Order Book
An order book is the classic exchange engine: a live list of buy orders (bids) and sell orders (asks) at each price, matched by the exchange. The gap betwe
An order book is the classic exchange engine: a live list of buy orders (bids) and sell orders (asks) at each price, matched by the exchange. The gap between best bid and best ask is the spread; deep books mean stable prices.
Why it matters
Order books concentrate liquidity at specific prices (unlike AMMs, which spread it everywhere), so professionals prefer them for size and precision. On-chain order books (dYdX-style) prove DEXs can do precision too — at the cost of speed infrastructure that often recentralizes matching. Spread + depth tell you instantly whether a market is healthy.