When you think of early DeFi, you might remember MakerDAO or Compound—but bZx, a pioneering decentralized finance protocol that let users lend, borrow, and trade crypto without intermediaries. Also known as bZx Protocol, it was one of the first to merge lending and trading in a single smart contract system. Unlike simple exchanges, bZx let traders execute leveraged positions directly on Ethereum, using borrowed assets from lenders who earned interest. It wasn’t just a DEX—it was a full-stack DeFi engine.
bZx didn’t just enable trades; it created a new kind of financial plumbing. Users could deposit ETH or ERC-20 tokens as collateral, borrow other assets, and then use those borrowed tokens to trade with leverage—all in one transaction. This was revolutionary in 2019, when most DeFi apps did one thing well. bZx tried to do three: lending, borrowing, and on-chain arbitrage. It even let users create custom trading strategies through its flash loans, a type of uncollateralized loan that had to be repaid within the same transaction block. This made it a favorite for arbitrage bots and advanced traders, but also a target for hackers. In 2020, attackers exploited a flaw in its price oracle system and drained over $30 million. The incident became a case study in DeFi risk—and pushed the whole industry to improve how it handles price feeds and smart contract audits.
After the hack, bZx rebuilt. It moved to a more secure architecture, partnered with other protocols, and eventually merged with the Rocket Pool, a decentralized Ethereum staking platform. The bZx token (BZRX) became part of a broader governance system. While the original platform is no longer the powerhouse it once was, its ideas live on. Today’s DeFi apps that offer leveraged trading, cross-margin lending, or on-chain arbitrage owe something to bZx’s early experiments. It proved you could build complex financial products on Ethereum—and that the risks were just as real as the rewards.
Below, you’ll find articles that dig into the mechanics of DeFi trading, how arbitrage works, and why some protocols succeed while others collapse. Whether you’re curious about how lending pools function, how hackers exploit price oracles, or why a token like BZRX still matters in governance, these posts give you the real-world context behind the headlines.
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?
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