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.

Ren, previously known as the Republic Protocol, is a decentralized dark pool exchange protocol; designed to support large volume trades, without effecting the prices of the assets being traded. The blockchain-based, dark pool protocol has built in privacy mechanisms and is provably fair. It uses secure multi-party computation (sMPC), and a network of Darknodes, to match orders without exposing their volume or price. Their private order book will also enable cross-chain trades of tokenized assets. The Singapore based company is also developing RenX, a decentralized dark pool exchange, built with the Republic Protocol. REN is the network's utility token. It provides security to the network, and is staked to enable the operation of a Darknode in the network.

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.