Uniswap is a decentralized exchange that facilitates automated transactions between Ethereum-based tokens. It is designed to be an open-source platform with an automated market maker (AMM) model. Instead of using an order book, token trades are facilitated directly between users through a liquidity pool and prices orders with an algorithm that relies on the equation x*y=k to create a price spectrum for token pairs available in the liquidity pools provided by other users. Uniswap tokens are used as a governance token and as an incentive for users to fund the liquidity pools. Since the platform is decentralized, all the trading fees collected are distributed among the liquidity providers; according to the share that they provide in the liquidity pools.
Uniswap is one of the largest decentralized exchanges (DEX) and one the largest cryptocurrency exchanges overall by daily trading volume. The platform was originally created by Hayden Adams, a former mechanical engineer at Siemens. It is backed by some influential venture capital funds, including: Andreessen Horowitz, Paradigm Venture Capital, and Union Square Ventures.

The Balancer cryptocurrency is the reward token that fuels the Balancer market maker protocol. The Balancer protocol serves as a liquidity provider and a non-custodial portfolio manager. Unlike other automatic market maker protocols, such as Uniswap, Balancer is designed to provide a general solution that can be customized for a variety of trading pools with different distributions. It uses smart order routing to send trades to trading pools with the best rates available, and rewards traders by paying them a fee for increasing the liquidity of these pools.

BitShares is a blockchain platform designed to assist the unbanked. It offers both banking and exchange services. Bitshares was originally launched in 2014 by Dan Larimer, an influential blockchain developer that has also worked on EOS and Steemit. It is a community run open source project.
Bitshares' goal is facilitate greater access to financial services. The Bitshares exchange is a decentralized platform that was designed to be scalable and ensure low transaction fees.
Bitshares has a delegated Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. Aside from a decentralized asset exchange, it also offers users the ability to issue their own assets, price-stable digital currencies, and flexible crypto payment options.
The Bitshares decentralized exchange and banking ecosystem is powered by the BTS token.