What Decentralized Custody Did Next

How the acquisition of Xena team and tech will bring world-class trading tools to Qredo

As Qredo was pioneering custody without counterparty risk, another crypto platform was pioneering trading without counterparty risk.

Xena Exchange has spent the last five years creating a non-custodial crypto derivatives platform that enables trading directly from the security of your own custody — eliminating the risk of hacked, frozen, or misappropriated assets.

This shared vision led Xena to become the first exchange to be integrated with Qredo. Our technical teams have now been working together for more than a year to provide access to liquidity from decentralized custody, and have recently deepened the collaboration with a bigger move: Qredo has acquired the team and technology of Xena Exchange.

To give you a glimpse of the possibilities that this deal unlocks, this post briefly unpacks the technology that will soon be embedded into Qredo's suite of decentralized liquidity products.

Team

Xena Exchange was developed by a team of former professionals from JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, ING and the Royal Bank of Scotland, led by Anton Kravchenko and Alexey Semichastnov.

Anton Kravchenko, Qredo Markets Director

Anton Kravchenko is a seasoned financial markets professional specializing in derivatives and algorithmic trading. He founded Xena Exchange following a career in London with JP Morgan and VTB Capital.

Alexey Semichastnov, Qredo Markets Product Director

Alexey Semichastnov has a wealth of experience in building products for financial markets, and has worked in technical leadership roles at several fintechs and Deutsche Bank. At Xena Exchange, Alexey was Chief Product Officer.

Tech

Since inception in 2017, the Xena team have spent five years building a selection of sophisticated trading technologies:

Matching engines

Whirring away at the heart of every exchange, matching engines are the high-speed, high-throughput and high-security software responsible for crunching orders — bringing together buys and sells in a matter of microseconds.

Xena Exchange has developed and tested a new matching engine architecture with a seven millisecond round trip time for public order routing — beating the fastest exchanges on the market. In addition, Xena's trading engine supports various advanced order types, institutional-grade APIs, and a range of different derivatives.

This functionality will form the backbone of Qredo's decentralized dark pool; an internal trading venue with a central limit order book (CLOB), which will be populated with high-speed liquidity from top market making teams — including Wintermute and GSR.

Brokerage software

Brokerage software is responsible for evaluating risks in real-time, settling liabilities, triggering liquidations, and tracking transactions. Xena's brokerage engine will be used to enhance Qredo's over-the-counter trading capabilities, including PowerSwap — the first piece of Liquidity Hub.

Algorithmic trading tools

In the US stock market, automated bots are thought to account for 70-80% of trading volume. Yet in the crypto market, automated strategies remain on the fringes.

Xena Exchange's automated portfolio management tools enable anyone to plug algorithmic trading strategies into the digital asset market. This offers an exciting opportunity for Qredo to help organizations employ algorithmic trading strategies in this relatively untapped market.

Check the roadmap for an overview of Qredo's future plans, and follow Qredo on LinkedIn and Twitter to stay updated with the latest developments.

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