In-depth discussion on how to create Web3 products that truly meet user needs.
After more than a month of technical refinement and security upgrades, OKX DEX officially returned on May 5, 2025, providing users with a more efficient and reliable trading experience. As a one-stop DEX aggregator, OKX DEX relies on its self-developed X Routing algorithm to find optimal liquidity across more than 130 chains and over 500 DEXs, helping users complete transactions with lower fees and less slippage.
For this product return, we specially invited a deep user of OKX DEX, Teacher Yue Xiaoyu (@yuexiaoyu111), who was formerly a product manager at a well-known internet company and is now a Web3 product manager, to engage in an in-depth dialogue with Shawn, the head of OKX DEX. Together, they analyzed the product thinking and user value insights behind this return and discussed how to create Web3 products that truly meet user needs, thereby drawing actionable product inspiration to further enhance user experience.
Next, let’s dive into this in-depth conversation and hear their views and thoughts. This is the first part.
Why did you become a deep user of OKX DEX?
1. What was the opportunity that led you to first encounter OKX DEX? What core factors prompted you to quickly grow into a deep user?
Yue Xiaoyu: Compared to many industry OGs, I actually entered the space relatively late, only really getting into the industry at the end of the 2022 bull market and the beginning of the bear market. It has only been about three years, and I have not yet experienced a complete bull-bear cycle. However, on my first day in the space, I knew I wanted to be an on-chain player, not just a retail trader on exchanges. Because only by becoming a real user of blockchain and gaining firsthand experience and information can I truly understand this industry and seize my own opportunities. This may be my long-standing mindset; I often express skepticism towards second-hand information and trust my own experiences and perceptions more. You can never learn to swim if you don’t jump into the water.
The first step into the on-chain world is, of course, to have a wallet. After all, a wallet is the entry point to the Web3 world, and it is the first blockchain application used by every ordinary user. In the last cycle, MetaMask was undoubtedly the essential wallet for on-chain players, affectionately called the "little fox wallet." My first wallet was also the little fox wallet. However, the little fox wallet was merely "usable," with overly simplistic functions and frequent lags, falling far short of being "user-friendly." So later, I wanted to find a multi-chain wallet that could conveniently manage multi-chain assets. Thus, I began trying out different wallets.
After trying many wallets for a while, I found that the most user-friendly one was still OKX Wallet. On one hand, it is quite friendly for beginners, with a low entry barrier, and the overall design is very smooth and easy to use. On the other hand, as my on-chain experience increased, I began to explore different chains and projects, and I increasingly felt that OKX Wallet provided many useful, native, and advanced features.
I have multiple identity tags on-chain: airdrop player, DeFi player, and meme coin player. My first identity was that of an airdrop player. When I was experiencing different projects, I discovered that I could also receive airdrop rewards, which opened up a new world for me. I learned, experienced, and played with different products through airdrops, thus gaining firsthand information and the most intuitive understanding. It was precisely because of airdrops that I became a deep user of OKX Wallet. It can be said that OKX is the most suitable wallet for airdrop hunters. For airdrop players, the biggest pain point is how to unify the management of assets scattered across various chains and protocols, and OKX can be considered the best choice on the market right now. Whether it’s the number of public chains supported, the number of DeFi protocols analyzed, or the response speed to new public chains and protocols, it is absolutely a leader.
Looking back on my growth path, I can see that my identity has undergone multiple transformations: from the initial airdrop player, where I could also earn profits while learning about products; to the later DeFi player, where I further delved into protocols and on-chain operations, mining for profits everywhere; and now to the on-chain trading player, chasing popular narratives and seeking wealth on-chain. This is my entire growth path, and the useful tool that is OKX Wallet has made my efforts much more effective. This is the path I took, and it is also my story with OKX.
2. During the month-long service suspension, what key matters did the OKX DEX team primarily advance?
Shawn: During this period, our entire team did not stop; in fact, we were busier than usual.
