Zaros, an emerging platform in the decentralized exchange (DEX) space, aims to revolutionize the trading experience by overcoming the challenges of limited liquidity, high fees, and complex interfaces. Despite the total transaction volume of DEXs exceeding $1 trillion in the last twelve months, their widespread adoption has been hindered by various obstacles.
One of the main issues faced by DEXs is the lack of market participants compared to centralized exchanges (CEXs), leading to price slippage on large trades. Additionally, liquidity is often fragmented across multiple platforms, making it difficult for users to find the best prices. During periods of network congestion, DEXs may also impose higher transaction fees. Moreover, decentralized platforms are generally not as user-friendly as their centralized counterparts.
However, Zaros is one of the platforms that aims to bridge the gap between decentralized and centralized trading experiences. By offering a perpetual DEX powered by boosted restaking vaults, Zaros strives to provide a decentralized trading experience that matches the convenience, liquidity, and variety found in CEXs. The platform enables trading of perpetual futures, which are financial contracts without an expiration date and allow up to 100x leverage.
To enhance liquidity, Zaros introduces liquid staking tokens (LSTs) and liquid restaking tokens (LRTs) that allow liquidity providers to earn extra rewards. LSTs are tokens received in exchange for staking assets, which can be traded or used elsewhere. LRTs function similarly but offer additional rewards through an additional layer of staking.
Zaros differentiates itself from competitors by offering up to 100x leverage on Arbitrum, an Ethereum layer-2 platform known for fast transactions and low fees. Additionally, the DEX will be available on Monad, a layer-1 blockchain known for its rapid processing and high throughput. Zaros also allows traders to deposit a wide range of assets as collateral into their accounts from Arbitrum and Monad, ensuring a seamless cross-margin trading experience where traders can utilize their entire balance without the fear of liquidation.
To streamline user access, Zaros supports social integration, allowing users to log in using Apple ID or Gmail. The platform also offers a sub-account system that enables users to implement different margin strategies or mimic isolated margins simultaneously.
In addition to user-friendly features, Zaros manages trading using skew caps and open interest caps, resulting in higher total value locked (TVL). Skew caps limit traders’ maximum exposure, while open interest caps restrict the total number of active contracts. These features allow users to explore more experimental trading alternatives, such as memecoins.
For liquidity providers (LPs) looking to earn real returns in ETH from trading fees, Zaros offers single-sided liquidity pools through its ZLP Vaults, which support LSTs like Lido and LRTs like EigenLayer. These vaults are pegged to underlying assets such as wrapped staked Ether (wstETH) and wrapped Ether (weETH), providing an additional yield layer. Zaros has also introduced USDz, an over-collateralized stablecoin that is only created when paying traders’ gains, ensuring its reliability for transactions.
Zaros is expanding its presence in the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, with partnerships including EtherFi, Redacted Cartel, and Yield Nest. The platform invites users to become early birds in its governance and is currently hosting a trading competition on the testnet to earn zPoints multipliers. The platform’s native token, ZRS, is set to launch via a liquidity bootstrapping pool (LBP) on Fjord Foundry, followed by elections for the Zaros DAO council.
As the DeFi space continues to evolve, platforms like Zaros have the potential to capture a significant share of the market currently dominated by centralized services. However, to realize this vision, DeFi platforms need to prioritize improving the user experience and ensuring equity in existing products. As DEX platforms continue to innovate, the transparent, decentralized, and composable structure of DeFi ecosystems will undoubtedly attract more users.
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