Synthetix is a derivatives liquidity protocol allowing anyone, anywhere to gain on-chain exposure to a vast range of assets. It enables the creation of synthetic assets called Synths, which are derivative tokens tracking the price of other assets, including cryptocurrencies, forex, indices, equities, and commodities. These Synths are backed by the 

, which is staked as collateral, entitling stakers to fees generated by Synth trades.

Synthetix allows people to gain exposure to assets on Ethereum they might not otherwise be able to access. It also solves problems of liquidity and slippage, as all trades between Synths are operated peer-to-contract. The protocol does all this without compromising on decentralization — traders retain custody of their funds at all times. Other decentralization trading options like AMM’s have major liquidity and slippage restrictions for most assets.

, are already being used across a range of platforms that leverage the underlying Synthetix protocol. Curve Finance uses sUSD in its deep stablecoin liquidity pool, dHedge uses Synths in its non-custodial mimetic trading platform, and while most Synth trading currently occurs on 

 that a new dApp called Kwenta will offer a completely revamped trading experience, still powered by the Synthetix protocol. sETH is a synth pegged to ETH which Synthetix users can mint through staking SNX in the 

 enables all of this — it gets staked as collateral to mint these Synths, creating a distributed liquidity pool. The incentive for SNX holders is that all contract exchanges between Synths generate trading fees, which are shared between SNX stakers. There is a correlation between the value of SNX and the number of Synths that can be minted into the system, which means there is a self-scaling mechanism built into the protocol.

 with Optimistic Ethereum, the Layer 2 scaling solution from Optimism, and has been showing unrivaled initiative in pushing DeFi onto L2. The other major milestone on the Synthetix roadmap is 

, which will allow non-custodial perpetual futures trading, offering high leverage trading across a range of assets.

. A summary of the network statistics across the various platforms using the Synthetix protocol is available at 

. If you’re interested in learning more, you can join the Synthetix community on 

What is Synthetix and what are SNX, sUSD, and sETH tokens?

Introduction to Synthetix

https://www.youtube.com/embed/nBo4FM1bB-4

 with the listing of DONUTs on Matcha! It’s exciting to watch Internet communities grow around tokens like DONUT, and we look forward to listing more tokens in this vertical. This simple guide covers the function of DONUT tokens and how to easily trade them on Matcha. Let’s dive in!

These tokens were originally released in October 2018 as “Community Points“ to the ETHtrader subreddit, which has 260,000+ members. Shortly after, though, the community voted to rename them to “DONUTs”. 

 to vote on community polls, grant special membership, and purchase the subreddit’s ad space.

How to buy and sell the r/EthTrader ad banner with DONUTs

The mechanism for buying and selling the ad banner is unique in that a Harberger tax is applied to each purchase. A Harberger tax is a concept popularized by the book called 

Radical Markets written by Glen Weyl and Eric Posner

1. The person who buys the banner sets the daily ad price. They can purchase multiple days of banner ad time.

2. Anyone can purchase it from them with their DONUTs for the set price, and the owner cannot refuse to sell at the current set price.

3. The person who owns the banner pays a tax on it (100% of the one-day banner price, daily) to keep the banner. Set the price too high, the more the owner pays in tax. But if it’s set too low, someone may buy it immediately.

4. If no one else buys the banner from the current owner, their banner image continues to be shown until the amount they deposited for the banner purchase is depleted.

5. When the banner is purchased, the DONUTs are sent to the original owner.

You can learn more about the philosophy and rationale behind this form of taxation 

The price of DONUTs is determined by the market, like any other token listed on decentralized exchanges. Matcha provides a simple interface to buy, sell, and trade DONUTs easily.

2. Register your Reddit account with MetaMask

3. Earn DONUTs by participating in the sub’s discussions (paid out weekly)

5. Choose a token to swap with your DONUTs and make the trade

Check out the video below for a walkthrough on how to trade DONUTs on Matcha.

