
Simon Kruse | November 4 2020
Simon Kruse | November 4 2020
Orion Terminal is the chain agnostic liquidity aggregator working to aggregate liquidity from all major exchanges, centralized + decentralized: providing rich trading tools in one easy to use platform. Endless liquidity, one platform, zero risk.
Don't waste time exchange hopping: access the liquidity of major exchanges in one place. This means access to the liquidity and trading pairs of centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, and swap pools in one decentralized platform.
Don't buy or sell unless you're getting the best price: by aggregating multiple exchanges' order books, Orion provides the best prices and lowest fees in market with almost zero spread and zero slippage.
Don't give up control of your private keys: simply connect your wallet and execute your order across any major exchange - even those they you don’t have accounts with - without giving up your assets, information, or conducting KYC.
The protocol standardizes connectivity to both centralized and decentralized exchanges, allowing all parties to participate in a trading workflow in a completely decentralized way. The protocol governs accounting and trade settlement that can be implemented on almost any public and enterprise blockchain. This means:
● Increasing liquidity and market depth by combining order books from multiple exchanges
● Acquiring the best possible price at any time from a potentially unlimited number of marketplaces
● Accessing the best fee rates on each exchange due to Orion's network of Brokers
● Single, unified fee for trades: no separate deposit/withdrawal fees
● Easy online management with no account via different channels (web, mobile)
● Comprehensive and sophisticated analytics when required, clear accounting and trades tracking
Delegated Proof of Broker governs every function on the protocol, from order execution, to clearing, to the governance of choosing a broker, and everything in between including via a decentralized brokerage with the native ORN token at its core. Designed using advantages from PoS, DPoB consists of two core components: Brokers and Non-Broker Stakers.
Every transaction across the protocol acts as a trade being carried out by a broker via the decentralized exchange. Brokers earn rewards for conducting these trades: profit share from each transaction will be shared back in the form of ORN tokens.
Brokers with exchange accounts run Orion Broker Software, automatically executing trades routed from Orion's liquidity aggregator. These Brokers are chosen to execute trades based on how much ORN, Orion’s native token, they stake.
Non-Broker Stakers stake ORN to ‘vote’ for their choice of Broker based on the variable reward share offered. This means Brokers are incentivized to offer attractive rates to Non-Broker Stakers to grow their stake, increasing their chance of being chosen.
Benefits are generated via Orion’s various revenue streams, preserving the value of the ORN token over time. Orion has partnered with DeFi providers to further monetize its Decentralized Brokerage
The network remains decentralized, non-monopolized, and democratic, giving stakers the chance to obtain results regardless of capital or computing power.
The high-performance Orion Matching Engine is built on the aggregated orderbook, updated from every connected exchange in real time. This fulfills splitting, routing and matching functions. The task of the order-matching engine is to ensure that trades are executed at the most advantageous price, by accessing the lowest asks and highest bids across all available exchanges.
When a new order is received, the engine first tries to execute it on the internal orderbook. If this does not give the best price, it then uses data provided by the Price Discovery Module to find the exchange or exchanges to which the order should be sent, depending on the required amount and the depth profile of each exchange. Based on the results of this analysis, the order is split up and submitted to the relevant exchanges. In order to fill a large order, or an order for a less-popular pair, the trade will typically be split into small pieces across a number of different exchanges. In other circumstances, one exchange might offer the best price for the amount required. Following a successful execution, these trades are consolidated and the client is notified of the completion of the order.
Orders can have one of the following statuses: new, accepted, filled, partially filled, cancelled partially cancelled. The trading interface also supports different order modes, including fill or kill, market, and limit orders.
A “smart search” is used to discover the right exchanges for the order – that is, the ones with the right combination of price and liquidity. When the Order Matching Engine splits the initial order and finds the best exchanges on which to execute them, the final step is to find exchange executors that eventually create, submit, and watch for filling of the native orders. The Orion Protocol unifies the process for working with both centralized and decentralized exchanges, leaving all the differences to be dealt with only by the specific executors.
In short, CEX executors work with API keys, whereas DEX executors sign orders right from the multi-currency wallet using a private key.
Centralized Exchanges
The centralized exchange executor is simply an adapter for a particular exchange that can send Buy or Sell limit orders using the provided API key, and monitor them for fulfillment.
Decentralized Exchanges
A decentralized exchange module is designed to connect to a DEX in the same way that the order-matching engine connects to a centralized exchange. The nature of a DEX and the way it operates means that the API functions very differently, and additional concerns must be considered. The exchange executor for a DEX uses a private key provided by a multi-currency wallet (see below) to generate, sign, and validate transactions tailored for the DEX on different blockchains. Because the transactions are signed before sending, the private key does not need to be exposed to the web. Nevertheless, security for this operation is paramount.
Orion's innovative mutual credit accounting system, implemented in different programming languages (including Solidity, Rust, etc) was specifically developed to be used in smart contracts on different platforms. This underpins Orion's blockchain-agnostic approach to exchange functionality that can be run on different blockchains. The Orion Protocol broker network, which governs the interaction between end-users, brokers providing access to liquidity, and the Decentralized Brokerage, will be deployed as smart contracts.
Before execution, orders are stored privately in Orion’s Matching Engine. Only if the order is filled by a selected broker, will the transfer of assets occur atomically within the smart contract. As a result, brokers never get access to traders’ accounts or funds as the smart contracts enforce secure conditions of the token exchange.
Only if the order is filled by a selected broker will the transfer of assets occur atomically within the smart contract: the trader gives the sold asset in exchange for the bought asset. The exact amounts of exchanged assets are strongly enforced by the conditions specified in the order and cannot be altered by the broker. Only when the order is fully settled by a broker is the transaction is submitted to the blockchain, so nobody can submit an order before others.
Atomic Swaps
Where orders are executed internally, e.g. on Orion’s internal DEX, atomic swaps can be used. These employ Hashed Timelock Contracts (HTLC) to exchange pre-determined amounts of cryptocurrency in their entirety (hence “atomic”), or not at all. Partial orders are not possible.