Republic Protocol shared last week that it would now allow third-party developers to build and operate their own independent decentralized dark pools for the trading of cryptocurrencies on their platform. The Singapore based company says it will “operate like an open source entreprise” where others may create their own “dark pool platform for trustless cross-chain atomic trading of Ether, ERC20 tokens and Bitcoin pairs.”
Dark pools in more traditional financial markets are pretty prevalent. In effect, dark pools are institutional trades that happen off exchange (like NYSE or NASDAQ). This keeps the trades privates (unless their are regulatory requirements to disclose the transaction).
Republic Protocol says the first dark pool will be there own. Their Ren Exchange or RenEx is scheduled to go live on the mainnet in the third quarter.
Republic Protocol says a key feature of enabling many dark pools is diversification of counterparty risk.
For “Darknodes,” multiple pools mean that the rewards they receive for serving as the essential order-matching engine for the network will not be pegged to the success of any single dark pool.
The company say a maximum of 10,000 total Darknodes will be allowed to operate, each needing a bond of 100,000 REN, will power all the dark pools that are built on the platform.
Republic states that it has been actively updating its community base as it strives to hit key milestones on its development roadmap.