How to trade Reddit ETHtrader DONUTs on Matcha

How to trade your EthTrader DONUTs

https://www.youtube.com/embed/V7uXrDaD8cM

Since launching in June, Matcha users have completed over 

! We are thrilled with this response and grateful for the feedback and engagement we’ve received from the community. Going into the final quarter of the year we wanted to make sure we addressed the two biggest pieces of feedback we’ve received:

Transaction costs are too high, especially for single source orders

 Matcha needs more tokens listed (Big update coming soon, stay tuned!)

Matcha’s goal is to always find you the best price for your trade, plain and simple. We do this by aggregating more than 13 liquidity sources and intelligently splitting up your order across multiple exchanges. But often the best deal can be found on a single exchange like Uniswap. In those instances Matcha has always been more expensive than going directly to the source. However, we’re excited to say this is no longer the case!

Starting today, 

it’s now actually cheaper to access Uniswap liquidity through Matcha

 than it is to go directly to the Uniswap UI! This is all thanks to the ongoing innovation of 

, which powers Matcha. 72% of the time Matcha is able to offer better prices than 1inch, Dex Ag, Paraswap and Uniswap. You can read the 

 about how Matcha stacks up against other DEXs.

Matcha outperforms other exchanges ~72% of the time by offering better prices after accounting for gas.

In addition to the Uniswap price optimizations we’re rolling out a few features we designed to give you more control and insight into your trades.


First, when reviewing your order we’ll now show you exactly how much money you’re saving by using Matcha. By comparing ourselves to the next best option.


Next, you’ll notice that most markets on Matcha now have depth charts enabled. Depth charts assist traders by providing an x-ray view into where liquidity is coming from. Drag your mouse over to see how your trade might be distributed across different exchanges in order to receive the best rate.

Finally, in order to have more control over how your trade is executed, we’ve introduced advanced controls. These controls will allow you to toggle on and off liquidity sources, adjust maximum slippage and change gas speed.

Today's updates are part of our ongoing commitment to put our users in control by offering an intuitive and trustworthy product experience that consistently saves you time and money. We’re looking forward to hearing what you think! Let us know on 

How Matcha is taking DEX aggregation to a whole new level

Create your first limit order on Matcha for free today



Over the past few months, Ethereum’s gas costs have risen dramatically, which has resulted in extremely high transaction costs and difficulty for DeFi users to get the prices they want when trading. We have been aware of this issue for quite some time and have designed Matcha to give traders the tools they need to navigate these high fee environments. In this post, we cover how to create free limit orders and how we transparently display fees so you know exactly the price you’re paying on each trade.



Before diving into how to set limit orders on Matcha, it’s important to understand the difference between a regular market order vs a limit order. A 

 is used when a trader wants to buy or sell a token at the current available price determined by the market. 

 is used when a trader wants to buy or sell a token at a specific price.



Limit orders are extremely useful when gas costs are high because traders can ensure that they receive the exact amount of tokens at their desired price without having to spend money on fees. Often times, market orders will fail because traders are not setting their fees high enough to be confirmed on-chain. Every time the order fails, they lose the amount they paid for the fee. On Matcha, all traders can set limit orders for free and can sleep soundly while they wait for their orders to be filled at their target price.

Unlike other decentralized exchanges (DEXs) that operate solely on-chain like Uniswap, Curve, Kyber, etc. Matcha does not store orders on the blockchain. Instead, orders are stored off-chain via 0x protocol, and only move on-chain to complete the trade. The maker of orders never pays fees, only the taker. This unique feature allows Matcha to offer free limit orders while other DEXs can’t.

Creating a limit order on Matcha is simple. Just select a market, click the 3 dots in the top right corner of the trade module, and click “Limit Order”. From there, you can input the price you want to buy a token at and when you’d like the order to expire if hasn’t been filled. You can set limit orders to expire in 10 minutes, 1 hour (default), 24 hours, 3 days, or 7 days.

Note that Matcha limit orders only fill at the exact Limit Price you specify (not above or below) and orders will remain open until 100% filled or until they reach expiration. Also, limit orders are not currently available on ETH markets. However, they are available on ERC-20 token markets, including WETH markets and you can easily 

.

