Onchain order books, eh? A (not so) brief dive into onchain orderbooks - strap in ↓

2/ When it comes to trading, liquidity is king. Liquidity is the measure of how easily someone can buy or sell an asset, without impacting its price. There are three primary liquidity models in DeFi: open order books, AMMs, and request for quote systems (RFQ).

3/ On a traditional exchange platform, buyers and sellers offer up different prices for an asset, and those orders are matched with each other based on that exchange's order book, called the central limit order book model (CLOB).

4/ Order books enable traders to enter and exit trades easily and with confidence that market prices won’t dramatically change in the middle of their trade. ✅ Price efficiency ✅ Reduced price impact ✅ Competitive liquidity

5/ CLOBs also support advanced order types, opening up additional trading strategies and giving traders more control, including: ✅ Buy limit orders ✅ Sell limit orders ✅ Stop loss orders

6/ However, in DeFi, AMMs have become the primary way to trade tokens across the ecosystem. AMMs rely on liquidity sourced from other users and pooled together in a liquidity pool.

7/ In 2017, 0x pioneered the off-chain order, onchain settlement model. We've also seen other hybrid models from @CloberDEX, and onchain orderbooks like @openbookdex. However, the reality is that fully onchain order books haven't been practically feasible on most chains.

8/ Why? For an order book to function well, market makers need to be able to quickly and cheaply create and cancel orders. This requires fast block times and low gas fees. Until now, EVM chains were often both too slow and too expensive.

9/ Enter @monad 🟣 Thanks to Monad’s 10k+ TPS and 1 second block finality, order books are finally coming onchain. Monad will enable onchain order books (CLOBs) for perps and spot trading, allowing market makers to provide frequently updated quotes onchain at low gas costs.