Introducing Equality Exchange
We are proud to announce Equality, a decentralized, non-custodial, peer-to-contract exchange protocol designed to trade assets that, assuming honest and secure conditions, should trade at approximately the same value.
Our goal is to create an exchange that will allow users to trade similarly-priced assets — such as stablecoins — with low fees and slippage. Meanwhile, we will garner adequate liquidity by incentivizing liquidity providers (LPs) with a share of transaction fees. Additionally, our liquidity pools will be integrated with other ICON DeFi products such as OMM to provide additional yield for LPs.
Furthermore, LPs will also receive Equality tokens (EQU), which provide governance rights over the Equality platform. There is no ICO and no pre-mine of EQU tokens.
What is Equality?
Equality is an automated market maker (AMM) that utilizes the StableSwap invariant designed by Michael Egorov, which most notably serves as the foundation of the Curve protocol. The StableSwap invariant is optimized to provide the protocol with deep liquidity while significantly reducing price slippage, which incentivizes traders to utilize the protocol and significantly reduces the potential “impermanent loss” suffered by liquidity providers.
As more stablecoins become available within the ICON ecosystem, a platform that facilitates a frictionless exchange of these assets in a manner favorable to both traders and liquidity providers will serve as yet another critical step toward fulfilling ICON’s original goal of interoperability.
Furthermore, we believe Equality can serve as a mechanism for diversification among stablecoins. By holding only one type of asset, failure of that asset for any reason would be highly detrimental; however, by providing liquidity to an Equality pool, you are effectively ensuring exposure to a basket of multiple assets of a similar nature.
Equality can also be thought of as a bridge exchange between networks. As ICON integrates more blockchains with BTP, ICON’s interoperability protocol, more stablecoins from other networks can be tradeable on Equality. This makes Equality a hub for entering and exiting the ICON Ecosystem.
Why Equality?
While existing AMMs are able to serve as an effective mechanism for trading different assets, relatively high fees and slippage make them unsuited for trading stablecoins. Meanwhile, the price volatility within a trading pair also creates the possibility of “impermanent loss” for liquidity providers, reducing the incentive to provide liquidity.
For ICONists wishing to trade one stablecoin for another — perhaps due to the fact that one may earn higher yields across DeFi platforms than the other — being able to do so while paying small fees and experiencing minimal slippage will ensure they are able to avoid the substantial loss in value that trading stablecoins in a traditional AMM would bring.
Learn More
For more information about Equality, read the whitepaper for a full breakdown of the protocol. Also be sure to follow us on Twitter and join us on Telegram to keep up to date on the latest news and announcements.
As of now, the launch date is scheduled for Q3 2021. As development progresses, we will provide the community with a more specific timeline.
Thank you for reading and we are excited to be building this important tool for the ICON ecosystem.
Sincerely,
Equality Early Contributors
Scott Smiley — ICX Station Co-Founder, ICON Strategy Team
Tom Nguyen — TNTXT P-Rep Founder & Team Lead
ICONOGRAPHER — RHIZOME Team Member
Kevin Newby — ICONation Co-Founder
Website: https://equality.exchange/
Telegram: https://t.me/EqualityExchange
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EQU_Exchange
Whitepaper: Click here