Filling limit orders on Matcha is different from centralized exchanges, so it is a good idea to learn about the scenarios of why your limit order may not be filled as expected. Some common reasons:

. Your order will only fill if there is enough liquidity to meet its requirements (number of tokens and price). Please note that the token price displayed on Matcha is the last trade price and not the price at which tokens are currently available. This situation occurs most frequently with large orders for tokens with less liquidity.

 Your order will remain open until another trader is willing to accept your order's requirements (number of tokens and price).

You do not have enough tokens in your wallet to complete the trade. 

For example, if you created a limit order for 5 ETH and you have less than 5 ETH in your wallet when your limit order is triggered, the transaction will not complete.

 Smaller limit orders can be less attractive for takers, including arbitrage bots, especially if they are making larger trades since all transactions carry an 

Your order wasn't profitable enough for an arbitrage bot to fill

. Arbitrage bots account for a good portion of limit order volume. If your order isn't worthwhile for bots to fill after factoring in the fees, they won't fill the order. This is especially true when Ethereum gas costs spike.

Other exchanges are not always transparent in disclosing all the fees charged for each trade. Matcha will always display a comprehensive fee breakdown in the review order prompt before a trade is executed. See a comparison below with Uniswap.

We are always looking for ways to improve the DEX trading experience, reach out to us through our Help button or 

How to easily create Matcha limit orders and see the total price of your trade through our transparent UI.

How to trade DeFi tokens when Ethereum gas prices spike

We are thrilled to announce that several new tokens are available to trade on 

). These are among the most requested tokens from the DeFi community due to their use in 

. For those that don’t frequent crypto Twitter or the 4chan biz forum, yield farming is a recent trend where crypto traders seek to earn additional tokens by providing capital and liquidity to protocols via structured incentive programs. Development teams create these programs in order to attract capital to their pools and distribute their project’s token in order to decentralize ownership.

This post gives an overview of how traders can use Matcha to increase their yield farming returns, as well as brief descriptions of the newly listed tokens that explain their function within their respective protocols.



Warning: Yield farming includes a nascent set of strategies that can be extremely risky. These liquidity programs often advertise very high interest rates and token compensation incentives that can be misleading. Yield farming presents a whole host of new economic risks, in addition to current DeFi risks like smart contract security, liquidations, etc. Matcha does not endorse yield farming strategies or the tokens themselves. Proceed with extreme caution.

A core part of a yield farmer’s strategy is to quickly and cheaply swap for tokens that take advantage of changing market conditions including:

: Many of these tokens have constantly adjusting interest rates which farmers can exploit. As an example,

 started the month of July around 0.75% and is now over 8.25%, while the USDT lending rate decreased from 3.13% to 2.02% during the same period. A simple YF strategy would be to swap USDT for DAI to earn the higher rate, all while earning COMP tokens (more on Compound later).

 Dev teams change their incentive schemes to attract more capital to their protocols. For instance, Aave is introducing a new token distribution mechanism dubbed “

”, which will include awarding users for supplying and borrowing assets from the protocol.

 Recently, certain tokens have increased in value substantially due to sudden swings in demand. For instance, YFI is up almost 11000% from its all-time low of $32 a couple weeks ago. Farmers may then start allocating more funds to yEarn pools where they may be able to receive additional YFI,

 Farmers often want to trade into stablecoins like USDC, USDT, and DAI to take profits from their yield farming rewards or protect their portfolios against falling prices

Matcha offers farmers and DeFi users the best prices on every token trade, as we aggregate liquidity and scan across decentralized exchanges so traders don’t lose money on

. Farmers can securely trade in seconds on Matcha because no sign up is required and token swaps are executed completely peer-to-peer. 

