Switcheo leadership hopes its community will propagate the founders’ vision as it slowly decentralizes. In a recent Neo News Today podcast, Switcheo CEO and co-founder, Ivan Poon, discussed how he hopes the SWTH token holders will carry forth the protocol and ecosystem.
Poon recounted how the Switcheo team traded both traditional financial assets and cryptocurrencies prior to founding Switcheo Exchange, but that it was the non-custodial space that really piqued their interest. The founders believed monies should be freely transferable and used to trade, hedge, or used as collateral at the holder’s discretion.
Switcheo launched on the Neo MainNet on March 31st, 2018, achieving its goal of building a non-custodial exchange. Since then, Switcheo has moved increasingly in the direction of architectural and political decentralization, preparing to place the care of its network and product strategy in the hands of its token holders.
To this end, Switcheo’s TradeHub now has 25 node validators and recently put a major network upgrade to a community vote. While its node validators are thoroughly distributed, all four TradeHub Improvement Proposals to date have been put forth by Switcheo leadership. Poon noted that Switcheo’s community will need to take on increased responsibility for its development in the future.
The upside for the token is for it to be independent protocol, a protocol that can exist without the core team here… We feel that we need to move towards a stage where everything’s truly decentralized, not just in terms of who’s running the software, but who was developing the software.
As communities grow and new participants enter an ecosystem, the threat of identity loss looms. There may be a day when the Switcheo Foundation proposes a network upgrade and token holders don’t vote in favor. Ultimately, Poon believes a positive track record and determination may sway SWTH token holders to vote inline with Switcheo’s founding vision. He said:
This is actually always a concern for us, especially because a lot of [token] holders may not be as experienced or as knowledgeable about what we are doing, or they may not understand our vision as much. As the protocol develops, and what it can do, [shows] very explicitly, then [we hope] people will get that Aha! moment.
The full interview can be found below:
About The Author: Dylan Grabowski
Dylan is a reformed urban planner with a passion for covering the Neo ecosystem. His objective as a writer for Neo News Today is to report news in an objective, fact-based, non-sensational manner. When not behind a computer screen, he can be found in the mountains rock climbing. Find Dylan on Twitter (@GrabowskiDylan).
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