Over the past five years, the automated market maker (AMM) model is the one associated with the term of decentralised finance (DeFi). Exchanges such as Uniswap and SushiSwap enabled any person to easily access liquidity and trade without the intermediary. However, they had some serious disadvantages
Traders experienced impermanent loss.
High slippage on large trading.
Unreliable trading experience with no way of knowing the end price until the trade is completed.
These issues were tolerated by us since the blockchains were not fast enough to handle something more complicated. It was impossible to place on the chain a traditional order book when blocks were received after a few seconds. It is impossible to operate a fast market with a waiting time of 12 seconds per update.
Initiate Fogo, and the beginning of an onchain central limit order book (CLOB).
The former limits have disappeared as the Fogo mainnet is currently operating at a stable block time of 40 milliseconds. This pace has given birth to Valiant, the best decentralised exchange on Fogo, and it provides a feel of a trading experience of Binance or Coinbase in its entirety, but completely decentralised.
Why the CLOB Matters
In order to understand why Valiant is a big change, we need to examine the operation of the market.
Trade against in the AMM model, you trade against a pool of tokens. The price is based on a mathematical curve (x*y=k). When you purchase in large quantity the price falls against you within a very short period of time. Liquidity providers (LPs) lose cash when the prices fluctuate excessively (impermanent loss).
Trading in the Valiant CLOB model is between known buy and sell orders in other users and market makers. You can had a limit order such as Buy FOGO at $0.45 or higher.
Since Fogo is integrated with the Solana Virtual Machine and the Firedancer client, Valiant makes milliseconds matches and fulfils orders. This provides the use of capital much better than AMMs. Market makers are able to provide narrower spreads when they update the orders immediately upon changes in the market data rather than fear losing to a faster market-bot during the same block.
The User Experience: It Just Feels Fast.
The first-time experience of trying Valiant is a shock to the DeFi users since there is no waiting. It only takes a couple of clicks to attach your wallet, and press a price on the depth diagram and press the buy button. The validation is almost immediate and the spinner is not pending.
A similar case with Valiant is the presence of the account abstraction of Fogo to facilitate the gas experience. In several trading pairs, market makers will cover the gas fees, leaving the trade free.
Deep Liquidity, Zero KYC
Valiant is not only successful in terms of technology, but the best indicator of its success is its liquidity. The total value locked (TVL) on Valiant surpassed 50m after only 48 hours of mainnet launch. It has already attracted biggest institutional market makers, who are attracted to the well known order book format.
This forms a virtuous circle:
Lower Prices: Restricted dispersion intends normal traders.
Greater Volume: The more trading volume the more market makers it attracts.
Deep Liquidity: Good liquidity makes prices not to fluctuate and this makes Fogo safe to trade in bulk.
The Verdict
AMMs served as a beneficial connect point to sluggish blockchains. That time is over though with the latency by Fogo of 40 ms. Valiant demonstrates that you get not to need to decide between the speed of a central exchange and the safety of DeFi. You can have both.
In the case of Fogo ecosystem development, we believe Valiant will become the primary liquidity hub of the entire chain not only due to spot trade but also futures and perpetual markets. The order book has reappeared and this time it is quicker than ever.
