Tokenlon has obvious advantages in transaction costs, and is deeply integrated with the head wallet imToken to acquire a large number of entry users.
Original title: “[Public Due Diligence] In-Depth Report: Tokenlon”
Author: First Class
Tokenlon is a DEX based on Ethereum. It has recently released version 5.0. Based on the RFQ quotation model, it has successively connected the liquidity of Uniswap, Curve, and Sushiswap. In the future, it will further integrate other agreements to expand its liquidity to obtain better Offer to improve user experience.
This research report is a free research report (non-wealth code research report) sponsored by Tokenlon. The content of the research report is completely independently written by the first-class warehouse. The first-class warehouse strives to ensure that the content of the research report is true, neutral and objective, and at the same time to avoid misleading readers Any free research report sponsored by the project party does not provide any investment-related advice. This research report aims to help readers quickly and in-depth understand the project and help everyone make better investment decisions.
Project summary
Tokenlon is a DEX based on Ethereum and is built into the imToken wallet. It adopts the RFQ quotation model. It will begin to access Uniswap, Curve and Sushiswap liquidity in 2020. In DEXs, Tokenlon’s transaction volume has always been relatively high, and Tokenlon is also the largest repeater for 0x.
imToken and Tokenlon are relatively solid entrepreneurial teams in the blockchain industry. During the development of Tokenlon, the team has always emphasized user experience. From the perspective of Tokenlon’s current products, the page is simple, the transaction fee is low, and the user experience is relatively good. Tokenlon recently released version 5.0, which integrates AMM DEX liquidity based on the RFQ quotation model. In the future, it will integrate more protocols and expand its liquidity to obtain better quotations and improve user experience.
The main advantages of Tokenlon currently are:
1) The user can get a better adjusted price, that is, the real price received by the user after deducting the transaction fee and miner fee:
- In non-ETH ERC-20 transactions, the platform only charges the higher of the transaction fee and the miner’s fee. If the miner’s fee is higher than the transaction fee, the transaction does not charge the user transaction fee, and the user only needs to pay the miner fee. If the miner fee is less than the transaction fee, Tokenlon only charges the transaction fee and puts the transaction on the chain for the user, earning the difference between the two, compressing its own profit space to reduce the user’s transaction cost;
- Under the RFQ quotation model, the impact of the transaction runaway on the final transaction price is relatively small;
- Tokenlon 5.0 subsidizes the difference in miners’ fees for transactions completed through AMM, thereby increasing the success rate of transactions and being more user-friendly under extreme market conditions;
d. Gas fees for transactions completed through Tokenlon are lower than the average level of DEX Gas;
2) Tokenlon is the built-in DEX of imToken wallet. As one of the premier blockchain wallet applications, imToken has the opportunity to introduce more traffic to Tokenlon.
3) The economic model design of the LON token is relatively reasonable. Since the launch of Tokenlon 5.0, the accumulated transaction cost has been approximately USD 5 million, which will be used to buy back the LON token in the future.
Tokenlon also set a minimum transaction amount, limiting the amount of miner fees paid by users to no more than 10% of the transaction amount, in order to reduce the user’s single transaction cost and increase the transaction success rate, but this also increases the small user’s Use threshold. According to team feedback, Tokenlon will consider canceling the minimum transaction amount in the future.
At present, liquidity is dispersed in multiple DEXs, and users’ demand for aggregators has increased. In addition, although AMM occupies half of the DEX, the order book format is more in line with users’ trading habits. Since the bottom layer of Tokenlon’s RFQ quotation model is the 0x protocol, and the limit order model is also one of the team development plans, it also has certain development potential in this regard.
However, Uniswap’s head siphon effect may be strengthened. If Uniswap aggregates more liquidity and forms a dominant situation, then users’ demand for other DEX and DEX aggregators may decrease accordingly.
Basic profile
Project Description
Tokenlon is a DEX on Ethereum. It was first launched in 2018 and integrated in the imToken wallet. In 2019, it was changed to an off-chain RFQ quotation model based on the 0x protocol, which further improved the transaction success rate and reduced transaction costs. At the end of 2019, Tokenlon released a web-side DEX. In 2020, Tokenlon will further explore and integrate the liquidity of Uniswap, Curve and Sushiswap one after another. It is currently in a critical expansion period.
According to Debank’s data, under normal circumstances, Tokenlon’s transaction share occupies between 3%~10% of the total DEX transaction volume, and can reach 15% during peak periods. As Uniswap, Sushiswap and Curve occupy nearly 75% of the market share, Therefore, Tokenlon’s trading volume ranking has been hovering between 4-6, and it is one of the DEX with larger trading volume.
imToken and Tokenlon are relatively solid entrepreneurial teams in the blockchain industry. During the development of Tokenlon, user experience is the focus of the team. From the product experience of imToken wallet, it can be seen that the team’s ability in user experience is very good .
