0x Community Spotlight — João Campos, Head Developer of DexKit

An interview with a phenomenal 0x ecosystem builder

4 min readNov 20, 2020

If you’re a part of our Discord developer community, there’s a good chance that you’ve interacted with João or at least recognize his name. A long-standing community member and talented builder, João has exceptional knowledge of the entire 0x tech stack and is always willing to help others with their questions. João is also no stranger to the 0x ecosystem, having worked on a few other 0x-powered projects in the past. He is now 100% focused on building DexKit, which you’ll learn more about below.

We consider ourselves fortunate to have João as a community member and sincerely thank him for his contributions. We hope you enjoy the interview!

Please share a little bit about yourself and your background.

Hey everyone, I’m João Campos, a simple guy who likes to code and has been passionately working in the crypto space for a while now. I have a PhD in Electrical Engineering and was previously teaching at a university but eventually transitioned to working in crypto as a full-stack developer.

I’m inspired to build a truly decentralized financial system, which will not be possible if all financial platforms and liquidity are centralized. Additionally, I want to focus on developing solutions that give non-technical entrepreneurs a way to participate in the blockchain revolution and earn additional income.

What is DexKit?

DexKit will be a platform to manage all of your crypto apps — exchanges, NFTs marketplaces, and aggregators. We are building a comprehensive DeFi portfolio management tool that will help users:

manage their investments
explore 0x protocol and Uniswap analytics
learn insights about their trading activity
receive trending token trading alerts
automate their DeFi trading

In addition to portfolio management, we’re planning to offer trading bots and multi-chain/currency support.

Another service offering currently available is a simple-to-use DEX aggregator front-end, perfect for anyone who wants to provide their community the ability to trade crypto and earn a portion of the trading fees collected. The front-end replicates the familiar Uniswap interface while the back-end takes advantage of the best-aggregated prices offered by 0x API.

This solution is available as a white-label product that can be deployed as a standalone website or integrated into an existing product. You can check out a working demo at swap.dexkit.com.

Swap by DexKit — Best prices via 0x API meets Uniswap UI

We’ve seen considerable demand for this solution and have already completed a few implementations (BitSwap, Swap, and Unilayer) with more on the way!

Offer simple crypto trading and earn trading fees with DexKit’s white-label DEX solution

Why did you choose to build DexKit on 0x protocol?

I wanted to use the most flexible and robust protocol to build on. While most DEX trading volume flows through Uniswap today, I predict that this will change in the future because traders are seeking better tools to trade with and the 0x protocol has the most flexible architecture to build these tools on. Also, thanks to the 0x API, our DEX white-label solution can offer better prices than even Uniswap.

What advice do you have for anyone considering building a DEX using 0x protocol?

My advice is to start with the developer documentation and the starter projects (0x protocol, 0x API), which will help you understand the protocol’s inner workings. Fork the Launch Kit and start tinkering with it. Even though it’s no longer officially supported by 0x Labs, it’s still a great foundation to start building and customizing your DEX on. Join the project’s Discord server to ask questions, and chat with me and the other devs building on 0x. Before releasing to production, test heavily and, if possible, professionally audit your platform.

What other projects are you most excited about?

Besides DexKit, I’m excited about all of the things that 0x Labs is working on. I think they’re a fantastic project and team, and I envision an incredible future ahead.

I also like Aave and Uniswap, both of which I’ve developed on. They have excellent developer tools and are easy to integrate. On the privacy front, I contribute to Ghost, which supports private ETH atomic swaps.