In addition to the website, new content pertaining to the Protocol can be found at mirror.xyz/zeroexprotocol.eth and tweeted from @zeroexprotocol. Subscribe and follow for all the latest happenings in the 0x Protocol ecosystem - ZEIPs, governance news, grant programs, research/thought pieces, and more.

“The launch of the new website and blog marks a significant moment in our journey to decentralize 0x Protocol. By providing a central hub for information and communication for the Protocol, we aim to further empower the community to participate in its development and governance,” said Eric Wong, Governance PM at 0x.

Recap:

• New website: 0xProtocol.org

• New blog: mirror.xyz/zeroexprotocol.eth

• New Twitter: twitter.com/zeroexprotocol

Establishing an independent online presence for 0x Protocol is a critical step in the progressive decentralization roadmap; one that ends with 0x Protocol becoming an uncensorable, unstoppable publicly good.

• As the final phase of decentralization, 0x Protocol will transition to a fully on-chain governance mechanism, with the future of the Protocol entirely in the hands of its community.

• 0x Labs will now become one stakeholder among many in 0x Protocol Governance with the Protocol also moving to its own dedicated website, communication channels, and applications.

• We invite and encourage your participation and support to help the 0x Protocol continue to realize its vision

Today we’re incredibly excited to share some updates on the unbundling efforts that were shared earlier this year via the 0x Protocol Governance forum, building upon the progress we’ve made over the past few years…

It all started with the 0x Protocol whitepaper in 2017, and since then, 0x Labs has served as the Protocol’s primary developer and steward. We’re proud of what we have accomplished during this time, including:

• Developing 0x Protocol into a secure and trusted global infrastructure that facilitates the exchange of tokenized value with four major versions released;

• Building tools to make it easier to use the Protocol such as 0x Instant, 0x Launch Kit, 0x Starter project, and 0x API;

• Running programs to grow the 0x Protocol ecosystem, such as the 0x Market Maker Program and Ecosystem Acceleration Program.

Along the way, we’ve also left our mark on the broader Ethereum ecosystem by open sourcing early Solidity tooling, introducing EIP-712, contributing to ERC-721, and even helping coin the term “DeFi”.

From the beginning, our goal for 0x Protocol has always been creating a self-governing, decentralized protocol run by ZRX token holders, where 0x Labs would be one stakeholder among many. To support the development of the community around 0x Protocol, we launched the protocol-owned treasury and the Bootstrap Delegates program in 2021. Our latest governance roadmap proposes a formal grants program, voter program, and security council to provide an even stronger foundation for the 0x Protocol community.

This year, management of the 0x Protocol will transition over to the community to enable it to flourish even more. While we will continue to be active contributors, we’re excited to see the community take the driver’s seat!

Here’s what you can expect in practice:

0x Protocol will continue to be an open-sourced public good. Additionally, 0x Protocol will have its own dedicated website, communication channels, and revamped governance portal that will serve as the source of truth for all things related to the protocol. We will announce the new URLs and channels in the coming weeks.

0x Labs will continue to develop and offer its own products, but these will be proprietary, may or may not be open-sourced, and will be left to the discretion of the 0x Labs team.

We want to make it clear that 0x Labs is not disappearing. We will remain active in the 0x Protocol ecosystem just as we've been – proposing new protocol updates, engaging in discussions, and sharing our thoughts on the future direction of the Protocol.

Join us to shape the future of 0x Protocol

As the Protocol enters its final phase of decentralization, this is the community's moment to continue to rise up to contribute and help shape the future of the Protocol. We believe that together, we can make the 0x Protocol the unstoppable standard for the global exchange of tokenized value – join us in making this vision a reality.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be unveiling new updates for both 0x Protocol and 0x Labs. Stay tuned here on the blog, as well as on the governance forum. Don’t hesitate to reach out on Discord if you have any questions or ideas.

Let’s keep building together 🫱‍🫲

-Will, Amir and the team at 0x Labs

0x Protocol is an open protocol that facilitates the exchange of digital assets. In 2019 we introduced v4, a modular smart contract architecture that enables us to innovate with minimal friction alongside the growing DeFi and NFT ecosystems. While v4 contracts initially only supported ERC-20 swaps, we will soon be adding support for ERC-721 and ERC-1155 swaps.

The updated bug bounty program aims to incentivize ethical hackers to discover and report vulnerabilities in the 0x Protocol architecture. The bug bounty covers any of the core smart contracts deployed on Ethereum mainnet, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom, Celo, Optimism and future deployments on other EVM-compatible networks.

