What is Mangrove?

It's a Decentralized Exchange (DEX)! On Mangrove, you can trade, swap tokens and create blueprint trading strategies or brand new ones. On Mangrove, we refer to strategies as programs which will run certain trading behavior, whose goal is to make profits (ex: buy low, sell high).

💡 For a concrete example of strategies on Mangrove, check out the Kandel strategy documentation.

The orderbook model

Mangrove is based on an "order book" model, which you may know from traditional finance exchanges. However, Mangrove is particular in that it allows liquidity providers to post arbitrary smart contracts as offers. What that means, is that the listed offers can point to pieces of code: we call them Smart Offers. 🤓

As you can imagine, this new flexibility enables participants to post offers that are not fully provisioned. The Mangrove's order book lists promises instead of locked commitments.

💡 There might be new words and concepts for you in here, and that's okay: we will provide you with either direct explanations or links and references. Feel free to check our Glossary and FAQ as well, it might help!

Making promises

The promised liquidity can be shared, borrowed, lent somewhere and at the same time displayed on Mangrove, ready to be sourced when (and only when) an offer is taken. The resulting consequences are far-reaching, because it removes liquidity fragmentation and the lock on assets, allowing its use in multiple places. 🔐

If you're curious about the unique features of Mangrove DEX enabled by Smart Offers, head over to our Concepts section.