<center>![BASE HEADER kybernetworkbeta is live.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTQJQ4MhNP9xd67NQyDBKdt3a9jh3T54eRdio9KczdkgL/BASE%20HEADER%20kybernetworkbeta%20is%20live.png)</center>


<h3> Finally some news! [Kyber Network (KBC) has launched their Decentralized Exchange today](https://blog.kyber.network/public-beta-announcement-870b21377136), and it's available for use as a public Beta. You can go to their DEX right now and make some trades if you like.</h3>

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<div class="pull-right"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/DQmNmuLo7PBN2swMFqZjFMWjx1upUn4vCsisoL4enp7uG9N/kyber%20logo%20small.png" /></div>


<h3>KYBER</h3> [The Kyber Network (KNC) is a Decentralized Exchange (DEX)](https://kyber.network/) on the Ethereum blockchain which allows for peer-to-peer trading. Compared to existing DEXes or hybrid-DEXes, Kyber offers true decentralization and peer-to-peer trading in a trust-less fashion. 

There has been some excitement regarding Kyber due to the fact it is Korean-based, but more importantly because Vitalik Buterin himself is on the advisory board. 

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<h3>FEATURES</h3>Kyber has some really great innovative features that many of it's competitors do not have, most notably the ability to perform **instant trades** through their liquidity pool, as well as offering this service *without* having to 'wrap' your ETH into WETH like many other DEXes (like the 0x ones) do. This means that Kyber is the first DEX-solution to offer trading *straight* out of your wallet. The other ones force you to deposit the coins into a smart contract first. This means that in order to make trades on Kyber _no extra actions are required_ and this saves a lot of hassle and confusion on the user's end.

<center>![kyber comparison.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSu6hRGxXjgbnbrC4XogZTeq1ZVqYnL2gPd51odFqrMA5/kyber%20comparison.jpg)</center>

Kyber Network is best compared to Shapeshift though as it does **not** offer the traditional trading screens and Limit-buy/sell options like exchanges do. Instead, Kyber aims for user-friendliness and has a similar layout and design as Shapeshift, where you enter the crypto you want to trade as well as the crypto you want to trade for, and then make the trade. 

Because Kyber is a DEX there are no withdraw fees or traditional trading fees involved, nor is there any sign-up. There are however Ethereum gas fees, like other Ethereum based DEXes, which you can set manually. If you don't overpay the transaction fees are generally low and in the $0.10 to $0.40 range depending on how clogged the network is and how much you choose to pay. Additionally since Kyber doesn't require you to wrap your ETH first, this saves you another two transactions and the cost of them (wrapping and unwrapping) to make a trade too. I really like that, because wrapping ETH which the other DEXes use is a sub-optimal solution.

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<h3>PUBLIC BETA</h3> [The public Beta of Kyber just went live](https://kyber.network/) and you can use it right now if you want. What's great is that they offer a variety of wallet integrations, among which hardware wallets, from the get-go which means you'll likely find it quite easy to set up. The Beta can be used on a mobile device or a desktop but take note to try Kyber only through Google Chrome! I did not manage to get it to work on Brave or Firefox on my desktop.

The Beta currently offers ERC-20 token trading of about 20 popular ERC-20 tokens like EOS, BAT, OMG and others.  Below is a screenshot I took where you can see how it looks if you want to trade Ethereum for EOS:

<center>![kyber beta screenshot.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmREvxyNa6pA3VBjquxpkqbzB1UAcfSzLm8i5JdyPWjHC9/kyber%20beta%20screenshot.png)</center>

Underneath the amount of tokens you can set the gas prices, and then you simply press the Exchange button to make the trade. Take note that I toggled the 'Advanced' slider in order to set the Gas prices. By default these settings are not enable so be sure to toggle the Advanced slider.

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<div class="pull-left"><img src="https://steemitimages.com/DQmZvUQAH1a4HB9cwcWcLxhWGsEkhWZckxJ7zzk4yCYaXjp/kyber%20knc.png" /></div>


<h3>THE TOKEN</h3> While this news isn't really about the KNC token itself, it should be noted that the KNC token is actually used behind the scenes to pay for the transaction costs. In other words, the value of the KNC token should be derived of the usage of the network. If more people perform trades through Kyber, the demand for these tokens to pay for transaction fees goes up and so would it's price.

It is important to note however that in order to use Kyber Network's Exchange _you do **not** need any KNC tokens_. The whole process involving KNC takes place entirely in the back-end and users need not concern themselves with them.

<center>![dividerline cartooney2.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVmKeFJZVR7A2hRwk6wYM5DiphcFJ8RmxvYpc8FWvhmNP/dividerline%20cartooney2.png)</center>


<h3>THE FUTURE</h3>After they finish this Beta Kyber isn't done yet. In the future there are plans to offer a payment service as well which merchants can use to receive payments in any cryptocurrency, yet choose their own cryptocurrency of choice to accept those payments in. Secondly there are plans to offer more advanced financial instruments, such as derivatives. 

To get a good simplified overview of the Kyber Network and their (future) plans, this official short video below should help you understand their goals:
<center><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/lNNLr2D0yig" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe></center>

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I think this release of Kyber Network is pretty great and promising! If you're like me and like to store most of your funds offline, then sending them to an exchange and taking them off again is a costly endeavour. And of course, I don't like the trust involved. So these DEX solutions are a really great solution, and Kyber especially appeals to me because it doesn't require any wrapping of ETH. It's as simple to use as Shapeshift, and because of that I will be using this next time when I can. I'm sure that without Shapeshift's extra service-fee, trading through Kyber is likely to be cheaper anyway.

<center><h2>[>> To try the Kyber Exchange Beta click here! <<](https://kyber.network/)</h2></center>

<center><h2>[>> To read the public beta announcement click here! <<](https://blog.kyber.network/public-beta-announcement-870b21377136)</h2></center>

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<center>[![footercartoon new5.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmRMndUYFqxoxwcTkTR4JAADzH6o43QhSS1WM17wP8uD1C/footercartoon%20new5.png)](https://steemit.com/@pandorasbox)</center>_(Art by [Roy Lichtenstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein))_