When you think of decentralized exchanges, you probably picture Uniswap or SushiSwap today. But before those became household names, there was Bamboo Relay, a pioneering decentralized exchange built on Ethereum that let users trade ERC-20 tokens directly from their wallets without a middleman. Also known as a zero-knowledge DEX, it was one of the first to use off-chain order matching to cut gas costs and speed up trades. Bamboo Relay didn’t just try to copy centralized exchanges—it solved real problems: high fees, slow confirmations, and the risk of losing funds to smart contract bugs.
Bamboo Relay’s architecture was built around Ethereum, the blockchain that enabled smart contracts and token standards like ERC-20, and it relied on decentralized exchange, a system where trades happen peer-to-peer without a central authority holding your crypto. Unlike centralized platforms like Binance, Bamboo Relay never held user funds. Orders were signed off-chain and settled on-chain only when matched. This meant lower fees and faster trades—but it also meant users had to manage their own security, and liquidity was thin compared to today’s giants. The project was quietly shut down in 2020 after its team shifted focus, but its ideas didn’t die. Modern DEXs still use off-chain order books and zk-proofs to improve efficiency, and many of the early DeFi builders learned from Bamboo Relay’s trial-and-error approach.
Today, when you see a DEX with low fees and fast trades, you’re seeing the legacy of projects like Bamboo Relay. It proved that decentralized trading could work outside the hype, even if it didn’t survive the market cycles. The posts below dig into how trading pairs create arbitrage chances, how new tokens like DOGE2.0 or BTTY emerge from similar ecosystems, and how exchanges—both centralized and decentralized—evolve under pressure. You’ll find reviews of current platforms, breakdowns of token standards, and real examples of what works and what doesn’t in crypto markets. If you want to understand why today’s DeFi looks the way it does, start here.
Bamboo Relay is a decentralized exchange built on Ethereum that lets you trade crypto without KYC. It offers margin trading via bZx and credit card deposits via Carbon. But with low liquidity and no updates since 2022, is it still worth using in 2025?
View more