Basic Information
Detailed project
team
imToken is the incubation company of Tokenlon. imToken received USD 10 million in seed funding from IDG Capital. Two teams, imToken and Tokenlon, developed independently.
Core member:
funds
According to Block123, the investor of Tokenlon is imToken.
Tokenlon has no fundraising and no pre-sale of tokens.
Code
Figure 2-1 Tokenlon code submission
According to Figure 2-1, Tokenlon’s code submissions are frequent, which can basically reflect the status of project updates.
The first frequent code submission was in the first half of 2018, which was the early development stage of Tokenlon, and the second was the beginning of mid-2019. At this stage, the Tokenlon update was improved on the original basis, and the off-chain RFQ quotation model was adopted. Daily update and maintenance. The third time is 2020. According to the information disclosed by the team, the original plan was to integrate the 0x v3 protocol. However, since the 0x v3 protocol needs to charge users a protocol fee and will increase the probability of transaction failure, the plan to integrate v3 was finally abandoned. The Tokenlon 5.0 version is integrated, and the liquidity of Uniswap, Curve and Sushiswap is integrated.
technology
The Tokenlon protocol is a token flash swap contract based on the 0x protocol, which uses the 0x protocol to realize the atomic exchange of tokens and settlement on the transaction chain. In 2019, Tokenlon upgraded on the original basis of 0x and adopted the RFQ off-chain quotation method to improve the transaction success rate. Recently, Tokenlon 5.0 version integrates AMM DEXs liquidity.
The 0x transaction protocol is a smart contract written in Ethereum. It regulates the parameter format of the order and does not directly serve users. Although there may be some differences in the trading platforms connected to the 0x protocol, the basic process of operation is the same; First, the trader creates an order under the chain, and the relayer (accessing 0x DEX) finds it and hosts it on its own server, and then other people can visit the website to find the order and trade. Tokenlon is one of the most popular repeaters in the 0x protocol.
RFQ off-chain quotation
Figure 2-2 The transaction process under the RFQ quotation model
Figure 2-2 shows the transaction process under the RFQ quotation model. Since professional market makers make quotations off-chain, they can create orders arbitrarily without paying gas fees. When a user initiates an inquiry, the Tokenlon server will request a market maker that supports the transaction pair every 4 seconds to obtain Compared with the latest quotation, Tokenlon’s off-chain quotation model can improve the efficiency of quotation and transaction.
Users can choose to trade or not to trade. Once the user chooses a transaction, he can submit the information to the chain. Since there is no on-chain price update, preemptive transactions (eg, market maker whitelist mechanism), etc., it can greatly improve the transaction success rate. Compared with AMM DEXs, professional market makers can avoid non-permanent losses and are more beneficial to market makers. However, the entry barriers for professional market makers are relatively high and ordinary users cannot participate.
Liquidity aggregation
Figure 2-3 System architecture
5.0 is the first step for Tokenlon to aggregate more liquidity. In the 5.0 design, each type of liquidity source will be aggregated into a strategy, which can be flexibly configured and plugged. Currently there are professional market makers (RFQ strategy) and AMM DEX strategy.
Since AMM DEXs usually determine the quotation by the algorithm, every transaction will change the parameters in the algorithm. If the transaction with high gas fee is preemptively packaged, then the order with low gas fee may not be successfully traded. In order to ensure that the transaction success rate of Tokenlon is not seriously affected, 3 parameters are set in Tokenlon:
- Slippage: If the price provided by AMM exceeds the slippage set by the user in a single transaction, then there will be no access to the liquidity of the DEX;
- Expiration time: If the user does not conduct a transaction within a certain period of time, then the quotation of the order becomes invalid, and the transaction cannot be continued, and there is no need to pay Gas fees;
- Miner fee subsidy: In the AMM trading strategy, miner fees are subsidized within a certain range and the transaction success rate is submitted.
In addition, Tokenlon optimized the transaction fee collection ratio. If the fee paid by the user can make up for the slippage difference, Tokenlon will take a part of the fee charged to ensure the success of the transaction.
Some of the above information comes from the information provided by the team.
product
Tokenlon currently released two products: Tokenlon trading platform, BTC cross-chain token imBTC.
Trading platform
Tokenlon was initially only a built-in DEX of imToken, and then for further development, a web version was launched.
