The Bitshares DEX was the first decentralised exchange to come online, as still today it is one of the most advanced DEXs around. The Bitshares DEX is actually a vast ecosystem that touches on many different mechanisms unique to cryptocurrency - such as creating stablecoins.
It all comes down to trust. On a centralised exchange, traders do not know each other but they trust in the exchange itself to make sure everything works as it should. On a DEX, there is no centralised party to take on that role as traders exchange assets directly between each other.
Created in 2014, the BitShares DEX was the first of its kind in the world. It’s native token is BTS which is used to operate the DEX and pay for transaction fees, execution fees and voting. BTS is also used as collateral for the many stablecoins available on the BitShares DEX. And just like with any other decentralised token, there is no single party in control of BTS.
Executing trades on BitShares a lot simpler and certainly faster. That has everything to with Delegated Proof of Stake. This model was first pioneered by BitShares, and is an improvement on Proof of Stake. With Delegated Proof of Stake, there are only a limited number of people who verify blocks which are referred to as Block Validators - that’s the delegation. These people are voted in by other members who are required to have coins to do so - that’s the stake.
Gateways are different windows into the BitShares blockchain. There are currently around 15 gateways that are all running on the same BitShares system, the same exact blockchain. In fact, with a BitShares account you could login through any of these gateways to access the DEX from a different window.
While all the gateways operate under the same rules, private companies create them to provide additional features that would add value for their customers. Think of different user interfaces or the ability to list additional currencies. Gateways such as Sparkdex are providers of those solutions.
There two different types of cryptocurrencies:
User Issued Assets (UIA) - Trading Bitcoin on the Bitshares blockchain
To make trading BTC on the BitShares DEX possible, a gateway will run a Bitcoin node that process transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. When a customer makes a BTC deposit, the gateway will take that BTC and issue a BitShares-based token in exchange which represents the value of that Bitcoin deposit. That is the UIA and as a BitShares based token, it can be traded quickly and easily across the BitShares ecosystem.
The UIA token takes on the name of the gateway that issues it. So in the case of Bitspark, the UIA Bitcoin token used for trading on the BitShares blockchain is Sparkdex.BTC
Market Pegged Assets (MPA) - Stablecoins
Market pegged assets (referred to as smart coins or stablecoins), use smart contracts and collateral to create new coins with a value tied to another asset. BitUSD was the first one ever created back in 2014, made possible by the BitShares MPA feature.