On one hand, while maintaining daily functions, we increased the upgrade work on the security and risk control systems for trading products, which are very important tasks. Our risk control system is now stronger than before and can intercept in real-time. In the industry, there are not many platforms that can achieve real-time interception of black market attacks, and we can do this thanks to our technological accumulation. On the other hand, when we return after completing product upgrades, everyone will feel a significant improvement in trading speed. The team has made substantial improvements in trading underlying capabilities, including trading speed, anti-sandwiching capabilities, and the intelligence of smart slippage.
We have some internal testing data, and we can now basically achieve rapid launch. In specific scenarios, we can even complete follow-up operations within the same block. For example, when we receive a signal and confirm the address to follow, we can complete the transaction with that address within the same block.
Additionally, our market products and token analysis capabilities have not stopped either. We continuously launch new features, such as the leaderboard signals and wallet tracking, and the richness of our pages has significantly improved. From the initial simple interface to the now rich features, we have made great progress. In the future, we will also launch more new features covering trading capabilities and analysis capabilities, which are all "black technologies" in the industry. Specific details are temporarily confidential, but everyone will see them soon.
3. What are your feelings about the OKX DEX upgrade before and after the service suspension? Did you find suitable alternative products?
Shawn: During the suspension of OKX DEX, my daily "yield farming" operations were significantly affected. Normally, I would use OKX Wallet to manage dozens of addresses, perform cross-chain transfers, swap, and join various projects' LPs, all completed in one interface. After the suspension, I had to go to the official or third-party cross-chain bridges of each ecosystem separately, manually comparing prices and repeating operations, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive, increasing slippage and fees, making the experience very painful.
I tried several mainstream wallets and professional tools, such as various wallets, on-chain monitoring, and trading tools, and found that they were difficult to replace OKX DEX in the following aspects: multi-address management, most wallets only support a single address and cannot batch create and manage hundreds of addresses. Trading routing aggregation, lacking the self-developed X Routing algorithm of OKX DEX, which cannot automatically optimize among hundreds of DEXs, resulting in high cross-chain costs. Mobile smoothness, although there are dedicated trading tools, the mobile optimization is lacking, and the operations are not smooth enough, severely limiting scenarios that require high timeliness, such as "farming while walking" or "quickly getting in within half an hour."
Based on the above experiences, I believe OKX DEX can continue to delve into the following directions: introducing more intelligent coin selection indicators, combining AI algorithms to provide alerts and target screening for "chain sweep" users, reducing information noise. Upgrading follow-up and risk control functions, supporting automatic following, take-profit and stop-loss strategies, and push notifications based on "smart money," helping users better manage their positions. Strengthening address and asset monitoring, providing more granular multi-address monitoring, visualizing fund flows, and abnormal alerts to meet the needs of professional short players.
4. What has increased your trust in OKX DEX?
Yue Xiaoyu: My trust in OKX DEX comes from OKX's commitment to decentralization, which is also the core reason I sincerely admire this company from the bottom of my heart. When I first used OKX Wallet, I researched this wallet application and saw on its official website that the wallet's private key module had undergone multiple code security audits. Many wallet products have encountered issues, so I do not trust many well-known wallets, but OKX Wallet's actions gave me a great sense of trust.
Later, as the industry kicked off the meme coin craze, many meme coin trading tools emerged, among which various TG Bots (trading bots in Telegram) became very popular. TG Bots can provide faster trading speeds and very rich trading strategies, such as various take-profit and stop-loss orders, and strategy-triggered orders. These features are quite important, as most people cannot monitor the market every day, and meme coins require speed, making manual operations every day impossible; hence, automated tools are needed. However, OKX had not yet launched a limit order service, which is a relatively advanced service.
