Aquis Exchange lifted its share of European dark trading from 7.11% in 2024 to 10.2% in the second half of 2025, a 43% increase. Average daily volume (ADV) on its dark book, Aquis Markets Pool, rose to €524 million in the second half, 64% above the 2024 level.
The engine for these increases was conditional orders. These let brokers advertise a large order across several dark pools at once without committing to any of them, and they have become the main route for institutional block liquidity in Europe. Aquis launched its conditional offering in late 2024, and in 2025 it took off. Conditional ADV rose from €36 million to €175 million, an increase of 387%.
“We launched conditionals at the end of 2024, but it was during 2025 that they gained real traction and were built into brokers’ routing waterfalls,” says Janak Patel, head of quant coverage and execution analytics. “That growth reflects the work our sales and quant teams did to demonstrate the quality of conditional liquidity on Aquis, providing members with conditional scorecards and detailed insight into what makes our pool distinctive. A key strength of our conditionals is that they interact with our continuous dark book. As conditional activity has grown, the core pool has grown alongside it.”
A key strength of our conditionals is that they interact with our continuous dark book. As conditional activity has grown, the core pool has grown alongside it
Janak Patel
The quant team also worked member by member on minimum execution sizes, showing brokers where a small adjustment would unlock additional matches. That matters because dark pool placement is sticky. Broker algorithms typically allocate resting orders according to each venue’s historical volumes, so a challenger has to give brokers a concrete reason to change their routing. Aquis did just that.
Innovation followed. In the second half of 2025, Aquis developed Aquis Smart Mid, a dark order attribute that waits a few milliseconds after a match and then executes at a fresher primary-market midpoint. This protects members from stale prices caused by the distance between European data centres. Smart Mid launched in 2026 and already has five members trading on it, with five more in testing.
Execution quality has kept pace with growth. Measured by how often the European best bid and offer moves within 100 milliseconds of a trade, Aquis averages 28% across its books, against 34% to 66% at other venues.
Aquis wins because it turned a late entry into conditional trading into one of the fastest growing dark franchises in Europe, and kept market impact the lowest in the region while doing it.
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