Rainbow Network: An off-chain decentralized exchange for synthetic assets

Ethereum’s programmable properties opens up the Decentralized Finance design space beyond simple value transfer. To date, lending platforms like MakerDAO, Compound, and Dharma, exchanges like Uniswap and 0x relayers, and prediction markets like Augur and Gnosis have provided a taste as to the variety of potential financial applications that can be restructured in a permissionless, non-custodial, globally accessible fashion.  

Recently, Decentralized Finance has started moving in a more exotic direction with the emergence of synthetic assets, providing prospective users the ability to gain long and short exposure to any asset imaginable without requiring ownership of the underlying: this could be anything from the S&P500 index to Gold to alternative cryptocurrencies.