Jack Dorsey wants to build a BTC decentralized exchange
2 min readTwitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey loves BTC and also wants people to trade with it, so he announced his latest project: the BTC DEX
In mid-July, he announced the launch of TBD, a new project aimed at facilitating the creation of DeFi services. He revealed yesterday that the division will also be in charge of the development of the decentralized exchange (DEX). Jack Dorsey has not published any additional information about the platform. So it is probably still in the theoretical phase, however, given the robustness of CashApp, it is possible that the development will not be as complicated as if the startup was trying to create a product from scratch.
What is a decentralized stock exchange?
DEX, or decentralized exchanges, are platforms that allow their users to exchange cryptocurrencies and tokens without the need for an intermediary. Thanks to the smart contract, everything is done decentrally and automatically.
In general, their advantages are that they are anonymous, can be integrated with any protocol-compatible token without an authentication process, do not require KYC, and allow parallel project development through new smart contract interactions.
In terms of disadvantages, operations are slow and costly.
In addition, decentralized exchanges are more prone to hacks and exploits due to the public nature of their code. In the event of a failure, the victims have no one to account for, as no central body is responsible for the service. Examples of decentralized exchanges are Uniswap, Sushiswap, PancakeSwap, Bancor, Balancer, etc. On the other hand, the best-known centralized exchanges include Coinbase, Binance, Kraken, Huobi, FTX.
Jack Dorsey wants BTC DEX, but it’s not as easy as it sounds
Due to their complexity, DEX are usually built on second-generation blockchains. BTC is a first-generation blockchain because it only allows sending and receiving tokens. Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain are second-generation blockchains because they enable the creation of smart contracts.
But Jack is a BTC maximalist and wants his DEX to focus on cryptocurrency no. 1.
There is not much information about how he plans to achieve his goal. Still, as Mike Brock, CEO of TBD in Square, revealed, much of the code is likely to be developed at RSK. This Layer 2 solution enables the execution of smart contracts in a BTC network.
Bisq, a decentralized BTC-oriented platform that has been around for several years, has already contacted Jack to offer him some kind of integration, and the CEO of Twitter liked the idea and referred it to Mike Brock.
