DDEX is forking the 0x protocol to remove the ZRX token

Tian Li, CEO of decentralized exchange DDEX, announced that his team is forking the 0x protocol — removing the ZRX token in the process. The forked protocol is dubbed Hydro and will have a "new order schema, an engine capable of true matching, robust market orders, and a fundamentally different liquidity sharing model." According to Li, the reason by ZRX token's removal is because "fee-based tokens create unnecessary friction."

The utility of ZRX is often debated in the crypto community. As The Block previously wrote, the 0x white paper outlined two core use cases of the ZRX token (1) governance and (2) transaction fees. Because there has yet to be a formal governance feature implemented in the 0x protocol, the current and only use case for ZRX — beyond speculation — is to pay relayers to access their order books and trade. And while relayers can charge users transaction fees denominated in ZRX, they are not required to do so. 

DDEX is the largest exchange on the 0x protocol, making up 46.4% of the relayer trading volume. According to 0xtracker, in the past 24 hours, DDEX did $143,044 in trading volume. Interestingly, DDEX has never accepted ZRX tokens for its transaction fees.