Kyber is an on-chain liquidity protocol that aggregates liquidity reserves to allow instant and secure token exchange in multiple decentralized applications (dApps). In 2019, Kyber ranked as the most widely used DeFi application on Ethereum.

Unlike other protocols, Kyber Network is fully built on-chain, without any off-chain component, and allows instant settlement of token-token transactions (e.g., MANA to BAT).

At its core, the Kyber Network interacts with a system of reserves, i.e., liquidity pools, working as pre-automated market-maker on the blockchain. There are three types of reserves: Price Feed Reserves (work with an off-chain component), Automated Price Reserves (built on an automatic algorithm within a smart contract), and Bridge Reserves (permissionless third-parties e.g., Uniswap, Bancor).

Kyber Network is an implementation of the Kyber protocol on Ethereum. It is by far the most used implementation of the protocol. However, the Kyber protocol itself has been deployed in alternative blockchain like EOS (YOLOswap) and TomoChain (TomoSwap). In addition, the project team has been working on cross-chain protocol like Waterloo to allow EOS/Ethereum token swaps.

The Kyber Network Crystal (KNC) token is an ERC-20 token running on Ethereum used to connect multiple participants in the Kyber Network ecosystem, including both liquidity contributors and different entities building on the protocol. For instance, to operate and provide token liquidity, third-party token reserves are required to use KNC to pay for their operation in the network as Kyber Network charges transaction fees in KNC from these reserves.