Crypto Infrastructure
Both venues end the same swap. They ask for different things first.
One is a company: an account, an order book, a support desk. The other is a set of smart contracts you connect your own wallet to. Same trade at the end of it — and neither model is automatically the right one.
The problem
Run one swap down both columns.
Identical trade, identical result. Watch what each venue asks of you to get there — then make each side show you what it costs.
One swap, two venues
SAME SWAP · BOTH SIDESA company runs the venue. Your balance lives on its platform until you withdraw.
Smart contracts run the venue. Your assets stay in your own wallet throughout.
Both columns are ready. Press Run the swap on either side to send the same trade through it.
Same swap, same coins at the end. The difference is everything that sits around the trade. On the centralized side there are four steps because a platform balance stands between you and your coins: you sign up, you fund the account, the platform executes, and only a withdrawal moves the result to a wallet you control. On the decentralized side there are two, because there is no account and no platform balance — you connect a wallet and you sign. Fewer steps is not automatically better: those extra steps are also where the fiat on-ramp, the deep order book and the support desk live.
Two honest costs, and they are not the same shape. The centralized venue has a party in the middle. It can pause withdrawals, ask more of you, or simply be unavailable — and it is the same party that can restore your access when you forget a password. The decentralized venue has nobody in the middle: nobody who can pause you, and nobody to call. The network charges for every action you take, successful or not, and a signature you should not have given is not taken back by anyone.
Read the last readout honestly: 0 vs 0. A settled transfer is not reversed by either venue type. A support desk can get you back into an account; it does not un-send coins that already moved. That is one line about custody — Section 5 covered who holds the keys in full — and the rest of this lesson is about the trading experience built on top of it.
The definition
Three claims worth turning over.
Tap each card for what sits behind it.
Hands on
One venue at a time. Six rows each.
Switch venues and read what changes. The questions stay put — only the answers move, and neither column is a recommendation.
CEX (centralized)
Two constructions, each with a strength and the cost attached to it. Which one fits is a question about you and the trade in front of you, not a ranking.
The bridge
Four checkpoints.
Who operates it, how you get in, where custody lands, and what each one is genuinely good at.
Both venues cost you money — just in different places. A platform charges you for trading and for moving coins out; a decentralized venue hands the bill to the network for every action you take, and the price you see is not always the price you get. Those costs are the next lesson: fees.
Check yourself
Five questions.
Answers come straight from this lesson. Submitting completes it.