Cryptocurrency or as commonly known, crypto is just a form of virtual currency that can be used over the web. In simpler words, a cryptocurrency is a form of digital money that like physical currency be used for the purchase and sale of goods and services but over the internet of course.
Also, it is extremely secure, portable, uncertain, and volatile in regards to price fluctuations which by the way can be very unpredictable and almost instant but, I believe that most of you knew that already as the cryptocurrency industry has had a boom in popularity and growth over the past few years and has made a name for itself on a global level.
The industry has managed to catch the eye of many potential investors, people with celebrity status, and business tycoons in the recent past, as a result, more and more people are intrigued to invest in virtual currencies. There are a lot of available currencies in crypto exchanges for you to invest in right now but, do you think it was the case when the industry was first introduced? No. There were limited options and back then people obviously didn’t have an understanding of crypto and its working but, looking around, I can be very certain that it is not the case today!
Some of the currencies today that you can pick from include Dogecoin, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Binance Coin and Baby Doge along with many more. For better understanding, see it this way that cryptocurrency can just be a way of passive income for a lot of people globally by investing just a part of their income which won’t be a big deal for them even if they lose but if everything goes right, they could end up having a lot more. Experts from all over the world are convinced that cryptocurrency is and will be the future of payment systems and will completely revolutionize the marketplace.
This would have given you a fair understanding of crypto and so you will be able to have a better understanding of what we have with us today, Serum. To know more, I suggest you read further!
What is Serum(SRM)?
Serum is nothing but a decentralized exchange or what is commonly known as DEX and an ecosystem that brings forward unparalleled low cost of transactions and speed to decentralized finance(DeFi), which is built on the Solana blockchain. Serum is one of the biggest projects to be developed on the Solana blockchain and is compatible with other virtual currencies such as Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Also, it is worth mentioning that SRM is the native currency token of the Serum platform. The Serum token is just an SPL token that basically lives on the Solana blockchain. As a matter of fact, SRM is also cross-listed as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. I believe there is no need to say this but SRM plays a very important role in the operations of Serum. Using this, users can pay fees, send values and be a part of the governance processes of the platform, all with the help of this token.
Serum is a high performant DEX and the only one to have been designed around a full on-chain matching engine and orderbook with a central limit. Other partners in the ecosystem of the platform can also create with Serum’s on-chain orderbook in order for them to share liquidity as well as to power their trading features for retail along with institutional users.
Talking about orderbooks, a key aspect of Serum’s design is a decentralized orderbook that runs with the help of smart contracts that focuses on replicating traditional exchanges by matching sellers and buyers. As a result, this offers price flexibility along with the capability of choosing the order size to the participants on the platform when they place orders, thus providing them with full control over their trading. It is worth mentioning that unlike most of the other DEXes, Serum is the one that is known to feature trading based on orderbooks, like in the case of centralized virtual currency exchanges.
In regards to the growth of DEXes and the popularity of DeFi on Ethereum, several developers and users are limited by slow transactions as well as high gas costs. But, as a matter of fact, Serum focuses on resolving these traditional issues of Decentralized finance, liquidity segmentation, centralization as well as low capital efficiency.
Basically, Serum is a platform where traders can buy and sell cryptocurrencies. For those of you who are not familiar with Solana. It is a blockchain platform that is focused on increasing user scalability with the help of faster settlement times for transactions made over the platform. Thus, considering that Serum is deployed on Solana, it will be able to take advantage of the platform’s cost-effectiveness as well as the speed of transactions on its blockchain.
Also, the Serum platform can easily handle in between fifty to sixty-five thousand transactions each second, which is just as much as the current transaction per second of the primary Solana blockchain. The Serum decentralized exchange presently features nearly thirty different crypto markets which trade against either USDC or USDTT. As a matter of fact, anyone can develop their own decentralized exchange on top of the Serum DEX while facilitating additional trading pairs with the help of the instructions laid out on Serum Academy.
Apart from that, the SRM governance and utility token allow users on the platform to receive discounts on voting rights and protocol fees as well. While, a hundred percent of the exchange fee collected flows back to SRM through staking rewards, buy and burn, and ecosystem grants.
In addition to this, MegaSerum is also an innovative addition to the network where users can lock 1,000,000 SRM tokens together in order for them to create 1 MSRM. As a result, this asset provides an increased utility to the entire Serum ecosystem. Thus, you can easily redder 1 MSRM for 1,000,000 at any given time!
