After couple of years in Web3 personally, the evolution of crypto exchanges has been notable. We have endured tough markets and numerous exploits, adapting along the way. CZ’s role in Binance’s rise, from a simple BTC/ETH exchange to a blend of CEX and DEX, is significant.
Exchanges like Bitget and Okx have also emerged, focusing on asset safety with MPC wallets and protection funds. Strategic partnerships, like with TON, have also helped them grow their user base and revenue too. So, 6 years down the lane on some of these exchanges (my personal journey though), I'm still wondering if these exchanges could go "shoulder-to-shoulder" with Binance! What do you think they should do better?
What Binance did is simply amazing! Changpeng Zhao is an amazing and also a very lucky liar. He built this exchange on many lies, the lack of knowledge of people and on dirty practices. That's how Binance went from 0 to the top.
At the moment I think that it's almost impossible for any exchange to reach Binance's levels because Binance has lots of power. Besides an exchange, they also own Coinmarketcap, Trustwallet and some other companies. They both work synergistically to promote and profit each-other. Binance also offers trading and bypassing of KYC documentation behind the scenes, which is illegal and well-known fact. Basically, if an exchange want to reach Binance's levels, they should do illegal things.
There are also 2 kind of DEX: Binance, OKX, etc. Where you just send all your documents, complete KYC and make your trades. Low privacy, usually cheap, and you can use Fiat and btc and basically any other blockchain/coin/token.
Binance and OKX in their original forms are centralized exchanges (CEX). They also have a DEX part, which I didn't know until your post. I did a research and such a thing really exists but I think that the best example of decentralized exchange (DEX) would be Bisq.