So, over the last few days I've been trying out the testnet for the Binance DEX. If you've missed the annoucement a month a couple of weeks ago, the Binance Decentralised Exchange is now live in a Testnet mode. So, basically they are just asking users to stress test the exchange to try and catch usage patterns, UI problems and also the possible bug as well.

I've had some experience with the BTS DEX as well as a number of Ethereum based DEXs as well, and I have to say that, in general, my impressions were not very favourable. My main gripe with most of them has been the lag in placing orders and the confirmation on chain.

As part incentive for testing out there is a Bug Bounty and also a Simulated Trading Contest. To be quite honest, I don't have the time these days to really compete seriously in either the Bug Bounty or the Trading Contest.. and so my interest is more out of curiousity, as the launch of a Binance DEX by the largest and most trusted centralised exchange would be a huge deal in the crypto-currency ecosystem.

Setting Up

Every current Binance account has the opportunity to set up 20 wallets in the DEX testnet. Each DEX wallet needs to be linked to a real Binance account to be eligible for the 200 TESTNET BNB airdrop to the DEX wallet. Please remember, these are simulated tokens and not the real BNB!

So, the usual procedure for creating a wallet is used. The usual 24 word BIP39 seed phrase that is linked to the creation of your wallet keys and the downloading of the keystore file. There is also a session password that is required for the unlocking of the keystore file (and thus your wallet) as well as the authorisation of trading actions. Definitely a good time to be using a password manager, as copy pasting this sort of stuff is just asking for trouble! Also supported is the Ledger family of devices for creating and authorisation.

When yo log in, you have the choice of unlocking your keystore file, logging in with a Ledger, using the 24 word seed phrase or entering in your private key directly. As always, the last two are a REALLY BAD option for logging in and should only be reserved as a backup for emergencies. I didn't want to attach my Ledger to a testnet... probably nothing bad would happen, but if it did, I would prefer it happened to someone else! On the other hand... that bug bounty.....

So, that left me with a keystore file and session password... fair enough! In the future, if the DEX takes off, then the Ledger might be handy...

Market Interface

Well... there are no surprises here. Anyone who has used the regular Binance interface will feel quite at home here. Everything works in a very similar way... only the huge number of crazily named testnet tokens is quite confusing... which wouldn't be a problem except that....

... you can't click on a previous trade and have the interface jump straight to that trading pair! You have to manually search for it with the search box in the list of crazy tokens. Not handy at all, especially as I have done a fair bit of trading with those 200 testnet BNB tokens, and most of the things that I've traded have incerdibly memorable names like 81JIAN or 000-0E1 or 80DASHOU. Seriously, in the future there needs to be a rejection of tokens with impossible to remember names...

Otherwise... all the familiar Trading View tools are all present and accounted for. It's pretty crazy to see most of the tokens mooning with 1000000% changes and then crashing back down with 100% losses. Just for kicks, I spend about half my tokens on dead tokens with 100% or near 100% losses, so if they do even a little recovery... I'm in the money (simulated money.... driving my simulated Lambo... living on my simulated island... getting arrested for simulated tax fraud)!

I tried this DEX out on a home gaming PC with a solid fibre optic internet connection, and the trading experience was seamless and really almost indistinguishable from the regular exchange! With a laptop and a phone hotspot (4G), it was also a great experience. With a phone and phone internet connection... it was horrible. The speeds on the phone only attempt was sluggish, and the interface is just NOT built with a phone screen in mind. That said, neither is the regular Binance exchange, so that is not a surprise.

Account interface

ARRRRRRGGHGHGHGGHGHGHGHGH!!!!!! MY EYES!!!!!!

Okay... what sort of sadist implements dark theme in the trading and market section... and then doesn't have the option for it in the account interface? Does this count as a bug? oversight? sheer arse-holery?

Anyway, this section contains all the little nitty gritty information about your account. For every trade, there is a transaction written into BNB chain to lock in the transfer of assets. With the screen above, you can view the actual information that has been written and the location with the block explorer.

It's possible to easily send assets to other users... I'm curious about the withdrawing from the BNB chain and how that will work. Will the withdrawal fees be lower or similar?

The balances screen is again very similar to the regular Binance exhange, there is no need to break what was a decent interface. At the moment, there is no ability to sort the list... they just appear in the alphabetical order of the tickers. Also, there is no way to jump from this interface to the relevant trading pair... hopefully this is something that will be fixed as it is just too much of an annoyance to keep manually cut and pasting the ticker name into the search field of the market.

With assets like GOO... I'm sure I'm backing winners all around!

The entire transaction history for your account (with the BNB chain) can be found here. This includes everything from asset transfers through to order placements and cancellations. Interesting, but not so useful for the regular user... but necessary for transparency.

A listing of open orders is possible to be viewed... with the large scale nuking options to cancel all, cancel buys or to cancel sells. I hadn't noticed those options in the main Binance site, I must check for them... they can be pretty handy. Although, I prefer to cancel individually one by one to be sure of each of them. Clicking through on any of these, sends you to the relevant transaction on the BNB block explorer.

Similar ideas here on the placed and fulfilled orders (buys, sells and cancellations)... except that you can't cancel anything! You can filter by date and also by trading pair, but again you can't jump straight to the relevant trading pair from here.

A complete trade history, as well as information on the BNB block height at which it occurred. There is no information here that can be interacted further with at the moment, it is just a historical listing. However, I did notice a funny pairing... BINANCE/BNB!

... and lastly a fee history as well. Recently, I checked this again.. and it appears that (like other DEXs) you do incur fees for cancellations, which could be a problem for those who provide liquidity to markets (as they like to constantly shift their buy/sell orders, which means lots of cancellations.

BNB:0.00020000;
This column includes fees from
0
trades,
1
cancels,
0
expires

However, for a little fish, it isn't so much of a problem... the order cancellation fee is tiny, and only is significant if you are doing it at volume. However, there was also a strange entry:

BNB:0E-8;
This column includes fees from
0
trades,
0
cancels,
0
expires

I'm not really sure what this fee was... probably, it was the fee for a very small order filling.

First Impressions

Well, there are some small User Interface issues (like snapping to the relevant market pairing...) that I'm not very happy with... but it could be that those are features of a testnet, and not the real product. Seeing as there is a crazy amount of token listings in such a short time, they probably thought it was too much development overhead on a feature that wasn't really critical to the functional testnet.

Speed is really a vast improvement on the DEXs that I've experienced to date, and this speaks volumes about the potential success of this COSMOS based DEX. I very interested in how this is going to play out, and if this sort of DEX can transition to the traditional market space, then it has the ability to open up new avenues of financing and investment that isn't bound by geographical location!

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