Uniswap & TrustToken Brings Trustless Foreign Exchange to the Masses for the First Time
September 19th was a special day for the world of decentralized finance — and it all comes down to this transaction.
But what’s so special about a transaction of less than a single dollar?
It was a swap between TUSD and TAUD, two of TrustToken’s popular independently verified, fiat-backed stablecoins, using Uniswap, the self-serve DEX allowing swaps between any two assets with no counterparty.
This $0.25 transaction is possibly the first-ever recorded trustless ForEx transaction — and a starter pistol for trustless, self-serve decentralized finance offering never-before-seen utility.
The TrustToken & Uniswap allow swaps between not just all TrueCurrencies — including tokens backed by Hong Kong Dollars, British Pounds, as well as Canadian, Australian, and United States Dollars — but crypto assets like BAT, ZRX, or MKR.
How to Make Your Own Trustless ForEx Transaction
After connecting your MetaMask wallet to the Uniswap Exchange, first select your input and output currencies. In this case, we’re still working with TrueCurrencies, but you can easily move between any other major ETH token.
Next, enter the amounts you’d like to swap in, which automatically estimates your expected output. The prices offered by Uniswap are based on the amounts of ETH and tokens in the contracts, and the more you buy or sell, the more the price will move.
Earn Returns By Playing Market Maker
Uniswap also allows you to earn a passive income when people make swaps. Adding liquidity requires providing an equal value of ETH and the token for which you’ll be creating the supply.
Investing these assets in a Uniswap gives you liquidity tokens you can redeem for your share of the liquidity later, and the investment is strictly better than holding the same assets outside of the Uniswap. Don’t forget, though, creating liquidity on Uniswap is not a risk-free investment: you are still exposed to their volatility.
Using digital US dollars to buy digital Hong Kong dollars makes a good story the first time around — but to do it without the traditional trusted third party of a ForEx desk or OTC broker is a world first. With TrueCurrencies listed to Uniswap, decentralized finance is finally spilling over into real world use cases.
What swaps do you think will be most popular? Let us know in the comments.
