This is a list of protocols for peer-to-peer exchange of cryptographic assets without a central entity. The architecture of these protocols can be quite different from one another. In some cases, they are built as smart contracts that anyone can use. In other cases, they are closed, but still implemented as smart contracts that are publicly verifiable. Other projects have chosen to create their own blockchain in order to build a protocol for exchange.

For our purposes, DEX is short for Decentralized Exchange.

[1] The OmiseGo white paper claims “this high-performant distributed network enforces exchange across as-set classes, from fiat-backed issuers to fully decentralized blockchain tokens (ERC-20 style and native cryptocurrencies).”

[2] The Enigma Catalyst white paper proposes an architecture for cross-chain atomic swaps using layer 2 solutions (also known as state channels). As far as I can tell, this is not currently being developed by the Enigma team.

[3] Bitshares claims that you can trade collateralized SmartCoins on the Bitshares blockchain. Bitshares claims to hold the collateral for these SmartCoins.

[4] https://blog.komodoplatform.com/everything-you-need-to-know-about-atomic-swaps-and-how-komodo-is-advancing-the-technology-cadaec50da7c

[5] Investors send funds to the "fund manager" and then receive a proportional number of the fund's shares in return.

[6] A company called Aphelion is developing this protocol in order to build their own DEX on top of it. I could not determine from the white paper if they are planning to open this protocol up to others or not. It is unclear from the whitepaper just how many assets this protocol will support.

[7] "Manage Offer" is an example of a function native to Stellar's scripting language https://www.stellar.org/developers/guides/concepts/list-of-operations.html#manage-offer

[8] https://ripple.com/build/transactions/#offercreate