Aurora’s IDEX suspended all trading on their exchange platform for a few days and this left investors both angry and worried at the same time.
IDEX is “the first high-performance decentralized exchange, provides both real-time trading and on-chain settlement,” according to their official description.
IDEX accounts for almost 10% of all ether token trading, so it’s understandable that the suspending of their entire platform triggers such a massive hype.
Aurora’s IDEX Exchange is still down, and according to users, trading has been blocked for about a week. This is definitely not what the platform promised as the official description states the following: “Traders on IDEX can trade continuously without waiting for transactions to mine, place true market orders and fill multiple orders at once, and cancel orders immediately without gas costs.”
Now, people cannot trade, and withdrawals have been disabled and re-enabled again, and this led to a significant question on everyone’s lips: “Is the exchange really decentralized?”
People don’t see the platform as a decentralized one if the owners can pause the order book and withdrawals any time they please. According to users, it seems that it takes 100k block delay for funds to be released.
Aurora’s official response is not what users expected
Aurora’s Twitter account became flooded with complaints. “It been days, I’ve missed out on many opportunities because of this. My funds are basically frozen because of them being on IDEX. You’ve given no timeframe at all. I feel you should credit user with AURA or something because half my portfolio is frozen at this point.”
Aurora’s official answers are being quite vague. “We don’t blame you for being frustrated, but we hope you’ll stick with us as we seek to resolve this issue ASAP,” they posted on Twitter on May 5th. “We are not coming back online until everything is rectified and is ready for a large influx of users,” they continued the next day, on May 6th. Things are currently the same and investors and traders are running out of patience. We’ll just have to wait and see just how long this situation is going to last.
What is Aurora?
Aurora is a collection of Ethereum applications and protocols that are supposed to form a decentralized banking and finance platform.
Aurora provides “an advanced, open, and stable financial network, accessible by anyone in the world regardless of geographic location or class status.” Aurora’s currency is called the boreal, and it’s backed by a mix of cryptocurrency reserves, debt, and retailer endorsement, and is available to customers via loans based on their digital economic reputation.
Traders on IDEX “decentralized” smart contract exchange, are able to use the boreal as payment for trading fees or as a stable base currency.