A complete Guide to Cosmos Decentralized Exchanges
This year, Cosmos has emerged as one of the strongest ecosystems in the crypto space and attracted multiple talents to come and build their own application-specific blockchains. This work will provide a complete overview of Cosmos DEXs, including their performance , competitive advantages (MOAT), and future development.
Interesting? Read below to learn more.
Highlight
Osmosis: the leading DEX with the highest IBC volume (source).
dYdX: building their own Cosmos chain (source).
Sei Network: building a layer-1 chain for trading with 0.6s finality time.
Thorchain: native cross-chain swaps & may enable IBC soon (source).
Canto: experimenting with Free Public Infrastructure narrative.
Kujira: grown-up DeFi narrative (source).
Osmosis (TVL: 177M, source)
Leading AMM style DEX with the highest IBC volume and first-mover advantage.
Most Cosmos-based tokens are available here with deep liquidity.
Required locking up farm tokens in the liquidity pool for up to 14 days to earn a higher yield.
Superfluid staking: users can stake $Osmo from their LP tokens to secure the chain and earn staking reward.
Just released stable swap & multi-hop swap fee reduction features in the V13 Fluorine upgrade.
In development: mesh security, MEV capture by threshold decryption.

Thorchain (TVL: 100.6M, source)
An AMM cross-chain DEX that allows native token swap across 9 chains (BTC, ETH, BNB…) without using pegged or wrapped assets.
Just proposed a unique lending design. @DeFi_Made_Here explained it here.
Could enable IBC transferring soon (source).
In development: protocol owned liquidity (released soon, source), limit orders book, and lending.
More information can be found here:

Canto Public (TVL: 79M, source)
EVM-compatible blockchain with 𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐏𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 (𝐅𝐏𝐈) narrative that focuses on DeFi with an AMM DEX, lending market (Compound v2 fork), and a stablecoin $NOTE.
Users can interact with the DEX through Slingshot aggregator.
Here is a very nice thread on Canto:


Injective (TVL: 8.7M, source)
A blockchain focuses on decentralized orderbook where users can perform spot and futures trading.
Prevent front-running by using the frequent batch auction system as its order-clearing mechanism.
project X private beta just launched (source), including strategy vault, one-click launchpad, and direct listing.
Crescent Hub (TVL: 7.5M, source)
Initially was Gravity DEX on Cosmos Hub but the team decided to migrate the DEX to its own chain.
A hybrid AMM/orderbook DEX that has ranged liquidity features to increase capital efficiency.
In development: lending, leveraging (Crescent Boost), and futures trading (Crescent derivatives) soon.

Kujira (TVL: 3M, source - not sure if BOW liquidity is included)
Migrate from Luna to its own appchain. Shipping super fast!
Real-yield narrative, order book exchange with no inflation.
Just launch a market-making feature BOW to increase liquidity.
Have its own overcollateralized stablecoin backed by $Atom token and liquidation engine Orca.
Investor’s token vesting ended in November 2022.
About to release a new product: Kujira Ghost!
Sifchain (TVL: 240k, source)
An omni-chain AMM DEX that was inspired by Thorchain but has poor execution.
Was called out for wash-trading on Osmosis by Osmosis cofounder Sunny Aggarwal in 02/2022 (source).
Was called out for slow rug in 11/2022 (source) and some validators are leaving.
DEX on other Cosmos chains:
Cronos (TVL: 427M, source): EVM-compatible chain with deep liquidity and visa card. VVS Finance is the largest DEX.
Kava Network (TVL: 194M, source): EVM-compatible chain. Their DEX doesn’t have many tokens and mostly are Kava’s coins. Farming rewards are locking up for upto 1 years. They have a stablecoin $USDX but it is currently traded at 0.88 $BUSD.
Luna2 (TVL: 32M, source): most liquidity is on Astroport. Delphi labs hinted about a novel DEX design SLAMMs (Shared Liquidity (SL) + AMMs) to solve the fragmented liquidity problems.


Juno (TVL: 7.6M, source): experimental chain for cosmwasm with no centralized leaders, most liquidity is on Junoswap but looks like the team has abandoned the project. @Wynddao DEX is expected to replace Junoswap in the near future.
Secret Network (TVL: 5M, source): A chain that allows users to transfer tokens/NFT without revealing your data on-chain. Most of the liquidity is on Sienna Network DEX.
Evmos (TVL: 3.4M, source): EVM compatible chain using cosmos tech stack. Most liquidity is on Diffusion. However, most of the Dapps are copycats/forked from ETH.
Iris (TVL: 1.4M, source): Coinswap Market is the only DEX and assets (BNB, ETH) are bridged through Gravity Bridge.
Cmdx (TVL 0.5M, source): Cswap Exchange is their only DEX. Haven’t shipped anything for a very long time and just launched their stablecoin $CMST & DEX recently.
Under development
Sei Network:
A blockchain specialized for exchange with a central limit order book.
Time to finality is 0.6s in comparison to 6s of that of other Cosmos chains.
Shared liquidity model for all dApps.
Read more about it here:
Berachain:
an EVM-compatible chain using a novel consensus “Proof of Liquidity”.
Have an over-collateralized stablecoin $Honey and will be paired with other tokens on their AMM.
Read more about it here: