Renegade is a new type of decentralized exchange, an on-chain dark pool.
Current DEXes are completely transparent: Anyone can see your balances and trade history. In contrast, Renegade gives you universal trade privacy. That means that your trading activity is completely obscured from all third-parties, both before and after a trade is filled. No one except you can learn the details of your balances or trades.
Why use Renegade?
In addition to avoiding the counterparty risk that exists in centralized exchanges and OTC desks, Renegade solves many problems in current DeFi spot markets, ultimately giving you better prices and optimal execution:
- Pre-trade privacy. Before your trade is matched, no one can see any details of your order. Larger trades that would normally move the market when rested on an order book or detected in the mempool can now be filled privately.
- Post-trade privacy. After an order is filled, only the counterparty learns what assets were swapped. This prevents third-parties from tracking and copying your trading strategies.
- Zero MEV. Since validators only ever see zero-knowledge proofs of valid trades, there is no ability for block producers to front-run, back-run, or sandwich your trades.
- Midpoint execution. All trades clear directly at the real-time aggregate CEX midpoint price. Trades do not need to cross a spread, and there is never any slippage.
By default, trades on Renegade are anonymous crosses that trade at the theoretically-optimal midpoint price. However, Renegade optionally implements Indications of Interest to allow for full price discovery and better liquidity provision.
Who uses Renegade?
Given the wide range of information leakage problems that exist in current DeFi systems, many different types of traders can see price improvement with Renegade:
- Market Makers. If one market maker is long some asset and another is short the same asset, the desks can anonymously net out these two positions against each other, balancing inventory without needing to cross a public spread.
- OTC Takers. Instead of trading against an OTC desk's spread, takers can directly cross their orders against counter-flow at the midpoint price.
- AMM Takers. Traders who move $5k+ at once through on-chain DEXes often incur significant price impact, get sandwiched by MEV searchers, and lose money to cross-exchange arbitrage. With Renegade, trades are always guaranteed to execute at midpoint prices.
- Privacy-Conscious Crypto-Natives. Renegade maintains complete anonymity, meaning that no third-party can see any details about trade or payments history.
Overview of the Docs
For a high-level background on the role of dark pools in traditional finance and how we can translate them into a crypto context, check out What is a Dark Pool and to better understand the idea of multi-party computation and how it allows for order matching without leaking information, see What is MPC.
To understand how we integrate MPC matching with zero-knowledge settlement, see The MPC-ZKP Architecture and check out Lifecycle and Privacy to see how we this MPC-ZKP architecture guarantees maximal privacy while trading.
For more advanced concepts, including the ideas of Indications of Interest and Super Relayers, see the Advanced Concepts. And finally, for the most precise description of the protocol, see the detailed Whitepaper.
Get Access to Renegade
Renegade is currently in an internal testnet, with a public testnet expected in Q2 2023. The network will be rolled out to whitelisted testnet participants over time: Sign up here for priority access.
Otherwise, feel free to contact us with any questions or feedback:
- @renegade_fi on Twitter.
- chris@renegade.fi via email.
- Discord for quick questions.
- Jobs for careers.