Tokenlon refers to the token trading function as “flash swap”. The supported tokens include USDT, ETH, LON, UNI, imBTC, PAX, 1INCH, BAT, BUSD, COMP, CRV, DAI, FARM, HT, HUSD, KNC, LINK, LRC, MANA, MIX, MKR, OMG, REN, REP, SUSHI, SWRV, TUSD, USDC, WBTC, ZRX, KP3R, BAND, RUNE, YFI, BAC, HEZ, ZKS, PERP. More token types will be supported in the future. The product page is simple and user-friendly. Since the liquidity is mainly provided by professional market makers, the number of tokens supported will be relatively small. In theory, after accessing Uniswap and other AMM liquidity, Tokenlon can achieve more token transactions, but in order to ensure the success rate of transactions, Therefore, the team does not intend to immediately support most long-tail currencies.
Tokenlon’s stablecoin transactions charge 0.04%, LON-related transactions charge 0.2%, and others charge 0.3%. Gas fees and platform transaction fees are only charged a higher fee, and the user enjoys a minimum rate of 0.1% based on the number of LON held by users.
Figure 2-4 User interface of the trading platform (mobile terminal (left) vs web terminal (right))
imBTC
imBTC is a token that is anchored 1:1 with BTC and circulated on Ethereum. It is generated by the exchange of locked BTC. Tokenlon is responsible for issuance and supervision. It is a centralized cross-chain BTC token. BTC is stored in Tokenlon’s cold wallet, and the security of BTC assets is ensured through a secure cold wallet. Tokenlon supports imBTC transactions, and holding imBTC can earn income (the income comes from the transaction fee for Tokenlon users to purchase imBTC and the fee for users to redeem BTC). imBTC is an ERC-777 token. As the transfer of the asset itself, there is no security problem. However, due to its ERC-777 feature, the integration of other DeFi protocols should pay attention to the compatibility of business logic and its characteristics. Uniswap and dForce have appeared in history. Compatibility of imBTC.
Figure 2-5 Number of imBTC
Figure 2-6 The number of BTC on the Ethereum network
Currently, there are about 150,000 BTC on the Ethereum network, and wBTC and renBTC are the main cross-chain BTCs on the Ethereum network. Since the release of imBTC products in November 2019, the number of imBTC has not increased much, and has remained at around 1,000 in the past four months. As of January 11, 2021, the number of imBTC was 1,187. Compared with wBTC and renBTC, imBTC’s application scenarios are not as good as wBTC and renBTC, so the market share is relatively small.
Summary: Tokenlon’s core product is a trading platform. The latest version 5.0 has been launched. It has combined the liquidity of Uniswap, Sushiswap and Curve, and is in a critical development period. Tokenlon’s platform transaction fees are relatively reasonable and user-friendly. Code submission is relatively healthy, and the status of code submission can basically reflect its update.
development of
history
Table 3-1 Tokenlon Progress Details Table
status quo
Technological progress
The team launched the Tokenlon 5.0 version in December 2020. The details of the improvements are as follows:
- After accessing AMM liquidity, the first batch of six tokens including 1INCH, FARM, DPI, REN, and LRC will be listed, and the second batch of eight tokens will be listed: KP3R, BAND, UMA, RUNE, YFI, HEZ, ZKS, and PERP;
- Access to Uniswap, Curve, Sushiswap liquidity;
- You can add third-party payees.
Activity: The second phase of liquidity mining
Tokenlon launched the second phase of liquidity mining incentives on January 21, 2021. This activity will last for 6 weeks and will end on March 4. LON will be rewarded to liquidity providers in the LON/ETH pool on Uniswap and the LON/USDT pool on SushiSwap. The second phase of liquidity mining rewards totals 1 million LON and 25,000 SUSHI.
data analysis
Figure 3-1 0x repeater ranking
According to Figure 3-1, Tokenlon has always been the most active and historically transactional repeater in the 0x network. The cumulative transaction volume has exceeded 6 billion U.S. dollars, and the cumulative number of transactions has reached 581,000. Tokenlon has its own stickiness. user.
Figure 3-2 Change trend of trading volume (2019.07-2021.01)
Figure 3-3 Growth trend of the number of users (2019.07-2021.01)
According to Figure 3-2, Tokenlon’s transaction volume has increased significantly for the first time in January 2020, from an average of 200 transactions per day to an average of 1,000 transactions per day. The main reason is that the explosion in the DeFi field has led to an increase in transaction volume. On September 26, 2020, there was a second burst of trading volume, due to two reasons:
- Tokenlon announced that it will release LON tokens and will give back to historical users and encourage more people to start using Tokenlon;
- The overall trading volume of DEX increased.
