What is Openfund?

Openfund is the first fully on-chain order-book spot DEX. Imagine if Coinbase or Binance were fully on-chain, with fully transparent on-chain trading and deposits, zero FTX risk, and no user experience trade-offs. This has been the holy grail for crypto from the beginning, and it has not been possible until Openfund, built fully on the DeSo Blockchain.

Openfund’s Key Advantages

Below, we explain each of Openfund’s key advantages, referenced in the table above, with direct comparisons to other platforms:

Fully on-chain order-book. Existing “liquidity pool” approaches like Uniswap or Raydium are designed to run efficiently on legacy blockchains, which do not have the ability to store and match orders efficiently on-chain, and thus do not give users the full power of an order-book DEX. Openfund, built on the next-generation DeSo blockchain, has been designed from the ground up to give users the full power of an order-book, exactly like the experience of using Coinbase or Binance, but with everything happening 100% on-chain. And we mean everything: Order placement, order matching, and even our advanced AMM order placements are all fully on-chain. What’s more, the DeSo blockchain, which powers Openfund, is 100% open-source, and anyone can audit the DEX code for full transparency (see the DeSo core repo, which contains all the key DeSo node code, with emphasis on the order-book code here).
Cross-chain spot trading. Today, if you want to convert one unit of BTC to one unit of ETH on a DEX, it would not be possible without using complex, slow, and high-risk bridging products (often taking whole days to settle). Perpetuals platforms like dydx and Hyperliquid allow users to speculate on asset prices, but they do not give users the ability to actually cashout to anything other than USDC (thus you cannot use them to actually “spot” trade one unit of crypto for another). What’s more, going long or short on perpetuals exchanges will subject you to funding rate fees, often 30% annually or higher, making it very expensive to maintain positions for long periods of time, especially if there’s a lot of volatility. In contrast, Openfund is the first DEX where one unit of Bitcoin can be directly traded for one unit of Ethereum (and many other currencies including SOL, USDC, SUI, DESO, and AVAX), without any hidden fees or perp funding rates because you actually own the underlying asset. No matter how popular perpetuals and derivatives become, there will always be a need to settle the actual underlying assets. As such, Openfund can serve as the unified “settlement layer” for all of DeFi, a role that was previously monopolized exclusively by centralized exchanges. This is made possible by a tight integration with HeroSwap, which supports near-instant cash-in and cash-out of fully on-chain assets.
Fully on-chain deposits. When using a Centralized Exchange (CEX), you have to trust that they are holding the deposits they say they are holding, and, as we saw with FTX, this can go very badly. In contrast, with Openfund, every deposit is fully on-chain, and verifiably backed by the exact amount of crypto held by each user. This is made possible by wrapped assets powered by the DeSo blockchain, such as USDC-DESO, BTC-DESO, ETH-DESO, and SOL-DESO. Each wrapped currency has fully on-chain social information attached to it, thanks to DeSo, including a profile description with links to backing wallets, and a list of holders, who also each have their own on-chain social profile. When you deposit a currency on Openfund, one unit of your currency goes into the fully-transparent and on-chain backing wallet, and you receive one unit of wrapped currency on DeSo, held in full self-custody. This wrapped currency can be used to trade on the fully on-chain DEX, and swapped back anytime within Openfund itself. At any time, users can verify that their assets are 1:1 backed simply by clicking through the backing wallets listed in the wrapped asset’s on-chain social profile (again, only possible thanks to DeSo’s on-chain social features). Exchanging BTC for ETH on Openfund is as simple as depositing BTC, swapping for ETH on the order-book DEX, and then cashing out, just like a centralized exchange, but with full transparency, and full self-custody the whole time. In addition, using DeSo wrapped assets is nearly gas-less. Over time, people may even come to prefer holding a DeSo-wrapped asset over the real thing because of these advantages, combined with the level of transparency around backing assets.
Unique human-readable on-chain tickers. Today, finding the right token on a DEX is an awful user experience, often requiring users to copy-paste contract addresses into search bars. What’s more, users frequently get tricked into buying a “doppleganger” token that looks like the real one, but that was actually created by a scammer who steals their funds. Imagine if, instead of identifying tokens by contract addresses, every token had a unique ticker, username, and description attached to it fully on-chain. This is what the DeSo blockchain enables, thanks to its fully on-chain social features. You’ll never have to enter a contract address to find a token on Openfund: The name of the token is the ticker, vastly improving the user experience and solving the doppelganger problem, especially when it comes to listing new tokens. Tokens also have fully on-chain social features that no other blockchain supports, such as the ability to make on-chain social posts, follow other users on-chain, and much more. This extra on-chain social information is attached to the token itself, and makes it easier than ever to ensure that the token you’re about to buy is the one that you think it is.
One-click meme coins, instant permission-less listing, and automated market-making for new tokens. Today, if you want to launch a new token, you not only need to convince centralized exchanges to list you, but you also need to pay market-makers millions to bootstrap liquidity for your market (only to have the market-makers dump your token the minute it lists due to lack of oversight). What’s more, because the “index price” of new tokens is highly volatile and sensitive to manipulation, perpetuals exchanges are largely unsuitable for trading newly-launched tokens, especially “long-tail” meme tokens (let alone with reasonable funding rates). Openfund changes all of this by pioneering an automated listing and liquidity-provision scheme that has been years in the making. Listing on Openfund is as easy as creating a social profile: Every wallet on the DeSo blockchain can issue tokens, which are then immediately trade-able on the Openfund order-book DEX. And because every token has a unique human-readable ticker/username, users can find new tokens much more easily. In addition, because Openfund is the first fully on-chain order-book spot DEX, it is pioneering a new kind of automated market-maker (AMM) to bootstrap liquidity. As soon as a token is launched, an automated market-maker can be configured to provide far better order-book liquidity than any centralized market-maker has previously been capable of, all with full transparency and zero conflicts of interest (with the creator earning fees on the trading automatically and seamlessly). These AMMs are currently running on the $btc, $eth, $sol, $openfund, and $deso markets. But they will be available to all new currencies that users launch on the DeSo blockchain via the launch of Focus, DeSo’s next-generation SocialFi app. Our new AMMs will initially be configurable exclusively on Focus to promote its launch, but they will be accessible to all DeSo tokens soon after (and all tokens launched on Focus will be trade-able on Openfund, thanks to the DeSo blockchain). Put simply, Focus can be viewed as a new launchpad for tokens, with Openfund serving as the order-book exchange for trading. What’s more, because everything is run on the open-source DeSo blockchain, there is nothing stopping anyone from creating alternative launchpads and AMM’s, all of which will result in tokens trade-able on Openfund, thanks to the fact that everything is on-chain.
Full self-custody. When you use a centralized exchange like Coinbase or Binance, they can freeze your assets or limit access to your account at any time. In contrast, this is impossible on Openfund because all of your assets are fully on-chain. Whether you are holding wrapped or unwrapped assets, nobody can freeze the coins in your account or limit your access to them in any way. Almost everyone who’s used a centralized exchange over the years knows what it feels like to lose access to your account, and to have to spend weeks convincing support staff to give you back access to money that’s supposed to be yours in the first place. This can never happen on Openfund: Your keys, your coins.

