From listing coins to going on-chain: What does it mean for OKX to integrate DEX within the exchange?

Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

In the narrative of cryptocurrency trading, centralization vs decentralization has always been a clear-cut binary opposition, with one side winning with depth and speed, while the other side adheres to transparency and self-custody as its belief.

Today, the boundaries are being redrawn. Leading exchanges no longer view on-chain trading as external traffic, but instead attempt to directly integrate DEX into the unified trading entrance of CEX, merging matching, clearing and settlement with a self-custody experience.

OKX has opened its built-in DEX product to all users, and currently, Gas fees are waived during this phase. This is one of the rare systematic implementations in this direction. Since the project was finalized in mid-year, over a hundred people have been involved in cross-team collaboration, emphasizing product delivery under the dual constraints of regulatory compliance and user experience, and is seen as an important milestone for centralized platforms to actively embrace the on-chain ecosystem. Its goal is to find a stable balance within the triangle of regulatory compliance, self-custody security, and user experience.

As Lei Ming, the head of the built-in DEX at OKX exchange, mentioned in an exclusive interview with Foresight News: “We hope that users can complete on-chain transactions directly within OKX, but the assets are always in their own hands.”

When DEX is no longer “long tail”

The changes in market structure have driven the integration of DEX into exchanges. In June 2025, the global share of DEX/CEX spot trading reached a historical high of 27.9%; in the same month, the DEX/CEX trading ratio in the derivatives sector also hit a new high of 8%. Both trends point to a common direction: on-chain trading is no longer just a long tail but is continuously encroaching on the centralized market share in the two most core trading scenarios of spot and perpetual. Behind this trend are the improvements in public chain performance, the maturity of liquidity aggregation technologies, and the increasing demand from users for on-chain transparency.

The power of the market is changing the narrative. With the maturity of high-performance chains like Base and Solana, DEX has transformed from the image of “slow, expensive, and high slippage” to an option that is “fast enough and deep enough.” Matching / re-aggregation DEX technology brings the two traditional pain points of slippage and transaction certainty closer to the CEX experience threshold. In reality, users do not care whether their transactions are “on-chain” or “off-chain”; what they care about is whether the experience is smooth, the prices are fair, and the assets are secure.

From a regulatory perspective, the EU MiCA will enter a phased refinement of rules starting in 2024, with a gradual implementation of the stablecoin and service provider framework; in the United States, the Senate will pass the stablecoin bill (GENIUS Act) in June 2025, establishing a federal baseline for reserves and disclosures. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has announced the launch of the SEC's “Project Crypto,” a comprehensive reform of the existing regulatory framework to accommodate crypto assets and pave the way for “on-chain” financial markets in the U.S. Paul Atkins also stated his firm support for self-custody wallets and will reform the special purpose broker-dealer rules that do not apply to crypto assets, creating more applicable regulations for registered institutions to custody crypto assets. These rules neither categorically exclude DeFi nor prevent leading platforms from exploring productized forms of self-custodial trading entrances within compliance boundaries.

As a result, exchanges began to realize that future incremental users might come from the intermediate layer that desires both visibility of assets and fast trading.

OKX's choice is a response to this structural change. “Users have found that the path to currency is no longer looking at the exchange but at on-chain popularity.” Lei Ming admitted, “What we need to do is merge the discovery and trading of on-chain assets into a continuous experience.”

This means that OKX is no longer just a platform for listing coins, but rather an entry point to the blockchain. Based on the accumulation of a unified account system, matching engine, and aggregator capabilities, the team has begun to try to make on-chain trading a part of the exchange experience. “This is not about cramming a DEX external link into the app, but rather about integrating the experience at the product level.”

OKX's Product Logic: Making Self-Custody a First-Class Citizen of Exchanges

Against this backdrop, OKX's strategy is not to simply “add a DEX button to the app,” but to embed on-chain trading as a system-level capability throughout the entire trading experience.

The core choice is “self-custody first.” For all assets not listed on exchanges, transactions must be initiated on-chain from the user's wallet. The platform does not hold or custody assets. This means that OKX has actively sacrificed some convenience in product design in exchange for clarity in compliance and risk boundaries.

The first version will support Base, Solana, and their own X Layer, with plans to expand to more networks later, allowing users to discover, trade, and manage multi-chain assets through a unified entry point, and the aforementioned networks will support stablecoin trading pairs in this DEX. To support this architecture, OKX mobilized a cross-departmental team of over a hundred people, coordinating between wallets, matching, aggregators, accounts, and funds systems, which resembles a “bottom-level reconstruction” rather than just minor tweaks on the front end.

