MDEX Review

What is MDEX?

MDEX is a decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol, working with both an automated market maker (AMM) and an order book. Running on HECO, BNB Chain, and Ethereum, MDEX aims to create a DeFi platform, which is a one-stop solution for liquidity services, betting, exchange, mining, etc. 

The project was launched on the Huobi Eco Chain (HECO) network on January 9, 2021. One of the distinctive features of MDEX is a dual-mining (liquidity and transaction) mechanism that profits participants, and another is its system for redeeming and burning coins received as transaction fees.

The project raised $21 million in a single round of private token sales, where 7.00% of the total tokens were sold at $0.3 per MDX.

How does MDEX work?

MDEX aims to create a DeFi platform that combines DEX, IMO and DAO features to bring universal liquidity services for high-quality assets and provide users with more secure, reliable, diverse, and cost-effective transactions. MDEX was originally based on the Automatic Market Maker (AMM) algorithm. It is a fully decentralized protocol that relies on liquidity pools and liquidity providers, rather than buyers and sellers like traditional financial exchanges with order stacks. As such, MDEX offers ample incentives for liquidity providers through yield farming and staking the MDX platform's native token.

The revenue of the platform is generated from its transaction fees. The MDEX transaction fee is 0.3% of the transaction volume, 0.1% of which is used to promote the development of ecological projects, 0.14% —  to reward the users who pledge MDX in “Boardroom”, and 0.06% —  to repurchase and destroy MDX to maintain deflation of the token. 

However, even though the swap fee is set at 0.3%, in practice the fee is less than that. This is due to a transaction mining mechanism that rewards users for every transaction on the platform. In this way, MDEX subsidizes transactions, reducing their actual cost to nearly zero. 

How to use MDEX?

Since the platform works with EVM-compatible networks, the wallet MDEX can be accessed with should support ERC-20 tokens. For example - Metamask, Coinbase Wallet, and others. 

The platform offers several core products for users. Among these products is Swap, which has the classic AMM interface, but with a separate window that displays earned MDX tokens from trading. 

Clients of the platform have recently gained access to a full trading interface with a book of orders, a chart, and other classic attributes of the exchange. To enter the trading room, users need to click on the Charts button in the main menu labeled Beta. Here, they can choose the trading pair they are interested in and place a limit order. After an order has been placed, the matching process will continue for 3 days. If the trade is not completed within this period, the system will stop brokering the trade.

MDEX fees are 0.3% per trade. At the same time, users receive rewards for each trading pair, which can be viewed under the tab ”Trading”. Thus, the trading mining feature subsidizes trading on the platform. Rewards are distributed in MDX tokens.

Users wishing to add cryptocurrency to a liquidity pool can do so through the "Pool" section. Here, they need to create a pair of tokens by selecting the "Add Liquidity" tab. In the empty fields that appear, enter the number of coins and confirm the operation to place the assets into the pool. Next, to farm tokens, users need to go to the next column and select a pool for the previously selected pair. In the pool, add coins and confirm the action. Earnings from the pool are made from commissions. The user acts as an investor, depositing assets to create liquidity, and receives a certain part of the commissions in return.

Another important feature of MDEX is "Bridge", which allows users to transfer tokens between different blockchains. Depending on the cryptocurrency, transfers are possible between certain blockchains (BSC, HECO, and ETH).

For MDX token holders and active participants of the project, there is a separate application "MDEX Decentralized Governance". All interested parties can post their suggestions for improving the platform, as well as vote for the suggestions of other members. 

MDEX staking

Staking of MDX tokens is available on BNB Chain and HECO networks through a separate product called "Boardroom." Tokens can be locked for different periods: 30 days, 90 days, 180 days, or 365 days. In exchange for the locked tokens, users receive xMDX tokens, which confirm their right to tokens kept in the staking smart contract. The MDX token also gives its holder the right to vote in the project's DAO. When the MDX tokens are withdrawn from staking, xMDX tokens are burned.  

The MDX token

The native token of the MDEX exchange is the ERC-20 MDX token. It is paid as a reward for liquidity mining and is also used for staking and platform governance. MDX holders participate in communal governance through voting to establish the transaction fee ratios, get the decision for achievement through destruction and repurchase, as well as revise essential rules to MDEX. The total supply of MDX is 1 billion tokens, of which 10% went to developers, 7% went to early investors, 3% was spent on marketing, and the remaining 80% went to liquidity miners.

Is MDEX safe?

MDEX was audited by Fairyproof, Certik, and SlowMist. All audits are from 2021 and their scope is the project’s v2 smart contracts, although each audit cites a different GitHub commit hash. While Fairyproof didn’t find a single issue in MDEX’s code, Certik found a bunch of minor level bugs and informational errors. These were all marked as “pending” under the MDEX team’s response column in the audit, at the time of its publication ( April 7th, 2021). The Slow mist audit file provided by MDEX on its official documentation webpage is only available in its Chinese language version.

MDEX runs a bug bounty program with rewards starting from $6,000 MDX for low-level issues, reaching $60000 MDX for critical-level issues.

MDEX team is anonymous

Partners

MDEX currently cooperates with numerous well-known exchanges, including Huobi, Binance, CoinmarketCap, and Coingecko. Other partners include DeBAnk, SafePal, imToken, PolyNetwork, DeFiBox, CoinWind, OpenMeta, WhatsCoin, KingData, ButKeep, iToken, and HyperPay.

What's next?

The project does not have a roadmap. It can be inferred from its LightPaper that the team will continue to build cross-chain infrastructure, connecting not only EVM-compatible blockchains to make asset exchanges between them, but also projects based on Substrate, Cosmos SDK, and others. 

MDEX also plans to continue improving order-book trading features to match user requirements, as well as a more user-friendly and richer pending order strategy to create an operational experience comparable to that of a centralized exchange. Among such features, the introduction of derivatives trading is expected. 

Links

https://info.mdex.com

https://mdexdoc.gitbook.io