Eventually, OKX DEX finally launched its own limit order service, which is completely different from the TG Bot tools on the market. OKX's limit order is a fully decentralized service. The biggest problem with trading tools like TG Bots is that they require custodial private keys, which belong to custodial wallets. This means that these platforms generate wallets for you, and the private keys are managed by these applications. When the trading trigger conditions are met, they use the private keys to sign and initiate the transaction. Since the private keys are not in the user's hands but stored on the trading platform's servers, the risk is very high. If a bot like GMGN is hacked, it could be compromised entirely, and the hacker would gain access to all assets. In contrast, OKX DEX's limit orders are non-custodial; after placing an order on-chain, the transaction is executed by a smart contract, which directly solves the biggest problem of TG Bots. Therefore, it can be seen that even though OKX knows that creating a TG Bot could achieve product functionality at the fastest speed, it chose a more complex but safer solution.
This is what is meant by "persisting in doing the right and difficult thing"! User trust in a product is accumulated and reinforced in such details. Currently, I have placed most of my hot wallet assets in OKX Wallet, and OKX DEX is also the feature I use most frequently in my daily activities.
Web3 Products That Meet User Needs
5. Are you afraid of losing market share by actively "pausing" during peak traffic times?
Shawn: Regarding market share, this is also a very good question. Since we decided to pause services, people have been discussing why we made such a decision and whether we are afraid of losing market share. To be honest, as employees, market share is indeed an important indicator for our business assessment.
However, from the tweets that Star usually publishes and the thoughts he conveys internally, it can be seen that we believe that corporate values and social responsibility are more important than market share; this is what we should do. So, I think this is an important reason why we can actively hit the pause button.
In the future, our overall strategy will not change significantly; we remain committed to serving our users well. Of course, our entire team, including myself, has matured more than before. In the past, we might have thought that a certain feature was sufficient, but after engaging deeply with user communities and communicating with many experts, we realized that this is far from enough. Now, the mindset of the entire team has changed; we will develop features that are more aligned with user scenarios rather than making assumptions.
6. Do Web3 products need a Web2-like experience? What do you think of OKX DEX's Web2-like interaction design?
Yue Xiaoyu: Web3 products need to provide a product experience similar to Web2. The biggest challenge our industry currently faces is how to continuously attract traffic from outside the circle and increase the positive externalities of our industry. This is a core proposition of our industry and the most pressing issue at present. Our industry cannot simply remain at a basic PVP level, where players merely cut each other; we need to create more things that truly impact the real world and bring value to it. Here, I would like to share a theory from Meng Yan, the founder of ERC-3525 and a well-known expert in the Chinese blockchain industry, which has greatly influenced me:
Web3 is not just a technological revolution; it is also a social movement that follows three stages of social movements: the positive (idealistic stage), the negative (alienation stage), and the synthesis (integration with reality stage).
(1) The positive stage of Web3: Driven by idealists like Satoshi Nakamoto and Vitalik, who proposed a decentralized and transparent value system.
(2) The negative stage: Witnessing the alienation of this ideal—deviating from its own goals and moving towards its opposite, which is the current phenomenon of "cutting韭菜" (a term referring to exploiting retail investors).
(3) The synthesis stage: Emphasizing that Web3 needs to integrate with the real world, combining with traditional systems, and using idealistic elements to transform and integrate the real world.
Historical experience tells us that the "negative" stage often requires a huge price to pay, leading to many problems and contradictions, while the "synthesis" stage is usually an effective way to ultimately achieve goals. Web3 is currently in the "negative" stage, characterized by the conflict between ideals and reality, as well as the concentrated outbreak of various problems and contradictions. However, we cannot remain in this state for long, as it essentially uses the slogans of idealism to achieve improper goals for individuals or small groups. This approach not only deviates from the original intention of Web3 but also severely harms the healthy development of the entire ecosystem.
Ordinary users would rather have a centralized giant doing harm a thousand kilometers away than have a thousand small rogues doing harm within a kilometer. Web3 aims to deconstruct centralized fiat currencies and traditional financial systems, but it has produced a bunch of scams that exploit retail investors, with the performance of the vast majority of projects far inferior to traditional finance. Therefore, we must have a very clear understanding of these issues before we can take the next step. The first step is to provide a product experience similar to Web2, lowering the entry barrier for external users. The Web2.5 phase will last for a long time, so providing a Web2-like product experience in Web3 products is very important.
