The Trouble with Centralized Exchanges

It’s true that centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have revolutionized blockchain finance in a major way over the past few years. However, it seems there are still some gaps in their ability to really provide the seamless trading that’s going to power tomorrow’s financial industry. Are we where we want to be with regard to ease of use and investor confidence?

One problem with the centralized exchange is related to cybersecurity. With a single point of failure, it’s relatively easy for black hat attackers to take down some part of the platform’s functionality long enough to compromise its use by investors. The Mt. Gox example is instructive, but there are others, too, chilling cautionary tales that leave the asset holder wondering whether his or her crypto tokens are safe from grasping (virtual) fingers.

Many centralized exchanges also suffer from a low number of available trading pairs. This doesn’t square with the modern trader’s often-used strategy of gliding down multiple crypto on-ramps to get a portfolio of decentralized assets into their wallets. With all of the complexity of today’s fintech world, having a wide basket is going to be critical to promoting a big user base, and a scaled result that really accomplishes liquidity (not to mention economies of scale that enhance what an exchange can offer).

Going back to cryptocurrency, there’s also the hot and cold wallet issue, where cold storage can result in lost assets, but being linked to an exchange can leave assets vulnerable. Investors read scare stories about people who lost key passwords and lost their high-value assets forever (or suffered theft) – but it’s also smart to untether after the deal has been done. Organization is key!

Another problem with these exchanges is related to downtime. The administrative burden for a custodial exchange is pretty high, in general. In order to provide the access to markets, administrators have to check a lot of boxes. They have to make sure that the entire asset life cycle is well-supported, which in many cases, is easier said than done.

By contrast, Orion Protocol, as a liquidity aggregator, makes all of this a lot easier with a non-custodial trading platform for decentralized cryptocurrencies. Blending B2B and B2C opportunities and offering staking options, Orion coalesces aspects of the market in an appealing way (and in a practical way, too.) The Orion Terminal, by aggregating liquidity from a diverse group of major exchanges, combines rich trading tools with ease of use in a way that facilitates the kind of active strategy that investors are looking for in this rapidly emerging field.

Then there’s staking, the new frontier of yield chasing in the DeFi world. With the ability to stake ORN in multiple CEX environments, Orion Protocol expands this opportunity for its users, at a time when the high APRs of staking agreements are a kind of “holy grail” amid the desert of low global interest rates. If it all comes down to profit (and at the end of the day, it does) the combination of great on-ramps with staking opportunities is too good for many traders to pass up, no matter what their background is or where they are in the world.

The development of Orion Protocol as deliberately liquid, scalable and accessible is the next step in the materializing of dynamic blockchain enterprises that will change how we look at money forever. It’s scale-friendly and versatile and enduring in a financial world where risk is always a big deal. As individuals and agencies look at how traders leverage value on markets, being able to open coordinated price streams is a major value, and Orion Protocol is providing those opportunities to its users. It’s one to keep an eye on as fintech continues to quickly innovate.

This article originally appeared on iHodl.