Bringing DeFi to Cosmos: How the Gravity DEX Protocol Came to be

The Gravity DEX protocol is finally live, marking the biggest stride forward for Cosmos to date. Users will be able to experience the protocol when Emeris, the first platform to support it, launches in beta later this month.

Together, we have successfully deployed the Gravity DEX protocol.

Gravity DEX marks the biggest stride forward for Cosmos to date. It also marks a big step in realizing our vision for the future of crypto: multiple interconnected blockchains.

Beyond its massive impact as the most secure cross-chain decentralized exchange, Gravity DEX unlocks incredible amounts of utility for the Cosmos Hub: encouraging new chains to trade and create liquidity, enabling more traders to start arbitraging, and helping developers discover a new path to permissionlessly list their tokens.

The Cosmos ecosystem is worth more than $65 billion. This ecosystem includes Cosmos Hub, Binance Chain, Terra, Crypto.com, THORChain, and hundreds of other projects. Gravity DEX enables permissionless swaps and pools of digital assets between any two blockchains in this rapidly growing ecosystem.

Apart from the larger, more widely recognized projects, many tokens in the Cosmos ecosystem have been historically hard to purchase. Many early-stage projects with incredible potential aren’t available on most of the centralized exchanges, but Gravity DEX provides immediate access to all of these hard-to-buy tokens, such as Regen Network, Akash, Sentinel, Persistence, and IRISnet.

How the Gravity DEX revolutionizes DeFi

In an effort to broaden user accessibility, the Gravity DEX improves price models and decreases transaction fees.

The Gravity DEX protocol will democratize DeFi by drastically lowering transaction fees — to an average of $0.08 — ensuring that trading is accessible to everyone.

Gravity DEX uses an innovation called the Equivalent Swap Price Model (ESPM) that improves price discovery by landing on precisely the latest swap price. This price model makes it fair for traders while ensuring that the price you see is the price you get.

And, improving upon the Uniswap model, the Gravity DEX protocol uses batch execution to remove the possibility of front-running or price manipulation. With batch execution, orders in the same block are processed simultaneously and treated equally, removing the opportunity for front-running. Conversely, Uniswap orders are executed sequentially, and Ethereum miners can exploit this to ensure that their order goes through first.

How to use Gravity DEX: Introducing Emeris

Last week, Tendermint announced Emeris: a one-stop portal for all crypto apps, regardless of the blockchain the app runs on. Emeris will also be the first platform to support the Gravity DEX protocol.

The beta version of Emeris is set to launch in the coming days. And, thanks to the support of the Gravity DEX protocol, Emeris will enable users to experience cross-chain DeFi for the first time. Beginning with cross-chain token transfers and swaps, Emeris plans to rapidly expand to enable access to decentralized applications built on various blockchains — all from within a single easy-to-use interface.

Gravity Bridge: connecting Ethereum to Cosmos

Beyond cross-chain trading of Cosmos tokens, work is underway to connect major chains to Cosmos. The most advanced work taking place is on the Gravity Bridge to Ethereum. This bridge is scheduled to be proposed as an upgrade to the Cosmos Hub in Q3 2021.

The Gravity Bridge will be the most secure, efficient, and decentralized cross-chain bridge to Ethereum. The bridge will allow Ethereum’s substantial value and liquidity to flow into the Cosmos Hub, enriching the Gravity DEX marketplace, and enabling the Ethereum community to buy Cosmos tokens on DEXs like Uniswap.

Closing thoughts

With the Gravity DEX protocol going live today and Emeris beta launching imminently, Cosmos is primed to become a leading ecosystem in the DeFi space. We’re excited to level the DeFi playing field and make trading accessible to all users. We are building the Internet of Blockchains, and the Gravity DEX deployment is just the beginning.

Gravity DEX Keynote

Previously published here