ShapeShift is Shutting Down

Crypto exchange ShapeShift is shutting down, breaking down its corporate structure and handling over operations to a Decentralized Autonomous Organization DAO. Announced on twitter, Erik Voorhees, CEO of ShapeShift published a thread describing the next evolution of the pioneer crypto company.

In the publication, Erik Voorhees said the company has been operating for 7 years and have grown to have the structure similar to other corporate organizations. All through these years, the company has been modeled and ran having investors, board members, bank accounts, and paid its taxes amongst other things.

He argued that the corporate structure was the standard during the 20^th and into the 21^st century, but that may not be the format or model that will be best for the digital age. A new type of model is imperative, the model of a DAO.

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Why DAO?

The crypto trading platform pioneer, concerning the reason for going the DAO way said centralization has become a problem in the realization of their vision.

But why should we, an established and well-funded for-profit corporation, consider such a model?

Simple: centralization has become a liability against the realization of our vision.

— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) July 14, 2021

He said the company’s vision is the establishment of an immutable, borderless and financial system but this can only occur or happen upon an open and decentralized protocol. Therefore, they are taking the lead. In his words ‘we must be the change we wish to see in this world.’

Upon much reflection, we’ve come to the conclusion that the vision of an immutable, borderless financial system can only occur upon open, decentralized protocols.

So we’ll start with ourselves. We must be the change we wish to see in the world.

— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) July 14, 2021

The Future of ShapeShift

As the ShapeShift has decided to go decentralized, the CEO said the company will be open-sourcing the ShapeShift project. The corporate structure will be dissolved towards ‘zero’ and reorganized around a borderless decentralized community governed by holders of its FOX tokens.

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Erik believes the future is in decentralized autonomous organizations and they are stepping into it and away from the ‘trappings of equity and incorporation.

We’re stepping into that future, & away from the trappings of equity and incorporation.

Equity and incorporation fasten an organization to jurisdictional friction.

Appropriate for industrial companies in the 20th century.

Inappropriate for digital companies in the 21st.

— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) July 14, 2021

With the transformation to a decentralized governance structure, ShapeShift will be governed marginally at first then completely by FOX token holders. When this happens, the role of a CEO, Board, Shareholders, Employees, Bank Accounts and other corporate structures will be no more.

In his words, “what remains is pure technology in the service of users; an open-source, non-custodial, cross-chain crypto interface for all mankind’.

ShapeShift Largest Airdrop

As it moves to totally decentralized itself, ShapeShift said it has airdropped tokens to its employees, investors and over one million of its customers and DeFi community members. This was from a DAO treasury which it had created.

Erik Voorhees concluded with a salutation to actors, architects, pioneers, and believers in the world of decentralization.

To all the individuals and projects that have pioneered this path of decentralization, we salute you.

To those who have a passion for an honest, transparent, immutable, borderless financial system, please join us in this next phase of ShapeShift.#ViresInNumeris

— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) July 14, 2021