Crypto exchange Ouinex has raised $3.5m from its traders, bringing the total to $9m to create a “Non-Intermediate Order Book” designed to protect trades from market makers.
Summary
- Ouinex receives $3.5m, bringing the total funding to $9m
- The cycle is sponsored only by retail and professional traders on the platform
- The new currency will create a “No-CLOB” model to keep market makers from seeing user orders
According to Forbes, crypto and derivatives platform Ouinex announced on May 19 that it has raised $3.5 million, taking its total funding to $9 million since launch. The French-based company told Forbes that every investor in the new round is a retail or professional trader drawn from its users, without participation in venture capital. Ouinex says the proceeds will be used to develop a “Non-Centralized Order Book (No-CLOB)” operating model that aims to “avoid and protect retail traders from competing directly with large market makers” in the same pool.
In its description, Ouinex characterizes the current order-book paradigm as a place where small traders are “like fish in a shark tank,” forced to submit orders to the same book as high-frequency firms with high data and latency. In contrast, the exchange presented No‑CLOB as an attempt to rebalance that relationship structurally rather than just through strict spreads or education, a theme echoed in the broader post-FTX discussions of the exchange’s design documented in a previous crypto.news story. The increase comes as scrutiny of market makers’ practices and conflicts of interest grows across the industry, with quality trading becoming a focal point for regulation and media coverage.
How Ouinex’s ‘No‑CLOB’ model works
Ouinex markets itself as “the only crypto exchange that offers a No‑CLOB operating model,” arguing that the standard order book gives sophisticated fund providers a powerful information edge with full ledger visibility. Instead of a central limit order book where all bids and offers are posted and matched, the platform uses a pricing mechanism “similar to forex and CFD traders,” where external market makers broadcast two-way quotes but cannot see individual user orders or communicate directly with them.
As described by Forbes, Ouinex stands between its users and financial providers, entering client orders internally and aligning them against those quote radios without revealing the full order book to market makers. The exchange argues that the structure is specifically designed to “avoid and protect wholesalers from direct competition” with large market-making firms, limiting the range of strategies that wholesalers often see as predatory, short-selling or delay-based forward running. This focus on microstructure echoes concerns expressed about the internal use of other centralized and market-making relationships, including Binance’s, which crypto.news explored in a separate story.
User-driven growth and competitive pressures
Ouinex’s decision to rely solely on its community for funding allows it to position itself in a more user-aligned position and avoid the growth and exit pressures that often accompany crowdfunding. The company previously disclosed that it has raised more than $5 million from more than 10,000 retail investors through token sales and private rounds, and positions the latest $3.5 million as a continuation of that user-funded route. This first user account touches on the same unreliability of mysterious exchanges that have driven traders into highly regulated environments such as Deribit’s Dubai license platform, covered in another crypto.news story.
At the same time, Ouinex is entering a fiercely competitive market dominated by crypto-based giants such as Binance and Coinbase, whose numerous spots and exits and fee wars have been documented in many crypto.news stories. To be successful, the No-CLOB model must not only show traders that its protection is real but also deliver a spread and depth comparable to the areas that give market makers the visibility they want, while navigating the complex mechanics of funding that are tested by specialist market making research firms. How Ouinex balances that trade-off with a total funding of $9 million will determine whether its experiment becomes a template for the microstructure of a centralized exchange or remains an alternative to a market that is heavily structured around the order book.