7. Web3 products often face the dilemma of "which came first, the chicken or the egg." Do you think OKX DEX should focus on product development first or user growth?
Yue Xiaoyu: Product is the primary driving force for product growth. Discussing growth without a product is like a tree without roots or water without a source. Throughout the history of Web3 development, many products have believed in the idea that "great effort yields miraculous results," directly seizing market share from competitors through operational and marketing means. However, the end result is often fleeting; only market players who truly excel in their products can survive longer.
A typical example is Uniswap and Sushiswap. Due to the leading DEX protocol Uniswap's delay in issuing tokens, Sushiswap launched a "vampire attack," attracting users and funds from competitors by issuing tokens. "You’re not issuing tokens? Then I will issue tokens; everyone come use my product, and I will give everyone token rewards." In a short time, Sushiswap achieved tremendous success, with trading volume once surpassing Uniswap. But looking back today, how many people still know about Sushiswap? Meanwhile, Uniswap continues to lead innovation; after gaining market recognition with V2, it launched V3 with concentrated liquidity to improve capital efficiency, and then V4 with hooks, allowing developers to flexibly customize various logic and expand DEX functionality. Uniswap has become the infrastructure of DeFi and the industry, and no one doubts Uniswap's product status. Returning to OKX DEX, it is the same; we must return to the product itself. When the product is good enough, it can achieve product-driven user growth.
8. What do you think about the necessity of OKX Wallet's commitment to being a one-stop Web3 entry point? What does it mean for users and the industry?
Yue Xiaoyu: OKX Wallet's commitment to being a one-stop Web3 entry point is very necessary. The current multi-chain landscape has caused liquidity fragmentation and a disjointed on-chain interaction experience, so there is a strong need for a unified Web3 entry point to provide users with one-stop services. When ordinary users come on-chain and enter the Web3 world, the first major hurdle they encounter is the experience fragmentation caused by the multi-chain ecosystem: Why are there so many chains? What are the differences between different chains? What is the Gas for different chains? How do I transfer assets between different chains, etc.? Since our industry is still very early, the underlying protocol standards are not unified, and it remains in a competitive landscape with a hundred flowers blooming, there is an urgent market demand to provide a unified user experience for users.
Before the emergence of OKX Wallet, what was the user experience like? Users had to download one wallet for the EVM ecosystem, another wallet for the Solana ecosystem, and yet another wallet when the TON ecosystem became popular. Then users had to find ways to leave Gas on different chains and transfer assets across different chains. The entire process can be described as painfully cumbersome; every time a new ecosystem emerged, a new wallet and tool had to be used. This is when the necessity of a multi-chain wallet like OKX Wallet and a one-stop entry point became apparent; users no longer need to download multiple wallets for different chains or search for cross-chain bridges everywhere. This is also why OKX Wallet has been able to quickly capture an absolute market share.
Looking back at the rise of OKX Wallet, we can also see the importance of quickly supporting different ecosystems for product growth. We can see that May 2023 was a key month, marked by the key event of the Bitcoin inscription craze. OKX Wallet supported this very quickly, and the experience was very smooth, making it one of the few wallets on the market that supports inscriptions. It was precisely because of this wave of Bitcoin inscriptions that OKX Wallet captured a huge influx of users; basically, all users engaging with inscriptions were using OKX Wallet. Many users started using OKX Wallet because of inscriptions, allowing OKX Wallet to capture an absolute market share in Bitcoin wallets. Since OKX Wallet is a multi-chain wallet, once users develop their usage habits, it becomes easy for them to use OKX Wallet to manage assets in the Ethereum ecosystem as well, leading to rapid growth in Ethereum ecosystem data.
Each public chain ecosystem actually represents a user segment. Creating a unified entry point and a one-stop platform is about aggregating these dispersed users and liquidity, resulting in an exponential increase in users.
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