After the recent integrations it's made with TCY and the ability of the team to hit the ground running and smash any challenge that comes their way on day one... LEODEX has become my #1 frontend for DEX trades. When looking at the other options available to the market LEODEX is objectively the best one in a lot of ways.
LEODEX has lower fees than a lot of peer exchanges, especially when the amount being swapped is low. Of course DEXes currently can't compete with with the bigger centralized exchanges in terms of trading fees, but I guess that's the price you pay for going through a centralized intermediary and being forced to provide KYC information and such vs doing these things directly on chain. Once you add up the network fee, affiliate fee, and the outbound fee it can add up to something like 1%, but this is more of a DEX problem in general than a LEODEX problem.
LEODEX is currently connected to ThorChain, Maya, and ChainFlip, giving it access to a ton of different options and pathways it can find for the best deal. That gives it access to everything those networks are connected to, which is a very long and expanding list. Apparently Thorchain will integrate SOL and XRP soon, which is not something I'm particularly interested in but is a testament to the expansion we're dealing with here. At a certain point these L1s will be connected to all but the most fringe assets (which you maybe shouldn't be buying anyway).
LEODEX also has a backdoor into HiveEngine and the Hive ecosystem so that's a bonus as well. I would also expect a VSC integration if such things are convenient or otherwise profitable.
LEODEX allows users to grow the network and scoop a 30% cut of the profits for themselves. Something like this may or may not go somewhere but either way it's a nice marketing tactic you'd expect to see that has no downside or risk to any party concerned.
Even now LEODEX is basically the only place you can go to get live statistics on the bad debt that is Thorchain's TCY asset. Luckily the asset is performing quite well and the debt should be paid off given any kind of alt market whatsoever. Leo got a lot of street cred by being the only game in town that could interact with the TCY launch on day one.
I will admit was pretty hesitant to use LEODEX for a product that just launched 20 minutes ago but it worked seamlessly and was literally the only option available. It's always best practice to use test amounts rather than YOLO your whole stack all at once blindly, and LEODEX makes that easier by lowering the fee on lower amounts.
A product like LEODEX generates income regardless if the LEO token is purchased directly or not. What matters is usage and trading fees rather than direct speculation on the LEO token itself. This puts me in a unique position of being able to promote LEODEX without needing to shill the LEO token. Forget the LEO token; crash it zero for all I care; I would still use LEODEX.
The biggest problem with L1 DEXes right now is that they are very much dependent on the value of the alts they list. No alt market combined with scams and rugpulls everywhere make it very difficult to succeed in the industry (for all players). All we can hope for is that the dry-spell ends, devs continue building, and communities continue growing.
On the other side of that coin: if you believe a big alt market is coming (I do) then this is the perfect time to be buying into L1 DEX coins like RUNE/CACAO/FLIP that are currently comically undervalued while they lick the wounds of this dry season.
LEODEX has been around for a while but they are finally getting the recognition they deserve from outside the Hive network. By constantly hitting the ground running and being the only game in town they've been able to get a lot of attention. This has been described as marketing-though-launch. By being the only option on day one it's easy to get noticed, especially by the degens who trade a lot. At this point I have little reason to use any other frontend. Impressive.
