Polkadot Launches Polkastarter DEX, Aims At Rivaling Ethereum

Polkadot, dubbed as a direct rival to the altcoin leader Ethereum, announced the launch of the Polkastarter decentralized exchange. Polkastarter’s main design features include cross-chain token pools and auctions, which helps projects raise capital on the Polkadot network.

Despite that the Polkastarter decentralized exchange launch was announced in September by listing its native token – POLS on Uniswap, the live version of the DEX went online on December 15. Currently, Polkastarter is providing a single liquidity pool for offering rewards for swapping ETH tokens for POLS.

However, two more pools went live the next day. They are focused on offering swaps with SpiderDAO. 

Polkastarter is entering an already crowded DEX sector, with multiple projects battling for value locked and exposure. However, Polkastarter would also offer features like support for any asset on the crypto market, safe listed pools, as well as fixed swap pools. Also, Polkastarter’s DEX allows projects to list tokens at a fixed price, which would lower the initial launch volatility by maintaining the prices as long as the original token supply remains. 

Despite the decentralized exchange started on December 15, Polkastarter already acquired a growing list of partners. The list includes data transfer platform Shyft Network, automated liquidity provider Orion Protocol, the Moonbeam Network, which tackles the Solidity programming, as well as open-source oracle platform Decentralized Information Asset (DIA).

In the meantime, Polkadot admittedly aimed at its main competitor, Ethereum, stating that the company wants to “go way beyond the current ERC-20 standard.” In fact, just 30 seconds after pushing the Polkastarter DEX live, the first liquidity pool sold out completely. 

“Both our first two fixed swap token pools on Polkastarter sold out in less than 30 seconds. Our website survived having 10,000+ users simultaneously accessing our Ethereum dapp. Our servers managed to hold all throughout the usage peak period,” Polkadot wrote in a blog post

The hype around Polkastarter boosted the price per POLS, but its price peak of over $0.85 on some exchanges remained far away. On a weekly basis, POLS made a 46% price increase, and the monthly charts reveal a price increase from $0.26 on November 16 to a current price of $0.443186 per POLS token. 

Meanwhile, Polkadot’s native DOT token regained its weekly losses and currently trades at $5.18. However, DOT is nowhere near its all-time high of $6.84, recorded on September 1, 2020.