What is the best DEX on Cardano?

MinSwap, WingRiders, MuesliSwap, SundaeSwap & Spectrum Finance are the most popular Cardano DEXes. MinSwap is the overall best DEX on Cardano. Wingriders offers more unique features. SundaeSwap has the largest twitter community. Spectrum Finance is the only fully open source DEX on Cardano.

Here is a list of feature comparisons among the top Cardano DEXes

Cardano DEX comparison tables

Cardano DEXes Liquidity comparison

FeatureMinSwapWingridersSundaeSwapMuesliSwapSpectrum
TVL in millions USD$81.34$15.01$9.67$15.93$8.56
Liquidity Farmingyesyesyesnoyes
Native ADA stakingyesyesyesnoyes

Cardano DEXes features comparison

FeatureWingridersMinSwapSundaeSwapMuesliSwap
AMMyesyesyeson Milkomeda side-chain
Limit ordersyesyesnoyes
Fees discountyes (WRT holders)yes (MIN holders)nono
Trading & price chartsnoyesnoyes
Order Historyyesyesyesyes
Wallet portfolio overviewno *shows staked portfolioyesyesyes
Zap functionnoyesnono
Hardware wallet Supportyes (directly)yes (using eternl wallet)yes (via eternl wallet)no

Cardano DEXes tokenomics comparison

AllocationMinSwapWingridersSundaeSwapMuesliSwapSpectrum
Governance tokenMINWRTSUNDAEMILKSPF
Total tokens3 billion100 million2 billion10 million1 billion
Token Sale (presale & private/ public sales)020%13%25%2.2%
Team (includes future hires & advisors)10%25%32%15%12%
MarketingN/A5%N/AN/A9%
Ecosystem (community)90%50%55%50% (will be sold to community)75%
  1. MinSwap

    MinSwap DEX boasts the best UI among Cardano DEXs and is the largest Cardano DEX by TVL. It commands about 40.09% of Cardano's total TVL. MinSwap launched on March 8th, and in a week it toppled SundaeSwap to become the top Cardano DEX. It has since slipped to position 2 in terms of TVL

    Strengths

    1. Supports limit orders
    2. Best UI among Cardano DEXs
    3. Community driven governance
    4. Has the most yield farms on Cardano
    5. Price charts
    6. Wallets' assets portfolio
    7. Completely community funded. No early investors or token presale.
    8. Supports Ledger Nano X/S/plus from day one of v4.0.0 update
    9. Double yields farm pools e.g ADA/cNETA, HOSKY/ADA & MIN/NTX
    10. Has a LBE launch bowl function

    Cons

    1. No stablecoin support yet
  2. Wingriders

    WingRiders (WR) is a non-custodial peer-to-peer Cardano DEX that launched to mainnet on April 12th. It's the 3rd largest Cardano DEX by TVL. According to Liam Bussell & Kaaran Kalantari, Wingriders is designed to be the most secure DEX on Cardano. This way, it can attract the largest portion of institutional and retail liquidity.

    Strengths

    1. Direct token swaps. e.g MIN to GROW swap and vice versa.

      Note: Not all direct pair swaps are supported currently.

    2. Users can view their wallet portfolio on the UI

    3. UI Simplicity

    4. Supports hardware wallets off the bat.

      Ledger Nano devices are supported right away. Trezor wallet supports smart contract transactions on the DEX beginning May 19th Alonzo update announcement.

    5. Double yields are possible because of the native staking

    6. Support the most number of wallets in the space. It supports Eternl, Nami, Flint, NuFi, Gero, Typhon, card wallet & the aforementioned hardware wallets.

    7. Double yield farms e.g ADA/DRIP

    8. Wingriders updated their infrastructure to be Vasil ready.

      The DEX will be utilising Vasil's benefits right away after the hardfork with zero downtime.

    9. Was first to supports ERC20 stablecoins i.e madUSDTC & madUSDC

      Unfortunately, this turned out to be a disadvantage when the Nomad bridge was hacked.

    10. Supports limit orders

    11. Has a yield farming boost vault.

      This boosting vault is available to all pools. Yield farmers deposit WRT in exchange of higher yields. This feature could be an incentive to for LPs to hodl their WRT.

    Cons

    1. Has no price overview for available tokens
  3. SundaeSwap

    Prior to Minswap & Wingriders' launch, SundaeSwap was the most popular DEX on Cardano. It was the 2nd DEX to launch after MuesliSwap. It is the 4th largest DEX by TVL.

    Before its launch, SundaeSwap aimed to be like UniSwap on the Cardano Network and implement a similar constant product pool Automated Market Makers (AMM) algorithm.

