Non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift has announced the integration of DeFi apps Uniswap, Balancer, Curve, Bancor, Kyber, 0x and mStable. This will allow ShapeShift clients to avoid the KYC procedure.
ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees said the integration with Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols will ensure liquidity, competitive pricing, availability and security of digital assets. Plus, ShapeShift customers no longer need to be authenticated.
Previously, ShapeShift required its customers to pass KYC, since the exchange acted as a trusted counterparty for transactions. ShapeShift will continue to provide regulated services that are currently not available on decentralized exchanges. However, Voorhees said that all non-decentralized trading operations will be phased out on ShapeShift within a year.
“Integration with decentralized exchanges means that we are no longer a participant in trade transactions, custodian, counterparty or intermediary at any stage of transactions. We are a software company, so we will not be held accountable to regulators, ”Voorhees said.
Decentralized finance protocols supported include Uniswap, Balancer, Curve, Bancor, Kyber, 0x, mStable, and a few more. In the future, this list of integrations will be expanded. The ShapeShift CEO believes the DeFi ecosystem is moving forward and evolving.
Voorhees is suspicious of the centralized custodian services that are adopting DeFi. The phenomenon of “combined centralized and decentralized finance” (CeDeFi) will be short-lived. They are incompatible since the user is censored and controlled, Voorhees said. For example, some centralized exchange may be subject to restrictions on capital transactions, while a decentralized protocol may work in Venezuela just like in any other country.
Voorhees argues that ShapeShift’s non-custodial services are more suited to integrate with DeFi, and this engagement with decentralized exchanges could lay the foundation for a move to more diverse DeFi products, including decentralized bitcoin exchange services. Voorhees also noted that three years ago, decentralized trading was not easy enough to develop on a large scale. Now the situation has changed, and the provision of such services has already become not a privilege, but a market necessity in order to meet the interests of users.
Earlier, the ShapeShift founder stated that the volatility of cryptocurrencies is a prerequisite for the development of the cryptocurrency industry. In addition, Voorhees recently said that institutional investors will ensure a stable future for cryptocurrencies, and after the large-scale introduction of bitcoin, it will become the global currency standard.
