EIDEX integrates Rubic, an aggregator inside the route table

EIDEX has added Rubic to its cross-chain route aggregator. Its quotes are pulled live on every comparison, alongside 30+ other exchanges, bridges and DEX aggregators.

An aggregator inside an aggregator

Most sources in the table are single venues: one exchange, one bridge, one pool. Rubic is not. It runs its own network of liquidity providers and returns the best route it finds among them. Adding it means the table now holds something that does, at its own scale, what the table itself does.

That is less redundant than it sounds. Rubic's provider set is not ours. Where its network reaches liquidity we do not query directly, its quote can win outright. Where it does not, it is one more row and loses to the venue we already call. Both outcomes are worth having: the first adds reach, the second costs nothing but a row.

When the same liquidity shows up twice

There is a wrinkle that follows from putting an aggregator inside an aggregator, and it is worth stating plainly because it looks like a bug until you know the mechanism.

On some pairs Rubic routes through a provider EIDEX already queries directly. A transfer of USDC from Ethereum to Arbitrum is one: Rubic reaches that liquidity through Relay, and Relay quotes the same pool to us in its own right. Two rows, one pool, one price.

Rather than list both, the table keeps the direct quote as the row and records Rubic as an also-via on it. Rubic is quoted and present; it is simply not repeated. Showing it twice would inflate the count and imply a choice that does not exist, and a comparison table that double-counts its own sources is worth less than one with fewer rows.

Where Rubic's route does not collapse into somebody else's, it holds a row of its own. That is the case on pairs involving BTC and on same-chain swaps, where its underlying is not also quoting us directly.

What it looks like on a live pair

On a 0.01 BTC swap into ETH, run at the time of writing, the table returned fourteen live quotes. Rubic came back fifth, 0.58% behind the leader. Across the whole table, best to worst was 2.12% apart on the same swap at the same moment.

Do not read that fifth place as a fixed property. An hour earlier the same pair returned fifteen quotes in a different order, because providers drop in and out and rates move underneath. What holds between runs is not the ranking but the spread, and the fact that the top of the table keeps changing hands.

Why the ranking is the wrong thing to watch

A source earns its place by winning sometimes, not by winning always. A provider that never reaches the top on any pair adds length to the list and nothing else. Rubic clears that bar: it has surfaced in the upper half on every pair we have run it against, which is the only audition that counts before a row is worth rendering.

"A row has to earn itself," said Alex, Founder & CEO at EIDEX. "We are not interested in a longer list. We are interested in how often the answer changes when a source is added, and an aggregator carrying its own provider network changes it more often than one more single venue would."

The corollary is uncomfortable for anyone selling a single venue as the answer. On the run above, taking the worst of fourteen instead of the best cost 2.12%, on a swap that took the same amount of time either way.

Where Rubic fits

Rubic is a cross-chain aggregator that routes swaps between chains through its own set of liquidity providers.

In the EIDEX table it appears as its own row wherever its route is distinct, and as an also-via on the winning row wherever it is not.

The listing runs both ways: Rubic names EIDEX in its ecosystem documentation, and EIDEX quotes Rubic in its route table.

About Rubic - Rubic is a cross-chain swap aggregator that routes trades across multiple blockchains through an aggregated set of liquidity providers.