It’s opening day at the London Blockchain Economy Summit, the UK’s biggest gathering of blockchain and crypto companies, and the discussion is focusing on the future of centralized exchanges (CEXs). Leading the conversation is Lennix Lai, Managing Director of OKX. He opened the conference with a passionate talk about transparency in the CEX sector, and the technology being developed by OKX to prevent another major CEX collapse.
“Blockchain is offering a new financial system for humanity…with the ability to solve issues of financial inclusion,” said Lai.
In order to achieve mass adoption, CEXs must work together with regulatory agencies to introduce technologies that will increase trust and transparency in the industry. OKX is leading the way with their Proof of Reserves (PoR) technology, which Lai recently incorporated into the world’s second largest exchange. This system allows users to verify their funds, using Merkle Tree data structures to disclose the total balance of user assets and compare them to on-chain snapshots of connected wallet addresses.
Lai revealed that OKX has $8.6 billion in reserve to match 1:1 user deposits over the past four months.
He believes that PoR technology will become the industry standard in 2023, with the introduction of ZK-Snarks. This technology bundles transactions together, providing a public verification of the size of the transaction without revealing individual data. He believes that this could lead to larger scale adoption of this technology across major exchanges, and that this year might be the best time in the industry for institutional adoption.