The Kyber Exchange Beta just went live and can be used since today! Kyber is a highly anticipated Decentralized Exchange and is one of the two pet projects that Vitalik Buterin himself is an advisor to.
KYBER BETA
The Beta version of Kyber went live today and can already be used if you want! It supports Ethereum and 10 ERC20 tokens right now, among which favorites such as OMG, REQ, BAT, POWR and EOS.Even though the exchange is public, and allows for logging in, you can't actually trade there yet unless you have KGT (Kyber Genesis Tokens) tokens. These were handed out to ICO participants only and are currently the only way to pay for trading/gas fees. This means that unless you're an ICO participant this Beta is a 'watch only' Beta to you and you will have to wait until this stage of Beta is over and they change the trading fees away from KGT.
What I immediately like about Kyber is their wide wallet support. As a DEX, you don't have an account when you trade with Kyber. Instead you connect your wallet directly to the exchange, and this is essentially your account. Your funds will automatically be loaded and there is no sign-up or KYC involved, and your funds remain inside your personal wallet and newly traded funds always end up in your wallet too, giving you full control and eliminating trust.
Kyber is a 'next generation' DEX over solutions like Etherdelta because these older style 'DEXes' often have off-chain orderbooks and order matching. Kyber improves over these solutions by handling the majority of actions on-chain, meaning less trust is involved or required, and they also guarantee liquidity by having a built-in decentralized reserve to fill your orders with.
One thing to note though is that judging by the Beta, Kyber is not actually an exchange in the sense that we are used to. It doesn't have price graphs and doesn't allow many features that we're used to in exchanges.
Instead, Kyber looks to be more akin to a Shapeshift rather than a Bittrex: You tell the network which coin you want to trade and for what, and then commit your order. Essentially this uses the current market price, although some limited Advanced options are available to influence the buying price, it is clear that Kyber aims to keep it simple.
HIGHLY ANTICIPATED
Kyber is a popular and well loved project in the cryptocurrency sphere. Much of this is due to the fact that Vitalik Buterin, the founder and creator of Ethereum, is personally advising this project as one of the only two projects that he advises (the other being OmiseGO). Vitalik's backing inspires a lot of confidence and many people see Kyber as one of the premiere Ethereum projects because of it.Another big reason is that Kyber is a South-Korean project, and Koreans sure do love their crypto. It is hoped that Kyber gains a significant footing and userbase in South Korea, although the project is of course aimed globally.
Thirdly, Decentralized Exchanges have been touted as 'the future' for a while now, and with Kyber being a DEX it shares part of the excitement as well.
I haven't invested in Kyber's own token because I didn't find the token value proposition enticing enough (it is basically a tokenburn as it's value proposition). I believe this is the main reason for the low market cap of this coin, because it definitely has enough popularity to be among the top 20. I think this DEX may indeed become a popular choice for crypto enthusiasts and traders, much in the same way that Shapeshift is very popular today as well. Except this will be decentralized and trustless.
