0x Gobbles Up Rival Flood in Bold Play for Dominance of $2.3B DEX Aggregator Arena

Decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator 0x just made a power move—acquiring competitor Flood in a bid to tighten its grip on the $2.3 billion DEX aggregator market. Because nothing says ’decentralization’ like consolidation, right?

The deal—terms undisclosed, because transparency is so 2023—signals 0x’s ambition to outmaneuver rivals like 1inch and Matcha. Flood’s tech stack and liquidity routes now get absorbed into 0x’s existing infrastructure, theoretically giving traders better price execution. Or at least, that’s what the press release claims.

DEX aggregators are the middlemen crypto purists love to hate—until they need to save 0.5% on a swap. With this acquisition, 0x isn’t just buying market share; it’s betting that bigger really is better in the cutthroat world of decentralized finance. Whether users win or just another VC-backed entity gets fatter remains to be seen.

‘Niche domain’

Another motivation for the acquisition was Flood’s team of developers.

“This is a pretty niche domain,” Bandeali said, explaining that it’s very difficult for his firm to find talented developers who specialize in aggregation and trade routing.

Having the right developers therefore is crucial to an aggregator’s continued success.

“It sounds simple but it’s really complicated,” he said. “It gets more complicated as new chains and new tokens launch.”

The reward for proving the best swaps is great. CoW Swap is set to bring in almost $11 million in revenue this year, according to DefiLlama data. (It’s unclear how much revenue 1INCH makes, while Jupiter’s projected $162 million in revenue comes from more than just its aggregation services).

0x has also expanded into other areas, such as providing APIs that integrate its aggregator into other products, and trading analytics.

But improving its Core aggregation product, which powers swaps in apps like Coinbase Wallet, Robinhood, Phantom and Farcaster, is still the main focus.

And with DeFi getting more complex by the day, the demand for aggregators is likely to keep increasing.

“We’re just trying to abstract away the complexity faster than it’s created for our customers,” Bandeali said.