Opinion by: Ido Ben Natan, co-founder and CEO of Blockaid
Centralized exchanges (CEXs) have controlled what people can trade for years. If a token wasn’t listed on major exchanges, it didn’t exist for most users. That system worked when crypto was small. But today? It’s completely broken.
The rise of Solana-based memecoins, the popularization of projects like Pump.fun and developments in AI-driven token creation are driving the creation of millions of new tokens each month.
Exchanges have not evolved to keep up. That must change. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently weighed in on the topic, saying that exchanges must shift from an allowlist model to a blocklist model, where everything is tradeable unless flagged as a scam.
In many ways, this is the Kodak moment for CEXs. Kodak’s failure to adapt to digital photography has made it a poster child of failed strategy. Now, exchanges are faced with the