The list of deployed contracts eligible for the bug bounty can be found here. The most recent addition is the NFT swap feature coming soon to v4 that enables the trading of ERC-721 and ERC-1155 assets.

Bounty program rewards will be paid out according to the severity of a vulnerability. The severity of reported vulnerabilities will be graded according to the Common Vulnerability Scoring Standard (CVSS). The final reward amount is at the sole discretion of 0x Labs and will be paid in the specified sum in either USD or ETH.

Rewards are split based on the severity of the vulnerability as follows:

UPDATE (2/28): The ZEIP-93 vote was approved by the community and 0x Protocol v4 NFT swap support is now live on Ethereum mainnet. NFT swap support on other 0x integrated chains is launching very soon.

UPDATE (2/11): The vote to upgrade 0x Protocol v4 with NFT swap support will go live on February 14, 2022 at 9:00am PT. ZRX token holders may visit the 0x Governance Portal to cast their votes at that time. The vote will run until February 17, 2022.

Summary

• Support for NFT swaps is coming soon to 0x Protocol v4 on all 0x-integrated blockchains

• This upgrade combines creator-centric features and gas efficiencies that will make it more affordable than ever to swap NFTs on Ethereum and 6 other EVM chains and L2 networks

• 0x Protocol is the backbone for the decentralized exchange of all tokenized assets. By adding support for NFT swaps in v4, we seek to provide a public good to the NFT ecosystem, advancing it forward

Today, we are excited to announce that NFT swaps are coming soon to 0x Protocol v4! Pending a successful ZRX token holder community vote in February, the initial deployment will take place on Ethereum with other 0x-integrated chains*—Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, Fantom, Avalanche, Celo, Optimism—*to follow shortly after. While we await the completion of the smart contract audits, we invite developers to explore the upgraded protocol which is currently live on Ropsten.

Using a trusted open-source standard for swapping NFTs across many blockchains significantly reduces the effort required by Web3 developers and NFT marketplaces to deliver a seamless multi-chain experience to their users, giving them more time to focus on their products. The upgraded v4 will combine the NFT trading features from v3 that our developer community loves with new creator-centric features and benefits that include:

• The most robust feature set of any NFT exchange protocol

• NFT swaps supporting all major token standards

• Free non-custodial listings + off-chain / on-chain order optionality

• Up to 54% more gas efficiency

• Collection orders

• Instant royalties for creators

• A highly flexible modular architecture

• A developer-first experience

With NFT support on 0x Protocol v4, we take another significant step towards achieving our mission of building a tokenized world where all value can flow freely. We anticipate many new NFT projects powered by 0x will join our ecosystem, ultimately reducing market fragmentation, driving greater transparency and interoperability in the space, and helping to prevent the platform monopolies that exist in Web 2.0.

Most robust feature set

NFT swaps supporting all major token standards

Swaps for all major token standards are supported in 0x Protocol v4. Users can sign an off-chain order to indicate that they are interested in:

• selling a particular ERC721 or ERC1155 for some amount of any ERC20 token or ETH, or

• buying a particular ERC721 or ERC1155 for some amount of any ERC20 token

This feature is currently supported in 0x Protocol v2 and v3, but v4 introduces significant gas savings for NFT swaps on Ethereum.

Free non-custodial listing + off-chain / on-chain order optionality

All listings on 0x Protocol v4 are non-custodial, so NFTs don’t leave a user’s wallet until an order is filled. v4 also features off chain / on-chain order optionality, providing developers with greater flexibility.

Off-chain orders: Free listings 👤 Orders can be submitted either off-chain or on-chain. Off-chain listings are completely free to create.

On-chain orders: Easily indexable and discoverable orders 🔍 Developers can choose to use the “pre-sign” functions, which emit the entire order as an event, so that the order is indexable by subgraphs and thus easily discoverable without the need for an off-chain database. On-chain listings require gas to create.

Up to 54% more gas efficient

We have significantly improved the gas-efficiency of our contracts, making it more affordable than ever to swap NFTs on Ethereum.

We compared v4 to three popular NFT marketplace protocols: Wyvern (used by OpenSea on Ethereum), LooksRare, and Zora v3. OpenSea typically performs a single fee transfer per transaction, while LooksRare typically performs two (a platform fee and a royalty fee).

For the sake of fair comparison, we tested v4 with both one fee and two fee transfers:

When comparing the buying and selling of ERC721 assets, v4 is up to 41% cheaper to use than the other NFT protocols. For on-chain listings, v4 is 54% cheaper to use than Zora, the only other protocol to offer this ability.

