Cryptocurrency industry is fast growing and evolving every single day.
Centralized exchanges (like; Binance) is notching up their KYC policies which are getting stricter with every passing hour.
This restricts people from using their funds freely in the cryptocurrency market.
It can potentially take out the essence of the whole industry, which is decentralized and authority-less at the moment.
However, the exchanges that are less affected by these circumstances are Decentralized Exchanges (DExs).
A DEX allows you to buy crypto assets and keep full custody of your funds while maintaining complete anonymity.
These decentralized exchanges are known to have high transaction fees or slippages though.
Furthermore, with a new DEx being introduced into the market every-time, investors finding suitable ones with good liquidity becomes challenging.
This is where decentralized exchange aggregators come into the play.
A DEx aggregator can be used to find crypto-coins and tokens at the best price, with the lowest transaction cost and slippage.
What is a DEx aggregator?
A decentralized exchange aggregator sources liquidity from various DExs, and offers a better price and fee than a single DEx would.
On a DEX aggregator, you can select the best deal for buying and selling a cryptocurrency token, which is more like a search engine for DExs.
Now that you’ve understood what and how DEx aggregators work, let’s look into the list of aggregators for decentralized exchanges.
Best DEx aggregators for crypto
These decentralized exchange aggregators are chosen based on their reliability, popularity, liquidity and usability.
1. PancakeSwap
PancakeSwap lets you exchange crypto, and it also allows perpetual futures with up-to 100x leverage.
Users can even earn on staked crypto and win lotteries, which includes winning BNB by predicting the BTC price trend.
The exchange is one of the largest DExs with 2.2 million monthly users, and a $3.9 billion total value locked and staked.
The platform is based on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), and uses swapping of cryptocurrencies to facilitate transactions.
The automated market maker also lets third-parties provide liquidity via liquidity pools.
There’s no account registration, or even KYC verification, and users can start transacting directly from their wallets once connected to the exchange.
The PancakeSwap platform has a token called Cake that you can stake or farm in pools, and it also support NFT collectibles.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Farming, liquidity provision, perpetual futures, and staking add more value to the ecosystem | Only supports BEP20 tokens on Binance Chain |
| Add liquidity easily by visiting the exchange website, selecting a valid pair, and connecting the wallet | Just 15 cryptocurrencies supported |
| Place limit orders in addition to swaps | No support for fiat/USD and other currencies |
| Low transaction fees and high liquidity |
2. UniSwap
UniSwap platform is a smart contract and DeFi ecosystem with blockchain, exchange and cryptocurrency tokens.
It’s the largest DEx on Ethereum which provide users with a functionality to swap up-to 80+ ERC-20 tokens instantly.
It can also allow you to earn passive income for staked crypto assets, and browse or build DApps on the blockchain.
It also acts as an automated market maker to allow third-parties to provide liquidity to the exchange and DApps built and running on the blockchain.
The exchange supports swapping, and it also supports NFTs, DeFi alongside some other types of tokens.
It does not have a centralized order book, third-party custody, and no private order-matching engine, as it is a true peer-to-peer decentralized crypto exchange.
The exchange runs on its protocol, while the factory protocol is used to add new tokens to the pool.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Open-source, fully decentralized, secure and no KYC requirements | Supports only Ethereum-based crypto tokens – No other blockchain is supported |
| Additional products provide more value to the ecosystem | |
| Browse and use third-party DApps | |
| High liquidity with support for about 80 tokens | |
| Connects to many crypto wallets | |
| Low transaction fees |
3. dYdX
dYdX exchange platform capitalizes on derivatives of up-to 37 cryptocurrency assets using advanced order types.
The exchange allows perpetual futures with up to 20x leverage, while the minimum deposit is just $10.
The perpetual futures exchange is based on layer-2 blockchain but utilizes centralized order books, as user funds are locked into smart contracts.
This cryptocurrency exchange is very secured.
It supports cross-margin, meaning that, an account can open multiple positions while sharing the same collateral.
The exchange allows users to connect many wallets as follows;
- MetaMask
- imToken
- Coinbase
- Trust wallet
- Rainbow
- Huobi wallet
- Coin98
- TokenPocket
- WalletConnect
- Many other mobile QR-code-based wallets.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Discount on transaction fees offered for holding Hedges NFT tokens | Fiat-to-crypto exchange is not supported |
| Highly safe due to the platform’s decentralized nature | Fewer tokens are supported |
| No-fee trading for those with huge 30-day trading volume |
4. AirSwap
AirSwap lets you swap crypto on a peer-to-peer basis – about 250 tokens, making it one of the widest range of token supportive DEX exchanges.
It was recently updated into a multi-chain swapping protocol.
