Shaping The Future of The DEX User Experience | Push x ShapeShift🦊

This week, we’re thrilled to spotlight our latest fren ShapeShift — revolutionizing the way you trade, track, buy, and earn cryptocurrency.

ShapeShift is a decentralized exchange that focuses on non-custodial and multi-chain trading. ShapeShift is community-owned, open-source, and completely decentralized. With a user-friendly interface and secure transactions, ShapeShift has become a top choice among web3 traders and investors alike.

As a DAO seeking to communicate with users without compromising their personal information, privacy and security are particularly important for ShapeShift. ShapeShift leverages Push’s secure notifications to keep users informed about governance, wallet and product updates. With a notification feed directly in the app, users can also easily access all Push notifications from their subscribed channels, enhancing their user experience.

In this episode of ‘Frens of Push’, we sat down with Willy from ShapeShift to talk about its partnership with Push and how ShapeShift is utilizing notifications to enhance the UX on its platform. Willy also shared his excitement about the future of this partnership, especially with the advent of Push Chat.

How did you become involved in building in the blockchain space? What’s your story?

ShapeShift was started in 2014 in the wake of the devastating Mt. Gox hack from which millions of bitcoin were stolen. ShapeShift was created as the first way to trade crypto non-custodially from your own wallet rather than needing to deposit onto a centralized exchange.

Willy started building in the blockchain space in 2017 when he co-founded Bitfract. Bitfract was built on top of ShapeShift’s trading API and was the first tool to enable trading Bitcoin for multiple cryptocurrencies in a single transaction. In 2018, ShapeShift acquired Bitfract.

Tell us about ShapeShift — what’s it about, and what problem does ShapeShift solve?

ShapeShift is focused on building the ultimate interface to the decentralized universe. The early version is live now on app.shapeshift.com and also available in both the iOS and Android app stores.

The problem that ShapeShift solves is two-fold. On one hand, custodial crypto is centralized. This makes it risky, burdened by regulations, and fee-ridden.

Non-custodial crypto isn’t perfect either though. It comes with its own risks, is difficult, and often requires multiple wallets and tools.

To solve these problems, the ShapeShift community is focused on building an interface to the decentralized universe that follows each of the following principles:

• Non-custodial/multi-wallet
• Multi-chain
• Open source
• Community-owned
• Decentralized
• Free

How’s 2023 treating you so far? What’s your Q2 plan — any new releases coming soon?

Best year ever so far! Key metrics have been trending up and to the right since December, which is awesome to see in a bear market.

We have some really exciting updates planned for Q2, including FOX Rewards for users, cross-chain bridging, support for more chains, and displaying DeFi positions, which will make ShapeShift the most comprehensive interface for DeFi users who also hold non-EVM assets like bitcoin, doge, or cosmos assets.

Also very excited to create a growing list of useful automated wallet notifications with Push protocol and to work with Wherever to deliver native push notifications on smartphones.

How is ShapeShift using Push’s web3 communication layer?

Currently ShapeShift uses Push to send governance, wallet, and product notifications to users that subscribe directly from the app. Thanks to the integration with Wherever, ShapeShift now has a notification feed directly in the app where users can not only see ShapeShift notifications, but notifications from all the Push channels they’re subscribed to. Additionally, subscribers can opt in to receiving their Push notifications in email or Telegram. This is important because as a DAO, ShapeShift is seeking alternative ways to communicate with its users that don’t rely on collecting and storing personal identifiable information.

What cool use cases do you see Push being used for in the future?

We’re very excited for p2p wallet chat. We also plan to add more automated notifications in the future, such as news and price notifications for assets you hold as well as notifications for wallet activity on more chains.

How would you describe your experience using Push? What benefits have you seen?

The Push protocol has worked great at every step of the way, and the team has been incredibly helpful in supporting our integration and launch.

What haven’t we asked you about that you wish we had?

Q: Wow, how much does ShapeShift charge for all of this?

A: Zero! ShapeShift is an open-source public good :)

About ShapeShift

ShapeShift is a non-custodial crypto exchange that offers a secure and simple way to trade crypto across multiple blockchains. Currently supporting 11 chains, the DeFi platform also offers various other ways to earn passive income on your crypto assets. ShapeShift’s decentralized and democratic approach to governance empowers its users, making it a truly community-owned platform.

Find out more about ShapeShift: Website, Twitter, Telegram, Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Medium, YouTube

About Push Protocol

Push is the communication protocol of web3. Push protocol enables cross-chain notifications and messaging for dApps, wallets, and services tied to wallet addresses in an open, gasless, and platform-agnostic fashion. The open communication layer allows any crypto wallet/frontend to tap into the network and get the communication across.

To keep up-to-date with Push Protocol: Website, Twitter, Telegram, Discord, YouTube, and Linktree.

“Push frens” is our weekly content series to spotlight outstanding projects building with Push. If you want to be featured, reach out to us, and you could be our next Fren in the series.