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Openfund’s Key Advantages

Below, we explain each of Openfund’s key advantages, referenced in the table above, with direct comparisons to other platforms:

Fully on-chain order-book. Existing “liquidity pool” approaches like Uniswap or Raydium are designed to run efficiently on legacy blockchains, which do not have the ability to store and match orders efficiently on-chain, and thus do not give users the full power of an order-book DEX. Openfund, built on the next-generation DeSo blockchain, has been designed from the ground up to give users the full power of an order-book, exactly like the experience of using Coinbase or Binance, but with everything happening 100% on-chain. And we mean everything: Order placement, order matching, and even our advanced AMM order placements are all fully on-chain. What’s more, the DeSo blockchain, which powers Openfund, is 100% open-source, and anyone can audit the DEX code for full transparency (see the DeSo core repo, which contains all the key DeSo node code, with emphasis on the order-book code here).

Cross-chain spot trading. Today, if you want to convert one unit of BTC to one unit of ETH on a DEX, it would not be possible without using complex, slow, and high-risk bridging products (often taking whole days to settle). Perpetuals platforms like dydx and Hyperliquid allow users to speculate on asset prices, but they do not give users the ability to actually cashout to anything other than USDC (thus you cannot use them to actually “spot” trade one unit of crypto for another). What’s more, going long or short on perpetuals exchanges will subject you to funding rate fees, often 30% annually or higher, making it very expensive to maintain positions for long periods of time, especially if there’s a lot of volatility. In contrast, Openfund is the first DEX where one unit of Bitcoin can be directly traded for one unit of Ethereum (and many other currencies including SOL, USDC, SUI, DESO, and AVAX), without any hidden fees or perp funding rates because you actually own the underlying asset. No matter how popular perpetuals and derivatives become, there will always be a need to settle the actual underlying assets. As such, Openfund can serve as the unified “settlement layer” for all of DeFi, a role that was previously monopolized exclusively by centralized exchanges. This is made possible by a tight integration with HeroSwap, which supports near-instant cash-in and cash-out of fully on-chain assets.

