Crypto Trading Firm Wintermute to Launch DEX on Ethereum

Crypto market-making giant Wintermute is launching Bebop, a decentralized exchange (DEX) set to go live on Ethereum this summer.

Bebop will join the roster of existing DEXes on Ethereum, which includes Uniswap, SushiSwap and Curve.

“I believe that Bebop can be … more than just a tool to route to the best venue for execution,” said Evgeny Gaevoy, founder of Wintermute. “Bebop’s ambition is to redefine user experience in DeFi (decentralized finance), making the process of trading intuitive and hassle-free.”

Decentralized exchanges allow users to trade crypto tokens without the usual know-your-customer (KYC) checks, making them a popular alternative to centralized exchanges such as Coinbase (COIN) and Binance.

Unlike Uniswap and its various forks, the codebase for Bebop isn't open source, according to a Wintermute spokesperson.

The announcement comes on the heels of the April launch of Wintermute’s new zero-fee institutional trading platform, Wintermute Node.

Read More: Crypto Trading Firm Wintermute Launches Zero-Fee OTC Platform

One key feature of Bebop is its ability to swap one token for a portfolio of tokens and, conversely, swap a portfolio of tokens for one token, allowing traders to enter or exit multiple positions via a single trade.

Bebop says this feature will be “especially important in fast markets” and save users in transaction costs.

Unlike Uniswap or Binance Smart Chain’s PancakeSwap, which follows the automatic market maker (AMM) model, Bebop is a "request for quote"-based (RFQ) platform.

In an RFQ model, customers submit an amount of a token or portfolios of tokens that they want to trade. Then, market makers respond with a customized quote.

“For one-to-one and multi-swap trades, Bebop utilizes an RFQ model for its exchange, where professional market makers provide top-quality liquidity to the protocol,” explained Bebop product manager Kat Fore. “For users, this means protection from unexpected slippage – they always transact at the price quoted.”

Additionally, Bebop will have a built-in “last look” mechanism, a feature common in foreign exchange markets that gives a market maker the ability to reject a trade for some period of time after the customer has agreed to the quote.

According to the spokesperson, Wintermute will be the sole liquidity provider for Bebop during the project’s soft launch. In future releases, Bebop will connect to other AMMs and start adding other liquidity providers.