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Last week, ShapeShift announced they’re shifting away(pun intended) from an exchange without accounts to an exchange with a membership program. Shapeshift describes its newly rolled out membership program as a loyalty program that includes rewards like higher limits, rewards on trading volume, better pricing, and much more. Unfortunately to be a part of the membership program users will be required to give up basic personal information. This is a big change for ShapeShift but not very different from most exchange experiences. At first the membership program will be voluntary but ShapeShift has stated the program will be mandatory in the not too distant future.
Currently our users exchange through ShapeShift without setting up an exchange account or giving up any personal information. When ShapeShift officially makes their membership mandatory users that haven’t signed up for a membership will have to do so.
How This Will Work in Edge
The membership program isn’t mandatory yet but we wanted to give some insight into how these changes will work in the Edge Wallet.
When in the Edge Wallet and trying to use ShapeShift, users will be brought to a ShapeShift webpage. Users will be prompted to sign up for membership or type in their account credentials to their already established membership. Once the membership has been completed by a user or they’ve been successfully authenticated into their existing membership, Edge will save and encrypt each user’s unique membership token on their device. The saved token will allow them to re-use the ShapeShift exchange service without having to login for every exchange they want to make. In addition Edge will be able to synchronize the membership token between different devices. This allows users to continue exchanging through ShapeShift on multiple devices even with the upcoming changes. The exchange experience will be identical to the experience users are already familiar with, the only change is the initial set-up of the membership. Once that is done, the user experience will stay in-tact.
Keep in mind the personal information users divulge during membership sign-up will be collected solely by ShapeShift. Any personal information associated with a user’s token will be encrypted on the user’s device. Edge will not be able to see this information. We maintain a zero-knowledge architecture and a strict commitment to user privacy. Nothing about ShapeShift’s move to a membership program changes nor affects our approach.
New Exchange Options
The good news for those that are disappointed by the changes made by ShapeShift, new exchanges will be added to the Edge Wallet in the upcoming releases. This had been planned internally for some time and was going to happen regardless of the latest changes made by ShapeShift. We have always intended to give our users more exchange options.
When other exchange options are live in Edge, the Edge Wallet will be able to hunt for the best price between the available options. This is functionality we’re excited to roll out for our user base.
For example, if a user places an order to exchange LTC for BTC in the Edge Wallet, our application will be able to aggregate price quotes from each of the exchanges we support and pick the cheapest price for the user. This will be very powerful functionality that we know our user base will love and appreciate.
If you have any questions about Edge, ShapeShift, and the upcoming changes feel free to reach out to our support team.