    SundaeSwap Cardano uses the eUTXO model, an extended implementation model from Bitcoin's network. In the eUTXO accounting model, custody of assets on the blockchain can be traced as unspent outputs of transactions. The unspent outputs are used as inputs into new transactions, which help to produce more unspent outputs.

    Strengths

    1. The most popular DEX on Cardano by social followings
    2. Have uniform APY percentages on its yield farms
    3. Has a simple and intuitive UI

    Cons

    1. Doesn't support stablecoins yet
  4. MuesliSwap

    Muesliswap was the first DEX to launch in Cardano, and currently 2nd largest Cardano DEX by TVL. It launched on the 27th of November, 2021. Unlike other convectional DEXs, MuesliSwap first introduced an order book model like centralized exchanges (CEX) do, instead of an automated Market Maker (AMM) model.

    Just recently, MuesliSwap released an AMM sidechain of its DEX. This chain currently runs on top of the Milkomeda sidechain.

    Strengths

    1. Was the first DEX to launch on Cardano
    2. Has a DEX aggregator function, which helps users get the best price.
    3. Uses both order-book and AMM models
    4. Supports partial sell/buy matches on Cardano's mainnet after its v2 launch
    5. Supports limit orders
    6. Has a well designed user's wallet portfolio page
    7. Has launchpad

    Cons

    1. Its AMM function is currently not native to Cardano.

      This is a petty concern though because the AMM model works pretty well on the Milkomeda sidechain

    For the sake of completeness, we have included four other DEXs that are yet to launch but show great promise i.e Axo, Genius DEX, Spectrum (previously ErgoDEX) and a few DEXes on the Milkomeda sidechain.

  5. Spectrum Finance (ergoDEX)

    Spectrum Finance is a noncustodial & cross-chain DEX that will facilitate seamless transfer of liquidity between Cardano and Ergo blockchains. This like Cardano, Ergo's smart contracts use the eUTXO model. Spectrum Finance rocks an AMM DEX. On Cardano, it's the only DEX that is fully decentralized.

    Spectrum Finance supports nearly all Cardano web wallets e.g Nami, Eternl, Flint, Gero & CardWallet wallets. The Ergo side of the DEX supports the Nautilus wallet and Yoroi wallet is offered with an experimental disclaimer.

    The team behind the project intends to rename the DEX to Splash in early/mid 2024.

    Strengths

    1. It provides interoperability between Ergo & Cardano chains

    Cons

    1. No mention of its actual tokens distribution in its tokenomics documentation
  6. Axo (previously Maladex)

    Maladex, now Axo, is a fully-fledged platform for crypto, indexes, synthetics, and derivatives. On launch, Axo is will seek to minimize impermanent loss & slippage using programmable swaps.

    Axo launch was pending waiting for Cardano's Plutus CIP-31 upgrade. This upgrade is be part of the Vasil hard fork, which was merged on September 22nd.

    Note: Axo is more than a mere DEX i.e while one of its core functions is a DEX, it's a trading platform akin to Coinbase Pro that combines DeFi & TradFi characteristics.

    On September 18th, Axo hinted that they had something to reveal on September 28th. This reveal could be a testnet launch, mainnet launch or a mere NFT drop.

    Maladex announces rebrand to Axo

    Axo strengths

    1. Will support stop and limit orders
    2. Will support dollar-cost averaging (DCA) strategies
    3. Reliance on formal mathematical proofs and research-driven methods for trades' architecture. This approach is great for security.
    4. Double yields through staking

    Cons

    1. Might take a little longer to launch than its competitors *
  7. Genius DEX

    Genius DEX is the decentralized component of the genius yields protocol. The DEX aims to be intuitive, hassle-free, and secure. It will launch in Q2 of this year after rigorous testing.

    Strengths

    1. Smart Swaps i.e limit orders

    2. Has a yield optimizer built on top of the DEx that will help LPs maximize their yields.

      This yield optimizer will leverage AI-powered algorithmic trading strategies.

    3. Will offer crypto & DeFi educational services via the Genius yields academy

  8. Blueshift

    Blueshift is the largest AMM DEX on Milkomeda sidechain. It's key strengths include low impermanent loss, low slippage and the promise of high yearly returns (APR).

    For it's community, the DEX has a hard capped supply of 100 million BLUES tokens. That's the exact number of max supply as Wingriders.

    BLUES holders will share in the DEX profits once the platform's DAO with full on-chain governance goes live in Q4 of 2022.

  9. Occamx

    Occamx is the 2nd largest Cardano DEX on the Milkomeda sidechain by TVL, after Blueshift. On August 24th 2022, Occamx released zapping function.

  10. MilkySwap

    MilkySwap is a DEX running on Cardano's evm sidechain, Milkomeda. It's the third-largest DEX on the sidechain by TVL.




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