Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s complementary decentralized platform Binance DEX has launched in testnet on February 20th as promised by Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao last week.
In an official announcement on the Binance blog, Binance invited traders to visit the Binance DEX website, create a wallet and begin exchanging tokens on the testnet version. As insisted by the Binance team, this platform is available for public testing to enable the team to develop a more robust platform that should be able to complement the mainstream Binance centralized platform. Traders are required to accept the risk that comes with trading tokens on the platform as it is not yet ready for official launch.
As opposed to the Binance centralized platform, the DEX will allow its users to have complete control of their funds by controlling their private keys. In a DEX, a user is provided with a peer to peer platform on which they could trade directly with other traders without the need to transfer their tokens to the exchange wallets. As CZ said,
“With Binance DEX, we provide a different balance of security, freedom, and ease-of-use, where you take more responsibility and are in more control of personal assets.”
CZ boasted of the Binance DEX platform which will be run atop the also soon-to-be-launched Binance blockchain named Binance Chain. According to him, transactions on the Binance DEX will have almost near-instant confirmation times as opposed to other DEX platform with longer latency periods.
He said,
“Binance Chain has near-instant transaction finality, with one-second block times. This is faster than other blockchains today.”
He made parallel comparisons against other blockchains including Ethereum’s ~20 seconds and Bitcoin’s 10-minute block confirmation times. He said
“with the core Binance Chain technology, Binance DEX can handle the same trading volume as Binance.com is handling today. This solves the issues many other decentralized exchanges face with speed and power.”
The Binance Chain will also support the Binance Coin [BNB] which is expected to be migrated to the blockchain once it is officially launched. Currently, the BNB token is based on Ethereum’s ERC-20 token standard. Once Binance Chain launches, BNB will be the native token.
The Binance DEX was launched with support from Binance’s own wallet software Trust Wallet and thanks to a partnership with hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger, the Ledger Nano S. This means that DEX users will need to have access to either of these wallets to make transactions on the platform. According to the announcement, integration with other wallet service providers is in the works.
The Binance DEX testnet can be accessed at the following address: https://testnet.binance.org/
