The next great thing in the crypto-sphere is making its way over the horizon, and it's bringing with it everything that we love about decentralization. This is the rise of the DEX, and it's about it eclipse everything in its path.
Centralized exchanges are freaking out right now. Governments are shutting them down, hackers get into their hot wallets for fun and they can't hide their fraudulent activities. Cryptocurrencies sold us on their decentralized nature so why are we allowing ourselves to be held back by such a critical point of failure?
Decentralized exchanges solve all these problems but people are taking forever to realize this. Bittrex isn't, which is why they decided to delist Bitshares. Why should they support the system which is eventually going to make them obsolete? If Poloniex had their own token, do you really think that Bittrex would list it? Hell no, so delisting Bitshares is a smart move on their part but too little too late. Perhaps they should consider developing their own DEX and get with the new program.
Bitshares is pretty cool though, boasting a capacity of 100,000tps which makes Bitcoin's 3tps and Ethereum's 5tps look like child's play, but what other options do we have in the form of decentralized exchanges?
STeX (Smart Token Exchange)
Developed by a couple of Poles, this one is heading into ICO phase. Everything about the model of STeX's ICO and the pre-ICO reeks of ponzi but what good is life if you're not willing to take a few risks? It's just money, right?
SuperNet
SuperNet was delisted by Bitshares earlier this year but I didn't give it too much thought at the time. I tried using it and was extremely disappointed so I figured that its crappy performance had something to do with Bittrex delisting it but now that I see what they're doing with Bitshares, I understand that Bittrex is like my pet bitch Zazu- it absolutely hates competition.
Atomic Swaps
P2P, baby. Why bother logging on to another platform when you can just swap your coins directly with someone else, strait from their wallet? The infrastructure isn't quite there yet but Charlie Lee just made it happen, swapping Litecoin for Bitcoin in the world's first atomic swap. I love how these guys make this stuff look so easy.
EthDelta and Ox
Designed to work with Metamask, this one lets you exchange every ERC20 token out there. No other exchange allows this but the interface is absolutely appalling. Guess the developers chose function over form. Ox is an upgraded version of EthDelta so let's hope that Vitalik's guys get it right this time.