Matcha is simply the best place for farmers to quickly trade tokens, as we now offer all of the most popular YF tokens including LEND, BAL, YFI, AMPL, UMA, COMP, SNX, etc. and are frequently adding new tokens and liquidity.


https://twitter.com/patrykadas/status/1288419882040795136

Before jumping into the newly listed tokens, let’s start with 

, which popularized and kicked off the yield farming mania. Compound Labs issued COMP tokens (which have been listed on Matcha since launch) to users who supply and borrow tokens through their protocol. COMP is a governance token that enables community members to vote on proposals to change the system. Governance is a core function with many of these yield farming tokens and a primary reason why these token distribution programs started in the first place.

Aave, a flash loan and money market protocol

, is in a transition period with their token economics. LEND is the protocol’s current token, which will be phased out and redeemed 100:1 with the soon-to-be-released AAVE token. Holders will be granted the ability to vote on Aave Improvement Proposals (AIPs) that can change both market policies (determining new asset listings, loan-to-value (LTV) ratios, and interest rate modeling) and protocol policies (e.g. bug fixes, platform incentives, etc.).

Yearn.finance is an DeFi yield aggregator that automatically allocates user funds between dYdX, Aave, Compound, and other interest-generating protocols to find the highest rates. YFI is the system’s governance token which is being distributed to users who supply liquidity to various yEarn pools, as well as a Balancer pool.

Dig into the details of yEarn and YFI in 

AMPL is a new type of cryptocurrency where the supply of tokens fluctuates daily, but holders’ overall ownership percentage doesn’t become diluted or change. While AMPL is not a stablecoin, the goal of Ampleforth is to create a token which is soft pegged to the 2019 US Dollar in terms of purchasing power and to create a token that is uncorrelated with other cryptoassets. AMPL wallet balances automatically change every day based on demand for the token and the current price compared to a targeted price. This daily adjustment is known as the rebase.

To accelerate the growth of the system, the Ampleforth development team is currently offering additional AMPL tokens for providing liquidity through their Geyser program. To learn more about how Ampleforth works under the hood, check out the video below.


https://www.youtube.com/embed/e-8yjmsshFg

Balancer is another AMM protocol similar to Uniswap, except the system's liquidity pools are highly customizable and include a self-adjusting distribution mechanism. BAL is the native token currently being awarded through an incentive program to users who provide liquidity. Like the previous tokens, the main function of BAL is to grant governance rights to the community in order to decentralize ownership of the protocol.



How to increase your yield farming returns by trading on Matcha

Increase your yield farming returns with Matcha

Since our recent launch, we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response from the DeFi community on their trading experience with 

over $50 million in cumulative trade volume

. The most common question we’ve received is how Matcha surfaces better prices than individual DEXs and other aggregators. To answer this, we need to explore 3 components that Matcha uses under the hood. First, Matcha scans across all 

 to find you the best price at that moment. Once the best price is identified, Matcha uses smart order routing to ensure your trade is completed in a quick, efficient manner. And finally, to further reduce transaction costs for traders, we employ meta transactions and gas tokens so you save on 

.

All three of these functions happen automatically and are abstracted away so you can have a stress-free trading experience. This post dives into each of these aspects that contribute to better prices and explores how Matcha gives traders better prices not only compared to individual DEXs, but also to leading centralized exchanges.

https://twitter.com/matchaxyz/status/1278053856895590400

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of experimentation in ways to build DEX networks. 0x uses an order book model similar to that of Coinbase/Binance, where buyers and sellers are matched peer-to-peer to determine the price of an asset. 0x’s model has worked well for larger trade sizes for popular token pairs. Protocols like Uniswap and Curve use an 

 where a pre-defined algorithm determines prices. AMMs have served long-tail token pairs well and function adequately for small trade sizes, but are not efficient as trade sizes increase. Kyber is an on-chain system where traders can tap into liquidity pools, known as reserves, to swap tokens. There is also a swarm of individual liquidity providers who have deployed off-chain request for quote (RFQ) systems that enable traders to connect directly with market makers to fill the total amount requested.