In this plan, OKX chooses to integrate early project acquisition and on-chain transactions into a unified information architecture, while transferring asset custody responsibilities to user-side wallets. In multiple interviews with Foresight News, it was emphasized that the platform publishes Proof of Reserves (PoR) on the CEX side every month and adopts one-to-one matching in lending and other services, without setting up a platform fund pool, in order to reduce institutional risks of misappropriation/misallocation. For the DEX side, self-custody replaces platform credit, delineating the boundaries between CEX risks and on-chain risks.

At the same time, OKX has long adhered to a monthly update of PoR as a transparency anchor for the CEX dimension.

AA and Passkey, Reshaping On-Chain Usability

For most users, the biggest barrier to on-chain trading is not the complexity of contracts, but the usability threshold. Gas, private keys, mnemonic phrases—these native crypto terminologies are almost a natural barrier for users of traditional exchanges.

OKX's approach is to use technology to eliminate these barriers. Its wallet system adopts an Account Abstraction (AA) architecture, supporting Gas abstraction and batch calls. In the CeDeFi trading scenario, users do not need to pay Gas fees, as the system pays on their behalf to complete on-chain transactions; at the interaction layer, OKX introduces Passkey technology, allowing users to complete signatures using device fingerprints or facial recognition.

“The most painful aspects for users are the mnemonic phrases and Gas. We eliminate these two steps through account abstraction and Passkey,” said Lei Ming. He explained that Passkey is bound to the terminal, allowing recovery via email or cloud even if the device is lost. “We want users to feel almost oblivious to being on-chain, while the security boundary remains self-custodied.”

• Experience Layer: Supports Gas abstraction, allowing users to initiate CeDeFi transactions within the exchange app without Gas fees, as the system automatically handles on-chain fee settlement and cross-chain conversion, significantly reducing the friction of first-time on-chain transactions; AA allows for batch calls and one-click execution of multiple contracts, shortening the path from placing an order to being on-chain to confirmation.
• Risk Control and Recovery: The AA wallet is no longer solely accessed via private key + mnemonic phrase; Passkey binds the device. In extreme cases (loss of both device and email), the recovery path is longer, but the daily theft entry points (phishing, reused passwords) are significantly reduced, representing a paradigm shift that transforms user operational risk into device and identity credential management.
• Industry reference: Large platforms (such as Coinbase's Smart Wallet) have adopted Passkey + AA as the main form for the public, emphasizing no extensions, no mnemonic phrases, and cloud synchronization, validating the feasibility of the approach. The adoption of Passkey in the broader internet field is also expected to double in 2024, providing a social recognition basis for passwordless login + biometric identification.

This product design is essentially a re-interpretation of the experience. OKX compresses the operational path of on-chain transactions into a centralized interaction logic, yet does not cross the boundary of user asset custody. Users still hold the keys, but this key is encapsulated within a more familiar login experience. On the wallet end, the system also integrates risk identification and anti-phishing features. When an abnormal contract or high-risk token is detected, clear prompts will be provided at the transaction front end. This mechanism originates from the exchange-level risk control system, which has been a long-standing absence in the past DEX ecosystem.

From an engineering perspective, the key to this route is not who proposed it first, but who can refine the experience to the level of an exchange. This means integrating wallets, market data, risk control, transactions, and capital flow into a process that does not let users perceive the complexity of the blockchain. In interviews, the OKX team repeatedly listed experience and compliance as the two major constraints, reflecting the product perspective of upgrading technical usability to business usability.

Redefining Risk Models

The essence of risk in the cryptocurrency industry lies in the choice of where to place trust: is it entrusted to the platform or to oneself? “Is decentralization definitely safer?” OKX's answer is: the two models bear different risks.

The main risks of centralized trading lie in credit and counterparty, which the platform mitigates through PoR and independent audits; the risks of decentralized trading are related to user private keys and contract vulnerabilities. Therefore, OKX attempts to provide a third solution by implementing layered risk management.

“Safety is not zero risk, but rather clear about who bears what risk,” said Lei Ming.

From a system perspective, OKX is building a new “risk distribution model” where the CEX part assumes the trust responsibility for matching and fund security, while the DEX part returns to the personal responsibility of self-custody on-chain. Users can freely switch between different risk tolerance methods within the same platform based on the nature of their assets.

