Swap thru DeFi Aggregators
DeFi stands for Decentralized Finance and can represent any financial activity in a decentralized world of cryptos. Buying and selling crypto currencies is certainly considered financial activity. Consequently, swaps belong there too.
In previous article about Stellar (XLM) to Ethereum (ETH) coin swap, we’ve seen that swaps can be accomplished on many different websites (or swapping entities). More sophisticated swapping or exchange platforms operate on Automated Market Maker (AMM) basis. The most prominent example is Uniswap. Coin swaps are definitely one of the main services such platforms provide.
However, there is a higher level of DeFi platforms related to swaps, called aggregators. Such platforms offer coin swaps, but they do not directly perform swaps. Instead, they aggregate swapping services from various other platforms offering their users sort of one-stop-shop when it comes to swapping coins. Basically, they find the most efficient swap offer for the user and automatically route swap execution to achieve the lowest slippage and best exchange rate depending on the amount to be swapped. One of excellent DeFi aggregator platforms is 1inch.io.
1inch.io
As an aggregator, 1inch.io looks into number of different networks to optimize trades. Ethereum network is the largest at this time and there are hundreds if not thousands of ERC-20 coins that can be traded thru 1inch.
Other supported networks include: Avalanche, Polygon, BNB Chain, Fantom, Arbitrum, Gnosis and Optimism.
Since both Ethereum and HEX are ERC-20 coins, 1inch seems to be an ideal place to perform the swap (especially considering they don’t charge swapping commission). Note that this time I chose to perform a simple (instant) swap. If one is willing to wait for order execution, 1inch offers limit orders as well.
At present time, there is only one HEX and that is the one running on Ethereum network (thus considered to be an ERC-20 coin). In (near) future, when PulseChain network launches, another version of HEX will exist that will be considered a PRC-20 version. In order to distinguish the two versions of HEX, we will then call ERC-20 version eHEX, while PRC-20 version will be pHEX or simply HEX (as PulseChain will be native network for Richard Heart’s coins).
Regulations and Limitations
Companies that fall under certain jurisdictions have to follow rules and regulations of those jurisdictions. Even though some of the regulations may hurt the business, companies have no choice and they end up imposing such regulations on their customers.
One such regulation is that 1inch.io is not allowed to serve US customers (whether individuals or businesses). If you try accessing 1inch dApp from a US IP address, you may find that the access is denied.
Accepting 1inch Terms & Conditions also means you agree not to use VPN to mask your physical location (say you are in the US and you use VPN service that have you pop out outside of the US, which would then allow you to access 1inch dApp that way).