Transaction users are mainly from imToken wallet users. According to Figures 3-2 and 3-3, the increase in the number of users is basically the same as the change in the number of transactions. The increase in the number of transactions may be:
- Existing users increase DEX usage;
- Increase in wallet users, including some DEX users;
- The conversion rate of wallet users into DEX users has increased.
Figure 3-4 Tokenlon’s share of trading tokens in the past 6 months (USD)
According to Figure 3-4, the main transaction token types of Tokenlon are WETH and USDT, because the Tokenlon contract can automatically package ETH into WETH, which means that the main transaction tokens are ETH and USDT, and because the shares of the two are similar, It can be inferred that users who use Tokenlon mainly exchange ETH and USDT. Tokenlon’s daily transaction address number is similar to the number of transactions, so the probability of being an arbitrage robot is small, and it should be a user’s large transaction.
future
According to the team, Tokenlon will access more AMM liquidity in the future, and plans to export liquidity to other DeFi protocols. In addition, in the future, more proposal rights such as the adjustment of transaction rates and the launch of new coins will be gradually transferred to the community.
Summary: The overall development of Tokenlon is good, and the product has continuous iteration. Tokenlon is currently in a critical development period. Tokenlon has accumulated the first batch of sticky users as imToken’s built-in DEX in the early days.
From the perspective of the future path disclosed by the team, Tokenlon wants to become a DEX that supports more trading pairs and aggregates more liquidity, from a DEX with a single liquidity (professional market maker) to a DEX aggregation application platform. Since Tokenlon can maintain a middle-to-upper level in terms of transaction success rate and transaction costs, after integrating more liquidity, it can break through the limitations of limited liquidity and has certain development potential.
Economic model
Token distribution
Initial distribution of tokens
The total number of LONs is currently 110 million, and the upper limit is 200 million. Of these, 130 million were allocated to the community through the LON incentive plan, 49.68 million were allocated to the core team, 10.32 million were allocated to stakeholders, and the remaining 10 million LONs were used as development reserves. At present, the actual circulation of tokens is 19,969,996.
Table 4-1 Initial distribution of tokens
Current token distribution
The current holding address is 46,742. Excluding teams, stakeholders, development reserves, and community currency holding addresses, the top 20 addresses hold a total of approximately 22.3 million LONs, and the top 50 addresses hold a total of approximately 26.7 million LONs.
Value model
demand
LON is an application token of Tokenlon, and its application scenarios include:
1) Fee discount: Tokenlon has a transaction fee of 0.3% for most transactions, and users who hold LON tokens can obtain corresponding fee discounts by participating in the pledge;
Figure 4-1 Transaction discount
2) Participate in governance: LON token holders can pledge LON, initiate proposals and vote to determine Tokenlon’s parameters, product development direction, etc.;
3) Pledge rewards: LON holders can obtain pledge rewards. The pledge rewards come from the LON tokens repurchased by the platform fee. 40% of the LON tokens repurchased are used as development reserve funds, and 60% is allocated to the pledger.
supply
The maximum supply of LON is 200 million pieces, and there is no destruction mechanism for the time being. Currently etherscan.io shows a total of 110 million pieces, and 90 million pieces used for continuous mining incentives have not been issued.
As part of the tokens allocated to marketers, teams, stakeholders and development reserves will be linearly released, the circulation supply of LON has continued to increase, increasing by approximately 1.7% per month (approximately 1.7 million, not including Continue to mine additional tokens) . The team also released a repurchase plan, which will use transaction fees to repurchase LON, and has accumulated about 5-6 million US dollars in transaction fees.
Summary: In LON’s economic model, 25% is allocated to the team, and 5% is reserved as a capital reserve. Since the team did not raise funds, this part of the token allocation is relatively reasonable. In addition, about 50% of the tokens are used for continuous liquidity mining (100 million), and most of the tokens will eventually be rewarded to LON supporters. This process lasts about 5 years. Approximately 400,000 LONs are released every week, which provides initial liquidity for LON tokens.
According to the economic model released by the team, the needs of LON mainly come from: 1) the pledge demand of liquidity providers, which depends on the rate of return; 2) the incentive to buy back LON tokens, this dividend method may only be announced by the team When LON tokens are about to be repurchased and dividends will be distributed, the demand for LON tokens will be stimulated in a short period of time (refer to the amount of token lockup before and after Curve dividends).
Generally speaking, LON’s economic model is relatively reasonable.
competition
Overview
Tokenlon’s industry is: DEX.
