Decentralized exchanges are great in theory but in reality we are still witnessing the early stages of these platforms.
Many of which are either fundamentally no different than centralized exchanges, and those that less compromising on their decentralization are also less user friendly.

Today let’s explore a brand new DEX brought to us by the PIVX team called zDEX.

I reached out to the devs this week and here’s what they had to say.

VIEW VIDEO HERE

First, let’s understand some of the aspects of zDEX that make it different.

To access this zDEX (which stands for Zerocoin Decentralized Exchange) you will need to download the zDEX app.

Right now it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems.
This is a lot better than using a DEX through a website as the web hosting servers can often be easily targeted by hackers, we’ve seen this already with EtherDelta and MyEtherWallet.

zDEX is run with the PIVX masternode system and zDEX nodes. This masternode network is what coordinates multisignature escrow accounts and orderbook matching.

The “z” in zDEX comes from the fact that zDEX allows trades that ultimately involve zPIV coins which is a Zerocoin protocol version of PIVX that provide off-chain anonymity of those coins.

It doesn’t help to anonymize any other coins that are involved with the trade like BTC or DASH, but when you trade BTC for zPIV on this DEX you are receiving an off-chain anonymous one-to-one kind of version of PIV coins.

PIVX is after all a privacy centric cryptocurrency so it’s very fitting that they are providing this kind of anonymity for those who use their DEX and they are also introducing these privacy features to those who maybe haven’t yet explored them.

There’s another interesting feature to zDEX and that’s the fact that user accounts expire after 24 hours.

There’s no need to freak out over this one, it doesn’t mean that your funds are taken after 24hrs. This means that after 24 hours you’re able to move your funds either to a new account or to another wallet.
This feature exists out of the effort of keeping zDEX decentralized. This feature is what prevents the devs from having or needing centralized control to perform order manipulation to remove erroneous accounts.
According to the main developer of zDEX, this is an automatic FailSafe mechanism. The funds locked in an account automatically unlock to the user (owner of that fund/address) after 24 hours. This prevents an issue that can occur with multisig transactions where it cannot get all of the needed signatures from the signatories (zdex nodes) and results in the freezing of the user’s funds indefinitely. So this failsafe mechanism ensures your funds will not be frozen so you will not need to rely on any kind of centralized authority of a dev to step in and remedy the situation.

The income generated from the fees on this exchange will be distributed to development and to the zdex nodes. 80% of the fees will be paid to the zDEX team to ensure funding for continued improvements and new features, and 20% will be distributed to the zDEX nodes running the exchange.
If you’re interested in playing a more integral part of this DEX and help it to achieve a more decentralized network of nodes, you can setup a zDEX node which will require you to own and lock up 10,000 PIVX and a computer that is able to run 24/7.

When you set up a zDEX node, you can expect to receive up to 0.025 BTC a month as long as there is an average of 100 BTC trade volume per day.

The share of the trade fee is determined per trade that is made by the help of your zDEX node.

For every trade, 15 nodes are randomly selected from the zDEX node network and grouped together to confirm the trade. When the trade occurs, the 15 nodes (or less if some drop off the network before it but no less than 10 online nodes) get the share of the fee of that particular trade in the type of coin that was traded. (if LTC was traded, then zDEX nodes will receive the fee in LTC)
Note that each zDEX node can be part of multiple groups and can also perform multiple transactions at the same time.

It’s worth it to note that if you set up a zDEX node, in addition to earning a percentage of the trade fees, you will also earn PIVX masternode rewards.

zDEX is very much in its Alpha stage, test net phase.

It is compatible with Bitcoin-based coins and right now the options include:

• Bitcoin
• Bitcoin Cash
• DASH
• Litecoin
• Particle
• ZCash

Keep in mind that the trades you conduct now are involving test net coins. We will have to wait several weeks before the zDEX team is ready for the official public release.
In the meantime go ahead and check it out, get familiar with the concepts and exchange and stay tuned for the public release!

Additional Reading/Links:

zDEX exchange
zDEX tutorial for zDEXNodes and Traders
zPIV Protocol
PIVX Masternode Resources
Roadmap and DEX