# Foreword

{% hint style="info" %} ## **⚡ Surge is the first truly decentralized cryptocurrency trading solution.** {% endhint %} Numerous crypto projects and exchanges **claim to be decentralized** and advertise themselves as your key to financial independence. While taking a deep look into the core of said DEXs, we often find **crippling Ponzi schemes in disguise.** {% hint style="info" %} ### 💭 Did you know? Every buy and sell on Uniswap and Pancakeswap costs you 0.25% - 0.3% trading fee. {% endhint %}

**Uniswap volume reached over $784,790,000 in 24 hours on March 7th. This generated over $2,354,370 in trading fees in only one day! Source:** **https://info.uniswap.org/** **Considering the trading fee of 0.3% per trade.**

{% hint style="danger" %} ### Over 2.3 Million USD in trading fees are extracted from traders every day on UniSwap. {% endhint %}

PancakeSwap while being the smaller of both DEXs, still had $175,170,000 in volume in only 24 hours on March 7th. This makes for $437,925 in trading fees. Source https://pancakeswap.finance/info considering their trading fee of 0.25% per trade.

Cryptocurrencies were invented by Satoshi with the clear goal in mind to **achieve decentralized finance.** Still, the crypto space is **suffering under centralized exchanges** who **lie to their customers, misuse their funds** and put the name of cryptocurrencies to shame. Since BTCs all-time-high, the vast majority of **catastrophes in crypto were caused by overly centralized ecosystems.** Decentralized exchanges would be the perfect alternative to those CEXs. The most popular DEXs are mostly forks of Uniswap V2. By pairing a coin with a token into a liquidity pool, trading is made possible without any middlemen. **Owners of said Uniswap forks redirect parts of the transaction fees into their treasuries.** The teams often have full control over said funds. Some of the most popular DEXs are even owned and controlled by big centralized exchanges or token projects with **shady backgrounds.** ## **"Dead liquidity"** Countless DeFi projects launch every day, some after large presales. Those presales **target high raises to fund a big liquidity pool**, as well as development expenses and marketing costs. While the pre-launch-marketing is spectacular, most token projects fail to deliver after their respective launches. After a token is then declared discontinued, **large sums of money remain in the liquidity pools** until the liquidity lock expires. This takes **huge sums of coins** out of circulation and **away from the overall volume in meriting projects** with interesting utilities and ideas. We will call this phenomenon **"dead liquidity".** > ### Total value locked in liquidity pools as of March 7th, 2023: