Karura Swap Launches First DEX in Polkadot Ecosystem

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Karura has implemented the Polkadot ecosystem’s first decentralized exchange.

Karura Swap Becomes First DEX on Kusama

The Polkadot ecosystem has got its first decentralized exchange (DEX).

Karura Swap, an automated market maker on Polkadot’s canary network Kusama, is now functional. The DEX was created by Acala, a DeFi project backed by Coinbase Ventures.

Karura Swap is the first DEX to settle transactions via its own DEX-specific parachain connected with Kusama’s mainnet.

Prior to this launch, Acala and other teams had demonstrated DEXs built using Polkadot’s SDK, substrate. However, they were only experimental as they were built without a parachain.

The DEX currently lets users trade Kusama’s native token (KSM) with Karura (KAR) tokens in a permissionless, decentralized manner, with other token pairs expected to be listed later on.

The KSM/KAR trading pair has quickly amassed $3.4 million in total value locked from more than 1,000 liquidity providers, the team noted in a blog post announcing the update.

Besides functioning as a DEX, the parachain offers other decentralized products such as staking derivatives through liquid KSM and a multi-collateralized stablecoin called kUSD.

Karura Swap has become functional just a month after the team won a Kusama parachain lease auction. The team locked $100 million in KSM tokens that it raised as a loan from its supporters and acquired a 48-week period lease to build its DEX on Kusama.

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