Fully on-chain deposits. When using a Centralized Exchange (CEX), you have to trust that they are holding the deposits they say they are holding, and, as we saw with FTX, this can go very badly. In contrast, with Openfund, every deposit is fully on-chain, and verifiably backed by the exact amount of crypto held by each user. This is made possible by wrapped assets powered by the DeSo blockchain, such as USDC-DESO, BTC-DESO, ETH-DESO, and SOL-DESO. Each wrapped currency has fully on-chain social information attached to it, thanks to DeSo, including a profile description with links to backing wallets, and a list of holders, who also each have their own on-chain social profile. When you deposit a currency on Openfund, one unit of your currency goes into the fully-transparent and on-chain backing wallet, and you receive one unit of wrapped currency on DeSo, held in full self-custody. This wrapped currency can be used to trade on the fully on-chain DEX, and swapped back anytime within Openfund itself. At any time, users can verify that their assets are 1:1 backed simply by clicking through the backing wallets listed in the wrapped asset’s on-chain social profile (again, only possible thanks to DeSo’s on-chain social features). Exchanging BTC for ETH on Openfund is as simple as depositing BTC, swapping for ETH on the order-book DEX, and then cashing out, just like a centralized exchange, but with full transparency, and full self-custody the whole time. In addition, using DeSo wrapped assets is nearly gas-less. Over time, people may even come to prefer holding a DeSo-wrapped asset over the real thing because of these advantages, combined with the level of transparency around backing assets.

Unique human-readable on-chain tickers. Today, finding the right token on a DEX is an awful user experience, often requiring users to copy-paste contract addresses into search bars. What’s more, users frequently get tricked into buying a “doppleganger” token that looks like the real one, but that was actually created by a scammer who steals their funds. Imagine if, instead of identifying tokens by contract addresses, every token had a unique ticker, username, and description attached to it fully on-chain. This is what the DeSo blockchain enables, thanks to its fully on-chain social features. You’ll never have to enter a contract address to find a token on Openfund: The name of the token is the ticker, vastly improving the user experience and solving the doppelganger problem, especially when it comes to listing new tokens. Tokens also have fully on-chain social features that no other blockchain supports, such as the ability to make on-chain social posts, follow other users on-chain, and much more. This extra on-chain social information is attached to the token itself, and makes it easier than ever to ensure that the token you’re about to buy is the one that you think it is.

One-click meme coins, instant permission-less listing, and automated market-making for new tokens. Today, if you want to launch a new token, you not only need to convince centralized exchanges to list you, but you also need to pay market-makers millions to bootstrap liquidity for your market (only to have the market-makers dump your token the minute it lists due to lack of oversight). What’s more, because the “index price” of new tokens is highly volatile and sensitive to manipulation, perpetuals exchanges are largely unsuitable for trading newly-launched tokens, especially “long-tail” meme tokens (let alone with reasonable funding rates). Openfund changes all of this by pioneering an automated listing and liquidity-provision scheme that has been years in the making. Listing on Openfund is as easy as creating a social profile: Every wallet on the DeSo blockchain can issue tokens, which are then immediately trade-able on the Openfund order-book DEX. And because every token has a unique human-readable ticker/username, users can find new tokens much more easily. In addition, because Openfund is the first fully on-chain order-book spot DEX, it is pioneering a new kind of automated market-maker (AMM) to bootstrap liquidity. As soon as a token is launched, an automated market-maker can be configured to provide far better order-book liquidity than any centralized market-maker has previously been capable of, all with full transparency and zero conflicts of interest (with the creator earning fees on the trading automatically and seamlessly). These AMMs are currently running on the $btc, $eth, $sol, $openfund, and $deso markets. But they will be available to all new currencies that users launch on the DeSo blockchain via the launch of Focus, DeSo’s next-generation SocialFi app. Our new AMMs will initially be configurable exclusively on Focus to promote its launch, but they will be accessible to all DeSo tokens soon after (and all tokens launched on Focus will be trade-able on Openfund, thanks to the DeSo blockchain). Put simply, Focus can be viewed as a new launchpad for tokens, with Openfund serving as the order-book exchange for trading. What’s more, because everything is run on the open-source DeSo blockchain, there is nothing stopping anyone from creating alternative launchpads and AMM’s, all of which will result in tokens trade-able on Openfund, thanks to the fact that everything is on-chain.

Full self-custody. When you use a centralized exchange like Coinbase or Binance, they can freeze your assets or limit access to your account at any time. In contrast, this is impossible on Openfund because all of your assets are fully on-chain. Whether you are holding wrapped or unwrapped assets, nobody can freeze the coins in your account or limit your access to them in any way. Almost everyone who’s used a centralized exchange over the years knows what it feels like to lose access to your account, and to have to spend weeks convincing support staff to give you back access to money that’s supposed to be yours in the first place. This can never happen on Openfund: Your keys, your coins.