DEX is divided according to the source of liquidity and can be divided into: 1) Protocols that only use its own liquidity, such as all AMM protocols; 2) Aggregate trading platform, which specifically refers to not only access to the liquidity used by itself, but also access Other agreement liquidity trading platforms can achieve the role of liquidity aggregation.
If divided according to the quotation model, it can be divided into: 1) AMM joint curve pricing model; 2) Order book type; 3) RFQ quotation model; 4) Aggregation agreement.
Tokenlon is imToken’s built-in DEX. It was originally a DEX with a single source of liquidity. It is currently integrating DEX liquidity on the chain. The development direction is consistent with the aggregation trading platform. Therefore, the subdivision of Tokenlon is: the aggregation trading platform.
industry analysis
Industry chain
In simple terms, the completion of a transaction requires 4 roles: “Trader (demand side)-integrator (DEX/ aggregator)-DEX protocol-liquidity provider”. At present, the most critical role of DEX is the liquidity provider, and the liquidity they provide is the key resource for the transaction agreement. For market makers, which DEX agreement to choose for market making depends on benefits and costs.
Costs include: maintenance costs and losses due to market fluctuations. In the past, we often thought that the cost of making a market under the order book model would be relatively high because of the cost of computer programs, and AMM only needs to add liquidity. However, AMM DEX faces an additional risk of non-permanent loss.
According to the information previously disclosed by Tokenlon, there are currently about 9 professional market makers in Tokenlon. Professional market makers are usually not limited to making markets for 1 DEX. It is difficult to have obvious differences between DEXs with professional market makers as a source of liquidity. price advantage.
development of
The first-generation DEX such as IDEX has been gradually eliminated in the development process due to poor trading experience.
In 2019, the main DEX agreements include 0x, Kyber, Bancor, and Uniswap. 0x and Kyber belong to the order book DEX, but Kyber also added AMM to its reserve in 2019.
Bancor is the forerunner of AMM DEX. It wants to provide a trading place for long-tail currencies. Since BNT must be used as a trading pair, the depth is poor and it cannot provide a better price, so the trading volume has not increased. Start to improve in the first half of 2020 to solve
Uniswap is the later AMM DEX. It adopted a simple formula and operation method, and eliminated the threshold for listing of small currencies, which will explode in 2020. Subsequently, under the development of the DeFi boom in 2020, AMM occupies half of the DEX. AMM DEX such as Balancer, Sushi Swap, and Curve appeared. Subsequently, a batch of AMM DEXs appeared to solve the “non-permanent loss”. From the current AMM DEXs data, although the non-permanent loss solution has attracted some attention, Uniswap occupies most of the market share.
Tokenlon was originally a DEX based on the 0x protocol, with liquidity provided by professional market makers. In the second half of 2020, Tokenlon began to aggregate more liquidity. Currently, it has gathered the liquidity of professional market makers, Uniswap and Curve.
In the past few months, new DEXs have continued to emerge. At present, more than 9 billion US dollars of funds are distributed among dozens of DEXs, and liquid mining pools appear every week. As a result, the liquidity of DEX has become more dispersed than ever, which makes it more complicated for DeFi users to find the best transaction price, which promotes the use of DEX aggregators. At present, mainstream DEX aggregators include 1inch, Matcha, etc. At the end of 2020, MetaMask, the wallet with the largest number of users, also launched its own built-in DEX aggregator, MetaMask Swap.
The author believes that there will be 3 main trends in the development of DEX:
- The trend of Ethereum’s transaction protocol interconnection is more obvious, the demand for aggregators increases, and products that are more attractive to liquidity providers and ordinary users will occupy more voice;
- Although AMM DEXs occupies most of the market share, because order book transactions are more in line with users’ trading habits, they will inevitably occupy a certain market share. It is bold to infer that as the trading experience continues to improve, the market share of order book DEX There will be a certain increase;
- In order to improve the DEX trading experience and reduce transaction costs, the second-tier solution may become the standard configuration of DEX.
scale
Figure 5-1 2019-2021 DEXs trading volume situation
DEXs have entered a stage of explosive growth in transaction volume starting in 2020. There are several important reasons:
- AMM DEXs such as Uniswap and Balancer can create capital pools and add liquidity without permission;
- New currency issuance frequently: AMM DEXs is the key for new projects to issue tokens to bypass centralized exchanges, and the process of listing coins on centralized exchanges is relatively slow. DEXs have become the main venue for new currency transactions;
- Liquidity mining: Various projects have also launched the incentive model of “providing DEXs to obtain liquidity to obtain tokens”, resulting in the migration of liquidity from centralized exchanges to DEX; Uniswap’s “reward historical users” issuance token scheme is DEX Provides new business development ideas;
4). Increase in users of DEXs: As the popularity of DeFi increases, more users begin to understand and try DEXS.
