It wasn’t a good week for centralized cryptocurrency exchanges. Kucoin was hacked for over $280m, while Bitmex owners are facing jail time in the US.
There’s never been a better time to move to decentralized finance.
And, thankfully, the guys over at 0x have good news for their decentralized exchange Matcha.xyz.
Tl;dr: The new 0x API (v1) is optimised to bring you lower cost trades. It does this by accounting for gas costs in smart order routing, leading to an average 70% less gas used than the last iteration (v0) and cheaper trades than existing alternatives.
Uniswap Vs Matcha
Until now most people have gone directly to Uniswap to trade their Ethereum (ERC20) tokens. It’s interface is simple, with users able to swap their ether (Eth) for wrapped bitcoin (WBTC), dollars (DAI) or over 200 different tokens in one transaction at the tap of a button.
But the simple service (along with the rest of DeFi) has suffered in recent months. High gas costs have made decentralised services less attractive, especially when swapping small amounts.
The team at 0x may have the answer. Their new API promises cheaper gas costs, with the service accounting for the total cost of any transaction before acting (not just pairing the user with the cheapest market order).
Their decentralised exchange Matcha.xyz is the first to demonstrate the new system. It taps into twelve decentralised exchanges, including Uniswap, allegedly providing the cheapest transactions when accounting for gas.
But does the data back up this claim?
The Numbers
So can you really get cheaper decentralised transactions using Matcha? According to 0x’s data Matcha was cheaper in seven out of ten trades.
Adjusted price refers to the total cost of a transaction (including gas).
In a direct comparison between directly trading on Uniswap and routing to Uniswap through Matcha, Matcha was 3.7% cheaper.
Checking out Matcha ourselves was even more promising. Swapping ether for wrapped bitcoin with Matcha would allegedly have saved $7.44, making the service almost half as expensive as the next cheapest provider.
The Block Genesis Research
A recent investigative piece from the block agreed with this preliminary result. It analysed combined gas and slippage costs across DeFi, and found that Matcha ranked as the cheapest solution. It’s behind a paywall here.
Extra Features
Matcha is just as easy to use as Uniswap, and it has some nifty extra features too. The service shows a graph to the side, so you can see how the pair you’re trading has performed over the past 24 hours.
There’s also the option to set a limit order, leaving your offer to fill for up to an hour to snag a better price.
Conclusion
So there we have it. Matcha may just be the cheapest place to swap your Ethereum tokens. You can learn more about 0x V1 and Matcha here, or check out the team’s recent AMA.
There’s never been a better time to join the decentralized revolution.
