Nikolas Sargeant
If you’re a DeFi trader, Orderly may not be the first DEX on your lips but that’s because Orderly isn’t built for you. At least not directly: it’s built for the builders who can white-label its trading infrastructure or harness its liquidity to create powerful spot and perps protocols for end users.
DeFi traders are the beneficiaries of all this activity, however, even if Orderly’s products are targeted at a level above them: builders and institutions tasked with creating the products that will make onchain trading more accessible to everyone, from intermediate traders to pros. By providing a plug-and-play trading infrastructure with built-in liquidity, Orderly Network offers a scalable, secure, and efficient foundation for powering DeFi innovation.
The DeFi Infrastructure Challenge
Orderly wasn’t created in a vacuum: it was developed in direct response to some of the challenges that have dogged DeFi for years, particularly in the context of security. Every time a new DeFi protocol launches with its own codebase or adaption of an existing one such as Sushiswap, it increases the likelihood of a hack or exploit leading to loss of funds and loss of trust.
Past incidents have shown that building secure systems on public blockchains demands enterprise-grade infrastructure that goes beyond traditional DeFi setups. The ability for DEXs to tap into Orderly’s battle-tested, pre-made infra that requires them to simply customize a front-end significantly reduces risk. As DeFi matures, the industry needs infrastructure that can handle high transaction volumes with security and resilience – qualities typically associated with CeFi. This is where Orderly Network comes into play, providing a level of speed and liquidity more synonymous with centralized sources.
How Orderly Works
Orderly aims to do two things more efficiently than any other protocol: provide liquidity and orderbook trading infrastructure. These are the essential ingredients required in the creation of advanced DEX and perps platforms that can satisfy the demands of the current generation of DeFi traders. If a DEX can tap into best-in-class infra and deep liquidity, the rest –– UI and feature selection primarily – is window dressing.
The simplest case for builders choosing Orderly is that it saves them time and money: they don’t need to spend months hiring large dev teams and spinning up their own solution from scratch. Using Orderly, they can create a powerful trading protocol with support for advanced order types while sticking their own badge on it and claiming all the credit. Orderly doesn’t care: it’s not on a mission to impress DeFi traders – project teams are its target audience.
Designed to serve as a foundational layer for DeFi projects, Orderly Network allows developers to create high-performance applications without sacrificing speed, liquidity, or security. While Orderly began life on NEAR, it’s since branched out, bringing its tooling to EVM chains and, most recently, Solana. Its final form will see Orderly serve as an omnichain protocol that supports every major smart contract network, aggregating liquidity into a shared orderbook.
What Makes Orderly Different
Orderly isn’t the only DeFi liquidity layer that enables protocols to tap into readily accessible liquidity through a single API. Nor is it the only developer of white-label DEX solutions. But there are a number of features and qualities that distinguish Orderly from the competition. Its orderbook-based infrastructure is tailored for efficiency, offering low-latency, high-throughput transaction processing for one thing. This setup enables DeFi applications to deliver a trading experience akin to centralized exchanges, where speed and reliability are paramount.
Another area where Orderly shines is when it comes to risk management and compliance. By building security and compliance capabilities into its infrastructure, Orderly empowers projects to innovate without compromising on safety or falling foul of regulatory standards. This is ideal for projects creating solutions such as institutional perps DEXes, where KYC is required. Its risk management systems also ensure that DeFi applications built on Orderly are equipped to handle market fluctuations and volatility, protecting both users and protocols.
Who Orderly Is Built For
While Orderly’s target market has already been addressed – DEX and DeFi protocol developers – there are some segments that its products are specifically tailored for. These include spot aggregators, which can harness Orderly’s liquidity to provide competitive rates that will enable them to grow market share and with it revenue. Because Orderly can pull in liquidity from CeFi sources, it has a clear advantage here compared to onchain liquidity layers that solely utilize decentralized sources.
This same technology can also be brought to bear in the creation of onchain perps markets, where liquidity is particularly important. The ability to access Orderly’s virtually limitless liquidity isn’t just about convenience or delivering greater capital efficiency; it also frees perps DEXes from needing to engage in costly liquidity mining programs that risk diluting their native token through being compelled to dispense generous LP rewards.
Other user segments that have yet to be covered include web3 wallets, most of which now include some kind of swap facility. The ability to create a white-label integrated DEX is ideal for wallets, since it allows them to strengthen their brand, capture more revenue from trading fees, and avoids the need for users to utilize third-party dapps for this purpose.
Finally, Orderly Network prioritizes developer support, providing extensive documentation, APIs, and an active community. Developers building on Orderly have access to professional-grade infrastructure, bootstrapped liquidity, and a streamlined development experience, allowing them to bring DeFi innovations to market faster.
Orderly in Action
With its infrastructure having overseen more than $84B in volume to date from more than 400K traders, Orderly isn’t just a vision for DeFi – it is DeFi, as can be seen by the 30+ partners that have already integrated its technology. For example, Ethereum L2 Optimism uses Orderly’s settlement layer, which forms a vital component of OP Stack. Elsewhere, Orderly has been deeply integrated into LayerZero, where it’s already passed 1M messages, underscoring its role in making multichain a working reality.
As for where Orderly goes from here, it’s declared its intention to expand its omnichain capabilities continuously improve scalability, and deepen liquidity. As it continues to enhance its omnichain capabilities, Orderly Network is paving the way for a more integrated, resilient, and user-friendly DeFi landscape. Thanks to its plug-and-play solution, anyone can create an onchain trading application that’s blessed with liquidity and support for advanced order types from day one. That’s quite a feat, and the best is yet to come.
