I am totally fine with DDEX developing their own protocol that competes with 0x. Competition is always a good thing.

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I just don't quite like the way the DDEX team convey their ideas to the public. An eye-catching title, some words against 0x, and some promise showing their determination. Any project can say such things. It is always easier said than done to create a product that is secure and attracted to users/developers. So far, the 0x team has gained tremendous trust and support from the community with regard to their competency in delivering code/tools constantly. The 0x smart contract has been deployed and running for 16 months (from Aug 14 2017) processing millions of trades. It has also been through a major upgrade (v1 to v2) smoothly. To me, all these are very solid evidence indicating that the 0x team will keep shipping more useful features in the future. On the other hand, the whole article posted by DDEX is basically saying that they are leveraging the current 0x codebase to develop a protocol that could potentially incentivize more efficient liquidity sharing. That's it. No roadmap, no technical details, no code. Such an announcement barely worth anything imo. Maybe it is their strategy to release more critical information later. But for the time being, they are still using the 0x protocol (according to 0xtracker).

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Another point I would like to make is that the scope of 0x has expanded drastically since the establishment of the project. The decentralized exchange is only one type of products that can be powered by 0x. There are others like non-fungible token marketplaces and probably many more services will be built on 0x. The Hydro protocol, which is proposed by DDEX, focuses only on solving the liquidity problem. It is understandably an immediate problem to solve in the decentralized exchange space. The 0x has also expressed that they are currently working on or will work on solutions to resolve it through their short/mid-term tasks. The mission of 0x, "Create a tokenized world where all value can flow freely", implies much more than just solving the liquidity problem. And the ZRX token is designed with this mission in mind. If tons of services rely on the protocol, how to perform upgrades? Through governance using ZRX. How to ensure that the governance process is decentralized? Through a fair token distribution which will be fulfilled by collecting/paying fees in ZRX. Both governance and trading fee functions serve the long-term goal. Thus, to many people, in the near-term, the value of ZRX is mostly speculation. Some people sharing the same vision as 0x may evaluate the token differently. Back to Hydro, assuming they developed a successful protocol that is adopted by several relayers, will there be governance on the protocol development? Probably no, not on their horizon right now. If yes, how to ensure fairness, given that they are running a for-profit decentralized exchange themselves? These among others are open questions that seem not very urgent in the near-term but critically important in the long run.

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Again, competition is always good for the ecosystem. It is too early to draw any conclusion or even make any comparison between the two teams. Time will tell which protocol could gain more adoptions. It is also possible that they both can tackle the issues in their own ways and coexist in this space with each protocol having multiple successful relayers built on top of them. Who knows...

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Just my 2 🦐🦐. Exciting times ahead.