Blockstream and Sevenlabs Unveiled an XDEX Plan for Liquid Securities Trading

Blockstream and Sevenlabs unveiled a plan for XDEX Finance on September 3, 2022, presenting the proposed venue as a peer-to-peer marketplace for bitcoin-linked assets and tokenized securities on the Liquid Network. Poseidon Group was named as a partner. The announcement was consequential because it attempted to join three domains that were usually separated: non-custodial trading, Bitcoin sidechain infrastructure and regulated securities.

Contemporaneous reporting based on the partners’ press release said the mobile application was expected in the fourth quarter of 2022 and would operate around the clock. But XDEX was not an operating exchange on September 3. No live order book, customer count, trading volume or regulatory authorization was disclosed. The verifiable development was the partnership and product plan, not a completed launch.

A Bitcoin-sidechain trading stack

The proposal combined Sevenlabs’ open-source TDEX protocol, Blockstream’s Liquid sidechain and Blockstream AMP, a platform for administering issued assets. TDEX’s June 2022 technical paper described a non-custodial trading interface in which traders and market makers connect directly and settle atomic swaps rather than depositing assets with a conventional exchange.

Liquid supplied the settlement layer. It supports issued assets and Confidential Transactions, which hide asset types and amounts from public view while allowing the network to validate transactions. Contemporary announcement materials said XDEX intended to support bitcoin, euro- and Swiss-franc-denominated stablecoins and other Liquid assets. Blockstream Mining Notes and the equity token connected to the Infinite Fleet game were identified as intended launch assets.

That architecture mattered institutionally. It suggested a route for securities-like tokens and stablecoins to trade without a centralized venue holding both sides’ assets. Yet “decentralized” described only part of the system. Liquid used a federation of functionaries to sign blocks and manage its Bitcoin peg, while liquidity providers would still determine which pairs were available. Token issuers and regulatory authorities would retain separate roles.

Regulation was not solved by atomic swaps

The security-token framing made authorization a central unresolved issue. FINMA’s May 2022 cryptoasset guidance said businesses had to determine whether their activities required authorization before starting commercial operations, and specifically noted that trading or settlement platforms for asset tokens could fall under Swiss financial-market law. FINMA’s DLT-trading-facility guidance also said a covered facility could not begin operating before receiving a licence.

Nothing in the September 3 announcement demonstrated that XDEX had such authorization. Nor did peer-to-peer settlement establish that every proposed asset could legally be offered to every user. The partners’ description was a product and architecture claim; it was not a regulatory finding.

What remained uncertain

The announced fourth-quarter timetable was forward-looking. The partners did not disclose fees, eligible jurisdictions, onboarding rules, market-maker commitments, audit results or how securities-law restrictions would be enforced in the applications. They also provided no instrument-specific price or volume series from which Coinburn could measure a market reaction on September 3.

The central significance was therefore structural rather than numerical. XDEX proposed using Bitcoin-adjacent open-source software for a market category usually associated with licensed intermediaries, while leaving the hardest questions—liquidity, authorization and actual adoption—unanswered.

Later documented context

On September 20, 2022, Blockstream published its own detailed account confirming that XDEX had been announced at Baltic Honeybadger 2022. That later post moved the expected mobile release to 2023 and said XDEX would pursue a FINMA licence covering security-token exchange activity. Those later statements confirm that the September 3 timetable was provisional and that licensing remained a future objective, not an event-day accomplishment.