Figure 5-2 DEX transaction volume
According to Figure 5-2 and follow-up of the 2020 monthly report of the first-class warehouse, Uniswap’s transaction volume has been ranked first, 0x’s transaction volume has been ranked in the top 5, and Tokenlon has always been 0x’s largest repeater. Tokenlon’s January transaction volume growth did not increase much. The main reasons include: 1) the end of transaction mining; 2) there are certain bottlenecks in the expansion of user volume.
Figure 5-3 Transaction volume of major DEX aggregators
According to Figure 5-3, the current major DEX aggregators have a total transaction volume of approximately US$3.5 billion in January, with an average daily transaction volume of approximately US$150 million. It can be seen that the trading volume of the DEX aggregate trading platform is gradually increasing. At the same time, 1inch occupies the main market share of the aggregate trading platform.
Although DEX trading volume continues to grow, compared with CEX trading volume, DEX still has a lot of room for development. As the number of DEX continues to increase and liquidity is constantly being diverted, in order to obtain better prices, people’s demand for DEX aggregators will also increase.
competition
Aggregation protocol
The best indicator of the DEX aggregator is the “adjusted price”, which refers to the actual price that users get after completing transactions on the chain and paying transaction costs. Adjusted price:
Adjusted price = selling value / (buying value-transaction fee)
For example, suppose a user wants to trade 100 DAI into USDC. A aggregator quotes 100 DAI=100 USDC, and the transaction cost is $5. Using the above formula, the adjusted price=100/(100–5)=$1.05. Aggregator B quotes 100 DAI=104 USDC, but the transaction cost is $10. In this case, the adjusted price=100/(104–10)=$1.06. In this example, the A aggregator wins because it ultimately provides users with a cheaper price.
Therefore, metrics to measure the performance of DEX aggregators include:
Accuracy : the accuracy of the quotation, the settlement price should be equal to the quotation. A slight spread is acceptable because there is a time difference between submitting the transaction and confirming the transaction on the chain. However, under all other conditions being the same, a WYSIWYG aggregator is a better product;
Low cost : a. More transactions on the chain will result in more gas fees. The aggregator should aim to reduce user costs as much as possible, need to adjust the route of transaction conversion, and obtain the best adjusted price; b. The aggregator/DEX should achieve a high transaction rate as much as possible, that is, reduce gas fees caused by transaction failures Loss (supplement), in DEX transactions, even if the transaction fails, the user still needs to pay Gas fees for the computing resources already occupied.
Therefore, the factors that affect the adjusted price include: quotation accuracy; transaction costs (network gas fees, platform transaction fees); transaction success rate.
Competing item
Uniswap
Uniswap is an AMM that came out in 2019, and the whole system is very simple:
- The algorithm is X*Y=V;
- Create and add and delete liquidity without permission;
- Any two tokens can be exchanged through smart routing in DEX;
- Each transaction charges 0.3% of the handling fee and continues to be invested in the pool. On the one hand, it serves as a market-making reward for the liquidity provider, and on the other hand, it increases the size of the pool and reduces slippage.
Uniswap occupies more than half of the DEX industry, and the head effect is obvious, so it is listed as a competitive product.
0x/Matcha
0x is the DEX protocol, there are three versions, v1 is the most basic transaction protocol, v2 adds ERC-721 agency contract, supports the transaction of ERC7-21 tokens, v3 adds bridging agency, which can connect to any other liquidity Pools, including DEX agreements, lending agreements and private liquidity pools, but need to charge an agreement fee, the team will soon launch v4. The 0x team initially only does the agreement to provide DEX development tools and support for other relay parties. Later, they realized that convergence of liquidity is the core of DeFi, and successively launched 0x Mesh and 0x API, and launched their own exchange Matcha in April 2020.
Matcha is a DEX officially launched by 0x based on the 0x API protocol. It can obtain liquidity from exchanges connected to 0x Mesh, split a single transaction into multiple DEX trading pairs, and also supports the limit order function. One of the aggregators. In October, the 0x team launched the 0x API v1 version, which uses the RFQ off-chain quotation model, and can integrate on-chain liquidity, which is basically the same as the core function of Tokenlon 5.0. Therefore, it is listed as a competitive product.
1Inch
1Inch Exchange is a decentralized exchange aggregator that can obtain liquidity from various exchanges and split a single transaction into multiple DEX trading pairs. Smart contract technology enables the aggregator to optimize and customize transactions for users. The core function is to aggregate data from various decentralized exchanges and combine the best price of all bids with the necessary liquidity. Since 1inch is currently the leader of the aggregation protocol, it is listed as a competing product.