It’s also one of the most secure, given its decentralized nature, you do not need to register or signup to use the platform.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| No deposit, withdrawal or transaction fees | Does not support fiat to crypto exchange |
| Instant and secure peer-to-peer exchange |
5. QuickSwap
This platform improved from UniSwap on settlement time, as it’s built on Polygon – unlike UniSwap which is built on Ethereum blockchain.
The QuickSwap exchange is simply seen as a fork of UniSwap that employs liquidity pools to facilitate peer-to-peer-based swaps and order books.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| The natively earned dQuickon token incentivizes borrowing and lending on the platform | Does not support fiat exchange and transactions |
| Faster and cheaper transactions compared to Ethereum and other second-generation DApps | |
| $346 billion+ and high exchange volume of $22 million+ locked as value | |
| The team involved transparency |
6. ThorSwap
ThorSwap supports multi-blockchain crypto-coin swaps without wrapped, pegged assets or counterparties.
It lets people swap about 51 cryptocurrencies based on Synth, native ThorSwap and ERC20 tokens.
Its total value is locked at $358.89 million, but it is of a lesser value compared to most decentralized crypto exchanges.
Other products include staking Thor tokens to get vThor for voting and governance, liquidity pools, Thor nodes and hosted wallets.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Quite several cryptocurrencies are supported for exchange | Not transparent in terms of fees |
| Decentralized and secure exchange | |
| High liquidity APY | |
| Low transaction fees |
7. DexGuru
DexGuru allows users to peer-transact, or swap crypto-coins among themselves, while the prices of cryptos are derived from real-time transactions from liquidity pools.
It provides access to multiple decentralized protocols (such as; Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom and Arbitrum blockchains).
Users can connect their TrustWallet, WalletConnect, MetaMask, Trezor and Ledger wallets for transaction on the DEx.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| True peer-to-peer with different stablecoins supported | It does not support buying and selling crypto with USD and other national currencies |
| Secure due to the decentralized nature of the platform | No perpetual trading |
| Multiple wallets are supported | |
| High liquidity and pool activity | |
| Support for newer tokens |
8. Balancer
Balancer finance lets users keep portfolios that are rebalanced to earn more, and those holding balances collect fees for providing arbitrage opportunities.
Apart from portfolio balancing earnings opportunities, users can exchange about 110 tokens using the swapping protocol.
Users can swap any crypto for Ethereum, and users can also create portfolio earning pools on Polygon and Arbitrum.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| A large selection of tokens is supported (about 100) | Support for ERC tokens only |
| Liquidity pools are open to anyone | No fiat support |
| Massive returns on liquidity pools | |
| High liquidity – over $3 billion |
What is a decentralized exchange (DEx)?
DEx is any exchange built on top of blockchain technology that allow storage of the same immutable ledger across multiple computer nodes on the same network.
A decentralized exchange will allow you to buy crypto assets with full custody of your funds to maintain a complete anonymity.
Thus, they are a safe and more reliable method of purchasing cryptocurrencies.
How does decentralized crypto exchanges work?
True DEXes allow for swapping or direct exchanging of cryptocurrencies, hence do not allow exchange of any crypto-coin for USD, Euro or other fiat currencies, unless for the wrapped versions.
They also use smart contracts to facilitate transactions between one user and another.
These transactions are recorded directly on the blockchain instead of the company’s database.
Users also keep and manage their cryptocurrency in digital wallets instead of custodial centralized platforms that keep the private keys.
A DEX user can always use the private keys to recover crypto wallet balance on their own, without contacting the centralized exchange (CEx).
What are smart contracts?
Smart contracts enable transactions without a middleman or third party, and that’s to say, transactions happen directly between users at a very low cost.
Decentralized exchanges determine the crypto price algorithmically, with some using API-based, or liquidity pools to provide liquidity.
How are DEx aggregators better than DEx?
DEx aggregators are better, because they allow you to access the prices of different DEx in one place.
In that case, you don’t need to visit so many other decentralized exchanges to get a better price on your desired token.
Final thoughts
A decentralize exchange aggregator would allow you to keep full custody of your funds and give you the best price in the market.
If you use Ledger Live application, then ParaSwap will provide a very smooth transaction experience.
Most decentralized exchanges carry the benefit of low transaction fees to the tune of below 0.5%, which beats centralized exchanges.
Moreover, DEXes are very secure and carry high liquidity mining APYs of sometimes 100% of swapping fees.
The most secure way to use DEX aggregators is with a hardware wallet (such as; Ledger), but If you’re just starting, then use Trust wallet mobile wallet app.
Additionally, you should also learn how to secure your cryptocurrency wallet the right way, to avoid loss of funds.
