Chartui

What is the Stellar DEX (SDEX)?

The Stellar DEX (often shortened to SDEX) is a decentralized exchange built directly into the Stellar network. Unlike a centralized exchange, the order book lives on the public Stellar ledger itself — every offer, trade and price is recorded on-chain and is visible to anyone in real time. Chartui is a real-time market-data and charting terminal that reads that public data and turns it into live charts, order books and trade flow for active Stellar traders.

How the Stellar DEX works

On most blockchains a decentralized exchange is a smart contract you have to deploy and interact with. Stellar is different: the exchange is a native part of the protocol. Anyone can place a buy or sell offer for one asset against another, and the network keeps a classic limit order book on-ledger for every trading pair. When a new offer crosses an existing one, the protocol matches them automatically and settles the trade in the next ledger — roughly every five seconds.

Because the matching engine is the network, there is no custodian sitting between you and the book. Offers are made from your own account, and the market data — bids, asks, depth, and executed trades — is fully public. That transparency is exactly what makes the Stellar DEX a great source of real-time market data.

Assets, issuers and trustlines

Every asset on Stellar (other than the native token, XLM) is issued by an account and identified by a code plus its issuer, for example USDC issued by Circle. Two assets with the same code but different issuers are different assets and trade in separate order books, so it's important to track the issuer when you read prices — and it's why holding any asset first requires a trustline to its issuer. Chartui surfaces the issuer alongside each pair so you always know exactly which market you're looking at.

What you can see on Chartui

If you want to go deeper, see our guides to the Stellar order book & live trade flow, how liquidity pools add automated market-making to the same markets, and how to read XLM charts.

SDEX vs. a centralized exchange

A centralized exchange holds your funds and runs its order book on private servers, so you only see the data it chooses to publish. The Stellar DEX runs on a public ledger, so the same market data is available to everyone, all the time. That makes it ideal for charting, analytics and watching order flow — which is exactly what Chartui is built for.

View live Stellar market data on Chartui →

Frequently asked questions

Is the Stellar DEX really decentralized?

Yes. The order book and the matching engine are part of the Stellar protocol itself and run on the public ledger, so there is no central operator holding your funds or controlling the market data — every offer and trade is recorded on-chain.

Do I need an account or wallet to use the Stellar DEX?

To place offers or hold assets you need a Stellar account and a wallet, plus a trustline for each non-XLM asset. To simply view live market data, charts, the order book and trade flow on Chartui, you do not need to connect anything.

What's the difference between the order book and liquidity pools on the Stellar DEX?

The order book matches individual buy and sell offers, while liquidity pools (AMMs) price trades from a formula based on their reserves. Stellar's path-payment engine can route a single trade across both for the best price.

Is the Stellar DEX free to use?

Trading is permissionless and there is no exchange company taking a cut; you only pay Stellar's tiny network fee per transaction (a fraction of a cent) plus, for pool trades, the pool's swap fee.