After the collapse of FTX, crypto traders have been looking for decentralized, non-custodial and safer ways to execute orders and store their assets. This explains why some decentralized crypto exchanges (DEXs) like Brine Fi are getting investor interest even as VCs across the board continue to keep off the digital asset industry.

Brine is announcing a $16.5 million Series A at a post-money valuation of $100 million as investors appear bullish about the new orderbook-based decentralized exchange. The DEX, of which “mainnet,” or its fully operational network, launched merely weeks ago and has already accumulated $500 million in trading volume, according to stats from Starkware, the Ethereum scaling solution that powers Brine.

DEXs, as the name implies, carry out transactions purely on blockchains, a contrast to centralized exchanges (CEXs) that include consumer household names like FTX, Binance and Coinbase, which Brine sees as its closest competitors. Traders might choose DEX not just for full custody over their assets but for privacy — CEXs are normally required to undergo know-your-customer or KYC with local regulators, whereas regulations around DEXs are still largely undefined due to the lack of a central party.

“While they are the safest way to trade, many traders opted for a CEX to counter higher trading fees on DEXs, price slippage, transaction fees ($5-$25 per transaction), liquidity issues, the absence of an orderbook, transaction delays and an inability to provide privacy on orders causing front-running attacks. All things that can impact profit margins and substantially increase the uncertainty of specific trades,” said Shaaran Lakshminarayanan, Brine Fi co-founder, in a written response to TechCrunch.

“Keeping all these points in mind, we’ve built Brine Fi to let traders experience the best of both worlds, get access to the merits of a DEX and a CEX at the same place. Moreover, high volume traders and institutions don’t need to worry about front-running attacks anymore as we provide complete privacy on orders by using zkP (Zero Knowledge Proofs) technology which is backed by Starkware.”