Collection orders

0x Protocol was the first to support property-based orders for NFTs in 2019. We are porting this feature over to v4 with even more gas efficiency to enable NFT marketplace users to:

• Easily sweep floors in a collection

• Place a bid for any items in a collection with a certain property or trait

Instant royalties for creators

NFT marketplaces can now pay royalties in real-time at a lower cost so that creators no longer have to wait days or weeks to get paid. Marketplaces also have the option to send payouts to a contract that implements custom fee disbursement logic.

Flexible modular architecture

These new features are built upon the same modular smart contract architecture that powers household names in DeFi like Coinbase Wallet, Matcha and Zapper. This opens the door for future improvements, extensions, and novel synergies between DeFi and NFTs.

Developer-first experience

0x Protocol is public infrastructure for p2p exchange that anyone can build on top of. By introducing a single protocol for swapping NFTs that is consistent across blockchains, v4 will make it easy for developers and NFT marketplaces to provide a seamless multi-chain experience to users.

Start building with v4

0x V4 NFT support is currently live on on all 0x-integrated chains. To get started, check out our docs here. Please join our Discord and share feedback in the #dev-feature-feedback channel.

We are working with our ecosystem partners on developer tooling and integrations. If you are looking to quickly integrate NFT swap functionality into your app, Trader’s NFT Swap SDK is the best place to start. The Swap SDK currently supports 0x Protocol v4. You can find code examples here.

Want to learn more about building on 0x? Join us at ETHDenver for our DeFi & NFT Bufficorn Buildathon, where will be awarding prizes to teams who use the Swap SDK in their projects.

What’s next?

Our contracts are undergoing security audits. We will share the audit reports once they are ready as we prepare for the governance vote that will take place in February. Once the vote and time lock are completed, we will deploy the smart contracts on Ethereum, as well as six other blockchains and L2 networks.

As our friends in the NFT community like to say, TTP! (Trust The Process). We will share more updates on mainnet launch and specific NFT features in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

At 0x Labs, we believe in the Celo team's mission to build a financial system that creates the conditions for prosperity—for everyone. Blockchains allow us to leave the geographic lottery behind by establishing an open and globally accessible financial system that acts as a potent equalizing force for the world. And with over 90% of the global internet population using mobile devices to go online, we're excited to see the benefits of DeFi spread even further as developers take advantage of 0x's core internet exchange infrastructure and Celo's mobile-first blockchain platform.

As with previous 0x DAO funding, we plan to work with the 0x DAO Bootstrap Delegates on ensuring transparent accounting, management, and communication around the funding. If you have any ideas on the topic or want to get more involved in 0x governance, please visit the Governance and Research forum.

With 0x API now on Polygon, we anticipate an influx of new DeFi projects onboarding into the 0x ecosystem seeking to combine our deep and easily accessed liquidity with Polygon’s fast and flexible architecture.

While ZRX token holders will ultimately vote on how to use the funding, we envision that it likely will be directed towards Polygon-benefiting initiatives, such as:

• User acquisition campaigns and marketing

• Developer acquisition and support efforts

• Adding NFT support and other token standards

• New token economics and governance designs/proof-of-concepts

• Adding Polygon Network support to apps tracking 0x network activity, such as 0x Tracker

We plan to work with the 0x DAO Bootstrap Delegates on the best way to create transparent accounting, management, and communication around the funding. If you have any ideas on the topic or want to get more involved in 0x governance, please visit the Governance and Research forum.

Before jumping into the mechanics of the DAO (short for Decentralized Autonomous Organization), let’s spend a moment recapping why decentralizing the governance of 0x Protocol is so critical.

If you’re new to 0x and want to learn more about how the protocol helps create a tokenized world where value flows freely, visit https://0xProtocol.org/

Why are we doing this?

When we talk about centralization, it typically implies a single entity, whether a company, government, or individual, is in full control of all decisions related to how a technology or network is used and evolves. Centralization requires putting trust in a central authority and introduces higher risks of censorship and single points of failure. As we’ve seen time, time, and time again, it’s the users who suffer the consequences whenever these risks materialize.

Decentralization reduces these risks and transfers the ownership and decision-making authority to those who contribute to and use the technology or network. Decentralization also fosters transparent and open-source ecosystems where anyone, regardless of where they live or their background, can access, build on, and benefit from using the technology or network. Additionally, decentralization enables proper incentive alignment — those who contribute value (aka producers) receive the economic benefits from the technology or network’s adoption and growth, unlike a centralized model where typically only the central authority receives those benefits.