Single transactions of Tokenlon and Uniswap will not be split, while Matcha and 1inch will split a single transaction and complete the transaction through multiple liquidity pools.
competition analysis
accuracy
There is slippage in DEX. Slippage is the volatility space between transaction quotation and settlement on the chain. The smaller the slippage, the higher the accuracy of the system’s quotation.
0x released a simulated trading report (the report was released in early October, and did not consider the update of some agreements). The price difference (timing transaction price-quotation) is used to measure the accuracy of the quotation. The positive price difference refers to the price at which the user actually trades It will be lower than the quoted price. For example, when the user initiates a transaction, 1 ETH=1,000 USD, when the actual settlement is 1 ETH=900 USD, the user can purchase ETH with less USD. This 100 USD is the positive slippage, which is beneficial to the user. A difference of 0 means what you see is what you get. If the price difference is less than 0, it indicates that the price received by the user is definitely not higher than the quoted price.
Figure 5-4 Quotation accuracy data
Combined with Figure 5-4, the price difference of 1inch is always less than 0, which means that no matter how the market changes, users will not get a higher price than the quoted price. This includes two reasons:
- The positive slippage generated by using 1inch transaction will not be returned to the user[1];
- It may indicate that the data source of the quotation provided by the aggregator is not updated fast enough, or its response time is not fast enough.
[1] This part of the tokens will be recycled to the address of the 1inch team instead of being returned to the user. After the behavior was discovered by the community, the 1inch team decided to distribute this part of the “income” to 1inch staking participants.
After 1inch releases a new version, the response speed will be accelerated. The accuracy of Matcha’s quotation is relatively high. It should be noted that the above conclusion comes from 0x’s simulated trading, and there may be other interference factors in real trading.
Tokenlon’s quotation is the final quotation after deducting the handling fee. The RFQ model can basically achieve what you see is what you get. The transactions completed by AMM will still have a certain slippage, but Tokenlon will provide subsidies within a certain range. After many inquiry operations, Tokenlon’s quotation can basically be better than the average level of DEXs. Users can compare and choose the best trading method when using the product.
transaction cost
Gas fee
Figure 5-5 Average Gas Cost
In the simulated transaction data, as the transaction amount continues to increase, the Gas fee for Matcha (0x API) and 1inch also gradually rises. The main reason is that Tokenlon does not split a single transaction. Matcha and 1inch split a single transaction into multiple Dex trading pairs. This aggregation method increases the number of smart contracts called, which will inevitably lead to an increase in Gas fees.
Therefore, in the transaction mode where a single transaction is not split, although the transaction amount increases, the number of contracts called remains unchanged, so the gas cost consumed will be lower than the single transaction split mode.
Figure 5-6 Average Gas Cost in the Past 7 Days
Figure 5-6 shows the average Gas consumed by major DEXs in the market in the past 7 days. It can be seen that Uniswap is one of the cheapest exchanges for Gas fees, followed by Sushiswap, mainly because the contract formula is simpler. The average gas fee of Tokenlon is at an average level and slightly below 0x.
Transaction success rate
Figure 5-7 Historical transaction success rate
As can be seen from the above figure, Uniswap has the lowest historical transaction success rate, followed by Balancer and AirSwap, followed by Tokenlon and 1inch, and Tokenlon has the highest historical transaction success rate. The main reason is that Uniswap and Balancer are AMM DEX, the transaction uses the algorithm formula of x*y=k, the value of k will change every time a transaction is made, and the order of the transaction depends on the gas fee set by the user, and the miner first packs the gas fee. High transaction. Therefore, transactions with low gas fees will fail.
And Tokenlon adopts the mode of off-chain order book + RFQ quotation, and the liquidity comes from professional market makers. A new quotation will be obtained every 4 seconds. When the user confirms to submit the transaction, the quotation will be maintained for 15-30 seconds (1 -2 Ethereum blocks), so the success rate will be higher. After accessing more AMM DEXs liquidity, the Tokenlon server will access AMM liquidity when AMM provides better quotes, so the future transaction success rate will slightly decrease.
In other words, the possibility of transaction failure using AMM DEXs will be higher than that of the DEX of the order book and off-chain quotation model, and the probability of losing Gas fees is higher, especially under extreme market conditions. Tokenlon’s transaction success rate is relatively high among DEXs.