In the centralized part, OKX continues to execute monthly Proof of Reserves (PoR), disclosing reserves in an on-chain verifiable manner; in lending and wealth management products, the platform only acts as an intermediary and does not set up a capital pool, allowing users to always know who the counterparty is. In the on-chain part, OKX hands control back to users, reducing the probability of misoperations and theft through AA wallets and Passkeys, and then uses a risk control engine to identify risky contracts, converging the self-custody risk into “controllable operational risk.”

The benefit of this layered structure is that users can freely choose their risk tolerance model based on the type of assets. Mainstream assets are placed in centralized accounts, enjoying matching depth and instant transactions; early-stage assets are traded on-chain, enjoying transparency and self-custody. This is not a replacement of decentralization for centralization, but rather a complement.

“We issue asset proof every month, which is the most fundamental trust.” It emphasizes, “In our lending products, we only facilitate transactions and do not set up a fund pool, so users know who their counterpart is.”

This transparent system design is becoming a consensus for leading exchanges to rebuild trust. Over the past year, nearly all mainstream platforms have re-examined custody and asset boundaries.

Master the path, not the attention

By the end of 2024, the differentiation between exchanges will become increasingly clear.

Some platforms like Binance Alpha and others have emerged with pre-listing project pools and content channels. By continuously publishing early project listings, points, and tasks in wallets or on the main site, they softly link user attention with potential listing rhythms. Essentially, this is about discovery, operating in the form of content and project pools, and recommending early assets to users in an “information flow” manner. The core of this model is attention, allowing users to first know “what has heat” and then waiting for it to “list on the exchange.” However, it is clear that the boundary between compliant disclosure and whether it constitutes disguised agency sales needs to be continuously calibrated.

“While others focus on Alpha, we focus on aggregation, the more comprehensive and neutral the information, the better.” Lei Ming stated, “We don't tell wealth stories, we tell trading experiences.”

In this model, OKX does not pre-select projects or set a whitelist, but acts as a neutral aggregator, allowing users to complete real transactions directly on-chain. This approach presents two challenges:

First, the technical complexity is high, involving engineering issues such as cross-chain routing, aggregation quotes, and failure rollback.

Secondly, regulatory requirements are higher, and platforms must ensure that all transactions are initiated by users' self-custody wallets, with the platform not touching the assets.

For this reason, OKX's path selection appears more like infrastructure construction rather than a marketing experiment.

“This is not about stuffing DEX external links into the app, but rather about streamlining the experience at the product level,” Lei Ming pointed out.

This is also a self-transformation at the cultural level. In the past, everyone was good at traffic operation, using the rhythm of coin issuance and market heat to drive trading volume; whereas OKX attempts to reconstruct liquidity connections through technical operations, minimizing the friction costs from discovery to transaction.

Multiplication of Experience

In the architecture of OKX, the launch of new products is a key step towards a long-term ecosystem.

“The next phase will cover more ecosystems, aiming to enable every user to purchase their desired on-chain assets with a single click,” Lei Ming revealed.

This means that OKX is trying to build a three-dimensional system from wallets, trading to the chain itself. With the launch of its own public chain X Layer mainnet built on Polygon CDK, OKX has low-friction endogenous infrastructure, allowing on-chain assets to be bridged with one click in the wallet, lower Gas costs, shorter settlement delays, and native support for stablecoin trading scenarios.

Incentives can add, but experiences multiply. In this narrative reconstruction, technology is no longer the endpoint of the crypto industry, but rather the starting point of trust production.

When centralized platforms have self-custody features, and on-chain interactions offer exchange-level experiences, the boundaries between CEX and DEX become unclear. Users do not need to know which side they are on at the moment; they just need to be confident that this transaction belongs to them.

Once the regulatory framework is gradually implemented, user awareness will shift from speculation to usage, and the competition among exchanges will no longer be about “who lists coins faster,” but rather “who has a more stable system, smoother experience, and clearer risks.”

OKX's choice is to build trust through technological stacking, responding to faith propositions with engineering logic.

In the future, centralization and decentralization may no longer be opposing labels in the industry, but rather two forms of an integrated trading system.

And that original quote from the interview may be the most accurate footnote to this transformation — “We hope users can complete on-chain transactions directly in OKX, but assets are always in their own hands.”