About Excrow

Before Excrow, the primary way to trade Alpha tokens has been through on-chain liquidity pools. By design, every trade executed through a liquidity pool and AMM impacts the subnet price and incurs slippage. The larger the trade, the more severe the price impact and slippage. Large transactions move the market, causing execution prices to deviate significantly from expectations, whether buying or selling.

Alternatively, two parties may choose to trade directly with each other in private. This process is cumbersome and inherently risky. One party must make the first move and accept the risk of counterparty default. There have been publicly reported losses amounting to hundreds and thousands of Tao, while undisclosed private losses are difficult to quantify.

Excrow solves these problems. Price impact and slippage are eliminated because all transactions bypass liquidity pools. Counterparty risk is mitigated through a simple and elegant escrow workflow. Each order receives its own dedicated, one-time-use escrow wallet, ensuring assets remain protected until all trade conditions have been satisfied. Settlement is deterministic, transparent, and fully verifiable on-chain.

There is a clear need for a peer-to-peer Alpha marketplace, particularly for private orders involving subnet owners, institutional participants, and large investors. Excrow is designed to meet this need, with private orders as a core feature.

As subnet liquidity pools deepen and the Alpha market continues to expand, a peer-to-peer secondary marketplace will become increasingly important.

The Excrow Exchange has been built from the ground up with security and scalability in mind. API orders, automated order matching, and smart order routing are already built into the platform, although some of these advanced capabilities are not yet suitable during the exchange's early, low-volume stages. These features will be activated in phases as trading volume and market demand grow, positioning Excrow as the premier marketplace for peer-to-peer Alpha trading.

With the foundation in place, futures and options are part of Excrow's long-term roadmap. Derivatives are essential to every mature financial market. Inherently peer-to-peer, they are a natural extension of Excrow and will become an important part of the Bittensor ecosystem.

Our vision is simple: to make Excrow the NYSE and CME of Bittensor.

Excrow traces its roots to the original 118/HODL Exchange and is now being developed and operated by Investing88, the team behind Bittensor Subnet 88.

During the initial growth phase, all transactions on the exchange will be free as we continue to improve the platform and expand the user base.

As the exchange matures, we will introduce a small, reasonable transaction fee to cover ongoing development, infrastructure, and maintenance costs. These fees will be far below the slippage incurred through liquidity pools, ensuring substantial savings on every transaction.

The Alpha market currently processes approximately 200k Tao in average daily trading volume, and the figure is steadily growing. Over time, Excrow is expected to capture a significant share of this trading activity.

As part of the Investing88 product family, Excrow is a natural fit. The exchange provides valuable market intelligence, improves price discovery, and creates an additional alpha edge, further strengthening Subnet 88's quant fund product line.

The exchange's revenue stream will support the subnet. In turn, we are considering allocating a portion of Subnet 88's emissions to Incentivized Market Makers (IMMs) to accelerate growth during the exchange's early stages.

Excrow – Trade Directly. Settle Securely.