The bottom line is that there are a variety of exchange models, each with unique advantages and disadvantages. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an exchange that combined all the benefits? Enter DEX aggregation. Matcha aggregates all of these networks together in order to find the best price possible. Once the best rate is identified, Matcha’s order routing algorithm automatically splits transactions across these different DEXs to maximize the overall return for traders. We call this process smart order routing. You can learn more about how this algorithm works 

It is analogous to how Expedia aggregates the best routes and prices from airlines to help travelers get the best deals.

 Matcha takes it a step further in the sense that it automatically executes a transaction once the best price is found, so users don’t have to worry about price hunting when they want to trade.

If you’re a developer interested in the inner workings of DEX aggregation, you can learn about how Matcha connects with 

. There are a growing number of DeFi projects that use 0x API for exchange functionality and continued access to the deepest liquidity sources available.


If you have used an Ethereum-based app recently, you have almost surely noticed that gas fees have increased substantially. We have been testing out a few different mechanisms to reduce fees for users so they can trade without having to worry about Ethereum network congestion. The first of which are 

, also known as gas-less trades. Meta transactions, allow traders to interact with Ethereum without paying for gas fees, leading to a seamless trading experience because users no longer need to understand how blockchains work or the dynamics of the fee market. Meta transactions enable Matcha to sign and authenticate transactions on behalf of traders to pay for their gas fees.

, which allow us to harvest tokens and lock in low gas prices to be deployed when gas prices rise. It is important to note that we are not using these mechanisms on all trades. However, we encourage everyone to help us test out meta transactions and gas tokens so we can learn how we can use them long-term to improve the DEX trading experience!

Find out how Matcha offers the best crypto prices across Ethereum

How Matcha finds the best prices for DeFi traders

Today, we’re thrilled to finally release Matcha into the world, a simple decentralized crypto exchange designed for everyone! After nearly 3 years of building the 0x protocol and enabling others to build great DeFi products, our team had a ton of new ideas for how we could make it easier for more people to access exciting new markets.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/AxoWTVt5As0

, we believe that tokenization combined with global peer-to-peer markets will help to eliminate the geographic lottery and unlock latent human potential. That is why we set out to rethink the exchange experience and build the foundation to onboard the next wave of crypto traders.

First, you’ll notice that the homepage features token shortcuts and a search field. On other exchanges, navigating to markets requires clicking into two different dropdown menus to find the assets you’re looking for. With Matcha search, you can quickly type out whatever token or pair you’re looking for and immediately jump into that market to begin trading.

Eventually there will be hundreds of assets with thousands of different pair combinations you can trade. So, we wanted to make it as fast as possible for traders to find and navigate to whatever markets they’re looking for with fewer interactions, no matter where they are on Matcha.

Under the hood, Matcha splits trades across 0x Mesh, Kyber, Uniswap, Curve, Oasis, and our own proprietary liquidity sources to find the best prices for traders. As our team adds additional liquidity sources, Matcha will continue to improve to ensure traders are receiving the best prices the market can offer, which reduces time and effort spent price hunting.

On most exchanges, tokens aren’t given nearly enough prominence or the love they deserve. They are merely a list item hidden inside a dropdown menu. Traders are required to learn about and discover these assets on their own time. We believe a good exchange should make it easier for people to learn about the things they’re investing in. That’s why we’ve invested in building out asset pages which will serve as a destination for people to discover and learn about new tokens. We look forward to improving these alongside the various token projects and communities over time.

Most exchanges and DeFi products require you to be an expert going in. We heard time and time again from people who use DEX’s regularly, that they can still sometimes be scary. Whether it’s losing money due to extreme slippage or fat fingering a trade. We want to make sure that you always feel smart and in control when you’re using Matcha. We make sure that we tell you what is going on, we use friendly language and protect you and your money.

We want everyone to feel comfortable and confident trading on Matcha. Which is why we will continue to invest in education, new user onboarding and abstracting away the complexities of the blockchain wherever possible.

We’re really excited for you to start trading on Matcha! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us on 

 if you have any questions. We’d love to hear your ideas for how we can make Matcha even better. Thank you to everyone who already shared feedback during the beta, your input was vital.

Finally, I’d like to give a huge thank you and shoutout to the team for all the incredible work! 