Platform transaction fees
- Curve charges 0.04% transaction fee;
- Uniswap and Sushiswap charge 0.3%;
- Bancor 收取0.1%（两次转换实际0.2%）；
- Balancer 不同的池子收取不同的费用；
- 1inch 理论上不收取任何费用，但需要支付底层使用流动性池子的费用，此外1inch 不会返还正滑点的费用；
- Matcha 平台本身不收取费用，但需要支付Gas 费用和0x 协议费；
- Tokenlon 的稳定币交易收取0.04%，LON 相关交易收取0.2%，其他收取0.3%，Gas 费用和平台交易费只收取较高的一项费用。交易费用会根据社区治理变动。
二层解决方案探索
目前Uniswap 已经开始探索二层解决方案，而0x、Tokenlon 和1inch 还没有明确会集成二层。结合二层解决方案后，DEX 的交易费用将指数级降低，但是同时存在组合性差、安全性无法确定等问题。
流量入口
Tokenlon 的主要流量来自于imToken 钱包用户。而最主要的区块链钱包MetaMask 也推出了MetaMask Swap。imToken 和MetaMask 是目前市场上最主要的钱包，因此将其内置DEX 做对比。
表5-1 Tokenlon 和MetaMask Swap 基础信息
根据上述信息，我们可以得出几点：
- MetaMask 有浏览器插件和移动端，而imToken 只有移动端，因此MetaMask 的用户数量可能高于imToken。但是，作为入口级应用，钱包有机会为DEXs 引入更多的流量；
- Tokenlon 目前接入的流动性较少，而MetaMask 引入的流动性更多，理论上MetaMask 在大额交易时能够提供更佳的报价，但是由于MetaMask Swap 的单笔交易是拆分完成的，因此需要支付更高的Gas 费用，从而导致成本增加；
- 由于MetaMask Swap 上限时间较长，因此累计交易量较大，也可侧面看出流量入口DEX 的发展潜力。
图5-8 Tokenlon 交易路径
图5-9 MetaMask Swap 交易路径
根据图5-8，从发布5.0 版本后，Tokenlon 已有一部分交易已通过Uniswap 完成，但主要的交易还是由专业做市商完成。这部分交易主要是Sushi、FARM 等非主流币种。这部分交易还是占Tokenlon 交易的一小部分，2020 年12 月，通过Uniswap 完成了1,640 笔交易，2021 年，通过Uniswap 完成了2,406 笔交易（截至1 月20 日），使用量呈上升趋势，原因可能是Tokenlon 支持的长尾币种增加。而专业做市商在主流币种交易时仍能够提供较好的报价。
根据图5-9，通过MetaMask Swap 进行的交易主要通过Uniswap、0x、Sushiswap 和1inch 完成，并且Uniswap 和0x 的份额是逐渐增加的，这说明Uniswap 的深度和0x 的性能都是比较突出的。
结合5-8 和5-9，随着Uniswap 头部吸虹效应加强，Uniswap 上的一些池子深度不断加深，未来很有可能会形成一家独大情况，聚合大量流动性，对于DEX 聚合器来说，需求将大大下降。
Tokenlon 和MetaMask Swap 作为DEX，都有一个突出的优势：与钱包深度结合，以钱包作为入口，获取大量的入口用户。目前imToken 是用户人数最多的区块链钱包之一，还有大量的钱包用户没有转化为Tokenlon DEX 用户，有巨大的潜力尚未被发掘。
总结：Tokenlon 属于以太坊DEX，Tokenlon 的各项数据都在稳步上涨，目前处于向流动性聚合方向发展的关键时期。根据5.3 的数据，可以看出Tokenlon 在交易成本方面有比较明显的优势。目前团队将集合更多流动性和开发更多的功能，将进一步提高Tokenlon 的竞争力。相较于其他DEX，Tokenlon 还有个最大的优势是与imToken 深度结合，以imToken 钱包做为入口，获取大量的入口用户，根据目前的DEX 历史用户数量，有更大的发展潜力。
参考资料
Tokenlon Lite Whitepaper
https://tokenlon.im/files/Tokenlon-Litepaper_zh-cn.pdfA comprehensive analysis on DEX liquidity aggregators’ performance
https://blog.0xproject.com/a-comprehensive-analysis-on-dex-liquidity-aggregators-performance-dfb9654b0723Tokenlon 相关数据
https://explore.duneanalytics.com/dashboard/tokenlon-dex-statsDEX 相关数据
https://explore.duneanalytics.com/dashboard/dex-metrics0x 相关文档
https://0x.org/docs/guides/rfqt-in-the-0x-apiMetaMask 数据
https://explore.duneanalytics.com/dashboard/metamask-swap-volume
