The team of Aphelion, the NEO blockchain based decentralized exchange (DEX) announced the other day that they have been making “tremendous” progress in getting their compliance solution fully integrated. Last month, the team informed it would pause exchange activity until these matters were addressed.
First off, as a stated quick fix, Aphelion will be blocking participation on the DEX from users in the U.S. until the company can either partner with an existing broker-dealer to operate a compliant national exchange or get approved to be a broker-dealer on their own. The team says it will look to get one of the solutions figured out in advance of releasing cross-chain trading.
Until then, Aphelion will be blocking U.S. users, while re-activating the DEX within the next week or so. To note, U.S. users will still be able to view the DEX and have access to the full functionality of Aphelion wallets, but depositing into the DEX will be disabled.
More on DEX Compliance
Aphelion stated it will maintain existing as a non-custodial exchange (true on-chain and peer-to-peer). It’s been made clear that any exchange (decentralized or centralized) that is open to U.S. participation is in violation of SEC regulations if operating without a broker-dealer license. The Aphelion solution for users outside of the U.S. will allow the DEX to operate in compliance while it continues to develop cross-chain capabilities while finding a way to open to U.S. markets.
Contract Changes
The team also announced contract change, for this, Aphelion has implemented optimizations that will make the DEX faster and stronger than it was previously, these include:
- Reduce gas usage for deposit and withdraw
- Serialization optimizations
- Support for storing fully anonymous hashed based identity
- Support for whitelisting addresses
- Don’t allow deposit or adding an offer unless whitelisted
- Updated fee structure
- Reduced neoscan dependency
- Updated Fee Structure
“We have opted to move away from a logarithmic structure and will be implementing a flat rate of .07%, which is less expensive than any exchange or DEX as far as we can tell. This will simplify the calculations and also provide a far better redistribution for those that commit APH. Maker orders and buying Aphelion will always be fee free. We still really like the logarithmic model and may revert back to some form of that as volume increases and we move into cross-chain but for now, we felt it was more important to provide greater distributions.”
Plans For Maintaining Differentiators
- Aphelion also stated it seeks to maintain its unique position amongst all exchanges and DEX with the following key differentiators:
- Fewer fees per trade than anywhere else
- Earn collected APH fees though committing
- Wallet-based across all channels (iOS, Android, Web & Desktop)
- Blockchain-based SEC compliance
“After we reactivate with a better model, stronger contract and fully compliant DEX we will continue to optimize and work simultaneously towards cross-chain trading and opening the U.S. market as a broker-dealer. We are still committed to NEO and expect it to also get better in the new year and as NEO grows so does the Aphelion DEX, we are hopeful we will see a market turnaround and be poised for scale and growth as we push ahead into the next stages of development as a fully compliant DEX.”