Creating the DAO is a significant step on the journey that 0x has been on in becoming a fully decentralized technology and network. It will enable ZRX holders to get familiar with the governance system and fully experiment while still having some safe boundaries in place. Every token holder, big or small, will have an essential role to play from sharing ideas on how to use the DAO funds, creating formal proposals and advocating for their support, and ultimately voting to implement them (or not). Successfully making it to our final destination of becoming a fully accountable community will require everyone’s active participation and collaboration. We can’t wait to see what the community can accomplish together once the DAO is live!

How will the DAO work?

We created an on-chain binding governance system able to perform arbitrary actions on a 2M ZRX community-owned Treasury, seed-financed by 0x Labs. The smart contracts work in orchestration with 0x’s existing staking system, for what concerns both the voting power delegation management and votes cadence.Voting rights are exercised by holding ZRX, 0x protocol’s governance token, at the time of the vote. Alternatively, one can receive additional delegated ZRX by a third party holder, through the staking system.

The purpose of the community treasury is not enforced, and ZRX holders will be in control of what to do with the funds. The suggested usage, however, is the funding of projects that benefit the 0x ecosystem and provide positive effects to ZRX holders. Some examples of past activities led by 0x Labs include: introducing stakeholders incentives (such as Market Maker programs and ZRX staking), funding development efforts like 0x Tracker and Gitcoin bounties, and growing 0x protocol awareness through events and marketing campaigns.

We expect the 0x community members to take some time to familiarize themselves with 0x DAO’s processes and mechanics, and progressively form the necessary avenues for efficient coordination. The next step will be to expand the system’s reach to all aspects of the protocol, including upgrades that have just been made easier with the recent 0x v4 launch. Our goal is to get to full open governance by early next year, according to the roadmap.

Leaving the technical milestone aside, 0x DAO is ultimately made of people: ZRX holders, Staking Pools operators, Bootstrap Delegates, and any other individual whose incentives are aligned with the good functioning of the protocol. Through 0x DAO, you will be able to suggest, debate, and put communal funds to work — without relying on, or requiring, 0x Labs team whatsoever.

The process

The process is still in its infancy and will mature based on the community’s preferences and needs. It always starts with public discussions on 0x’s governance forum or other communal venues. We encourage the community to engage in active and productive conversations and take ownership of proposals. We have observed promising models emerging in other protocols’ decentralized communities and are excited to see the same happening for ours. Our governance forum has polling functionality currently being used to signal community support on different topics (example), but this may evolve to include using platforms such as Snapshot.

Anyone can submit a proposal by calling the smart contracts propose on-chain function, but realistically you should rely on Bootstrap Delegates to perform this action (see next section). Over time, we anticipate that the process for initiating a proposal to become more user-friendly. At the onset, there will be a minimum voting power requirement of 100k ZRX (0.01% of the total ZRX supply) for a proposal to be successfully moved to a public vote. This parameter is in line with what we have observed from other governance systems, such as those from Compound and Uniswap. Bootstrap Delegates are delegated enough voting power to submit proposals autonomously.

The proposal goes live after 1 full epoch waiting period. This will allow ZRX holders to react to the proposal, and potentially change their delegations based on the prospective vote of their representatives. Each vote will last 72 hours, and it will be possible to vote directly on ZRX Portal, which will be updated to support the new system. It will cost approximately 80k gas to cast a vote.

If a majority and at least 10M ZRX in voting power are cast in support of the proposal, it is queued in the (optional) Timelock. The proposal can be executed immediately or in any subsequent epoch, depending on the executionEpoch parameter. The proposal can perform any arbitrary operation, including utilizing its controlled funds (the treasury).

All the parameters mentioned above can be upgraded via a vote.

Meet your bootstrap delegates

Over the past few weeks, a few individuals and teams offered to help to shape 0x DAO’s first steps. As a result, we formalized a group of 0x DAO Bootstrap Delegates.

The following individuals and teams will be delegated additional voting power from 0x Labs, in order to be able to create proposals independently based on discussions with other ZRX holders. They will not have the power to unilaterally make decisions, but they will have the ability to influence decision-making through their reputation and advocacy.

The initial group of 0x DAO Bootstrap Delegates will be:

• nikita, sonofpegasus (0x Community Ambassadors)

• sha-2048 (BUILD and Metric)

• joaocampos89 (DexKit)

• nenadp, nikola_j (DeFi Saver)

• volleyfire (KeeperDAO and 0x market maker, VolleyFire)

• gabririgo (RigoBlock)

• evgeth (Zerion)

Apart from VolleyFire (which has already 50% of the Pools’ staked amount in voting power), each of them will receive delegated voting power from 0x Labs. This is an initial proposal allocation of voting power aimed at enabling the members to have agency in their role.

What’s next?