Furthermore, Serum is known to offer cross-chain support which means that the traders on the platform can easily trade tokens that are developed on other platforms as well like Polkadot or Ethereum. Also, users on Serum can develop highly responsive and dynamic DEXes making use of various development resources and more.
Reading so far, you must have understood that Serum focuses on improving the current state of DEXes by bringing forward all the advantages of a centralized exchange onto the Decentralized finance (DeFi) space.
History of Serum
Since you have a basic understanding of what Serum is, let’s now talk in brief about its history. To begin with, the Serum whitepaper was officially published back in July last year with a plan of developing a decentralized exchange without the limitations of the existing DEXes including cross-chain support as well as the absence of order books in automated market makers.
The Serum Foundation was developed through an association among Alameda research, FTX as well as the Solana Foundation. In a very short span of time, Serum has managed to establish itself as one of the major players in the cryptocurrency industry. Initially, when the platform was first introduced in August last year, it just had two exchange offerings including BitMax and FTX.
At the time of the launch, Serum sold its token for nearly 0.11 percent per token, and just within fifteen hours of its launch, the SRM token was already trading fifteen times what it was earlier. Together both the exchanges managed to raise nearly 660,000 US dollars by selling over six million SRM tokens.
As of today, the platform’s development is supported by the Serum Foundation backed by a team of experts in trading, cryptocurrency as well as decentralized finance( DeFi). As a matter of fact, Serum borrows its thought and design leadership from several organizations in the finance and digital currency industries worldwide.
How does it work?
Serum’s overall design and network is meant to support transactions in a way that is similar to that of other traditional exchanges in the marketplace. As previously mentioned, the platform is a part of the Solana network and thus benefits from its cost-effectiveness and transaction speed. All in all, if we talk about the major components in its working, some of them are orderbooks, cross-chain swaps, and stablecoins.
Having talked about orderbooks a lot previously, you must be wondering why are orderbooks important? Let me help you with that. An orderbook or a decentralized automated full limit orderbook is nothing but a feature that allows traders to have full control over the order they place on the platform. With the help of this, users can make transactions at desired prices, and set up limit orders.
Serum as mentioned earlier is based on Solana and is entirely permissionless. With the help of all its perks, Serum has managed to develop a design that is to make sure that decentralized finance can compete with centralized services. Not just that, the serum decentralized exchange’s on-chain order book with central limit and matching engines gives price-time priority as well as liquidity to composing projects and traders.
Users generally benefit from Serum’s exchange model through the ability to choose the size, price as well as direction of the trades they make. Whereas on the other hand, composing projects usually benefit from the platform’s existing bootstrapped liquidity, architecture as well as matching services.
Investing in Serum
As of today, the price of Serum is nearly 12.29 US dollars with a twenty-four-hour trading volume of about 1,202,264,861 US dollars. However, in just a matter of twenty-four hours, Serum has gone downhill by 2.50 percent. Having a market cap of 614,479,986 US dollars, Serum is placed at the #118 position in the CoinMarketCap rankings. The currency has a circulating supply of nearly 50,000,000 SRM coins with a maximum lifetime supply of 10,000,000,000 SRM coins and In just a week’s time, the value of the platform has gone uphill by 41.40 percent.
As far as investing goes, reading so far you might have gotten a fair understanding of Serum and by now you will be able to figure out on your own, whether or not investing in Serum is the right thing to do. However, I believe that there is still a very long way for Serum to go and, progress can be seen happening.
Seeing its growth over the past year and its future plans when combined with what it has to offer, I think Serum is a great investment if you have some extra money lying around and is likely to hit an all-time high in the near future. Again, like any other online currencies, Serum too has its own risks and you should invest only if you are willing to take those risks and bear any losses if at all necessary.
By now, some of you might be wondering about where can you trade SRM? Let me help you with that. Some of the most popular exchanges for trading SRM include Binance, CoinTiger, Upbit, FTX, and OKEx to name a few.
In conclusion, What are your thoughts on Serum? Do let us know in the comments below. To know more about various cryptocurrencies, do check out other articles we have on our website. Thank you for your time & if you found our content informative, do share it with your investor friends!
Also read: Solana: Everything you need to know
