Indian Crypto Exchange WazirX to Enter DeFi Amid Uncertain Regulations

Published at: Aug. 15, 2020

One of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges in India, WazirX, today said they are gearing up to develop and launch their first decentralized finance product in partnership with the Matic network.

In an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the company said they will launch an automated market maker (AMM) protocol. Nischal Shetty, the CEO of WazirX, shared that the product was currently under development, and they plan to launch a testnet version by the end of September this year.

An automated market maker protocol is a form of smart contract meant to replace order books used in traditional exchange marketplaces. They create a liquidity pool where tokens are automatically traded using an algorithm in a decentralized ecosystem.

Explaining the reason for choosing the Matic network, they emphasized that the network provided higher scalability and throughput than Ethereum.

Shetty said that through their new DeFi project, WazirX intends to attract the present users of the exchange and new institutional funds. 

The end product of their new initiative is expected to bring users to participate in the liquidity pool in return for WRX tokens. It will also allow institutional funds to take advantage of DeFi liquidity to execute their trades, said the CEO.

To bring additional liquidity, Shetty said, WazirX will partner with multiple liquidity providers; however, he abstained from naming their potential partners.

As of now, the new DeFi product will be launched separately from the main WazirX exchange, but Shetty said they plan to work on “a deeper integration between the two” platforms.

Regarding the impact of uncertain crypto regulations on the project, Shetty said that he was “confident about positive crypto regulations coming in India.”

It is a notable step for the organization to work on a new crypto project as the project risks coming to a standstill with almost no users if the draconian blanket ban bill proposed in 2019 were to become a law in India.

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