In the next few weeks, we will deploy the contracts, delegate voting power to the bootstrap delegates, and update ZRX Portal to support the new voting system. Stay tuned for the launch update!

We are excited to hit this significant milestone in 0x’s progressive decentralization and look forward to seeing how our system evolves along with other leading open protocols. We are collectively walking into the uncharted territory of human coordination. The biggest collective challenge will be transitioning from “engaged” to “accountable” communities. With the incredible growth in public blockchain adoption and blossoming interest in open project governance, we are confident that 0x’s community will transition to a fully accountable one in the years to come.

0x v4 is now the canonical 0x protocol, replacing v3 and v2’s functionality for ERC20 tokens (the DeFi token standard).

Special thanks to the 2362 unique ZRX holders who showed up with 11.6m ZRX to support the proposal. It was the largest vote by ZRX voting power and second largest by number of ZRX holders represented. It is encouraging and refreshing to see such a large community of token holders get together and participate in the governance of the open protocol.

What are the primary benefits of 0x v4?

It is the most gas-efficient DEX protocol. 0x users should expect more competitive liquidity from professional market makers (up to 70% gas savings for RFQ liquidity, 10% for limit orders). In addition to that, it is cheaper to trade on both Uniswap and Sushiswap using 0x v4 than it is natively on those platforms.

It is DeFi native. Apart from its industry-leading smart order routing algorithm, 0x v4 enables DeFi legos (e.g. borrowing, debt repayment, provide liquidity, etc.) to be injected natively into the context of a trade. The only transformer deployed right now is a simple ETH wrapper/unwrapper, but there is no shortage of DeFi legos that can be implemented with the same pattern. For example, it could be possible to provide liquidity into a pool with any arbitrary token, swap liquidity pool tokens, or swap your collateral on Compound or Aave on the fly.

It offers plug&play liquidity. V4 allows custom on-chain liquidity pools to be plugged in via a standard interface before being automatically aggregated with all other liquidity sources. Whether you’re a market maker with a proprietary on-chain strategy or a developer building the next-gen public AMM, V4 can support your use case out of the box.

It is automatically upgradable. Thanks to this new architecture and to the 0x governance process, the protocol will be able to iterate more quickly based on what the market needs, without having to wait for the ‘next 0x version’. ZRX holders should expect more ZEIPs and governance votes on specific features in the months to come.

0x Protocol Announcements

Introducing 0x - by Amir Bandeali | February 22nd, 2017

Introducing 0x Protocol v2 - by Tom Schmidt | May 15th, 2018

0x Roadmap 2019, ZEIPs - by Will Warren | January 17th, 2019

ZEIP-23, Trade Bundles of Assets - by Will Warren | February 11th, 2019

0x Extensions, Enabling New Types of Exchange - by Matt Taylor | February 27th, 2019

ZEIP-24 and ZEIP-39, Add support for ERC-1155 and StaticCallAssetProxy - by Matt Taylor | July 19th, 2019

0x Roadmap 2019, Introducing Coordinators - by Tom Schmidt | July 30th, 2019

Contract-fillable Liquidity Made Simple - by Matt Taylor | August 21st, 2019

0x v3 is Now Live on Ethereum Mainnet - by Matt Taylor | October 30th, 2019

ZEIP-56, 0x v3 - by Theo Gonella | November 12th, 2019

Expanding 0x Beyond Ethereum - by Theo Gonella | October 30th, 2020

0x Protocol is Now Live on Binance Smart Chain - by Will Warren | March 17th, 2021

0x Protocol Ecosystem

The 0x Ecosystem - by Will Warren | September 26th, 2017

Governance in 0x Protocol - by Will Warren | March 27th, 2018

The 0x Mission and Value - by Will Warren | June 7th, 2018

Announcing the 0x Ecosystem Acceleration Program - by Blake Henderson | December 14th, 2018

Introducing the 0x Market Maker Program - by Matt Taylor | January 7th , 2019

Introducing 0x Global Community Meetups - by Brent Oshiro | March 6th, 2019

0x Governance in 2020 and Beyond - by Theo Gonella | March 5th, 2020

Stronger Together, 0x Protocol Gitcoin Bounties - by Theo Gonella | November 9th, 2020

The 0x Protocol whitepaper was published by Will Warren and Amir Bandeali on February 21st, 2017 - check it out here.

Since launching, as of the beginning of Feb 2023, 0x Protocol’s smart contracts have settled $120B+ of volume, 50M+ unique transactions, and 6M+ unique user wallets. It also serves as the settlement layer for many top applications in the crypto space such as Coinbase, MetaMask, dYdX, Zapper, Matcha, and many more.

Here’s to many more birthdays and achievements to come!