Summary
A joint interview marking five years of routing between SimpleSwap and SwapSpace, with Stefan Lauer, Head of Infrastructure at SimpleSwap, and Vasily, CBDO at SwapSpace.
The subject is the layer users never see: what happens between tapping Swap and the asset arriving.
Stefan describes an arrangement that sounds odd until you follow it through. simpleswap.io, a self-custodial multi-source swap aggregator, assembles liquidity from 20+ CEX and DEX sources, and on SwapSpace it appears as one row among many, quotes judged side by side against everyone else's.
That, he argues, is simply how mature infrastructure behaves — it began with an integration ticket, not a strategy offsite.
Vasily traces aggregation back to fragmentation: before comparison existed, users had to trust a single offer rather than see the market.
SwapSpace now routes across more than 45 providers and 3,300 cryptocurrencies. The user sees one clean move; the infrastructure sees a network.
Both are dismissive of partnership as branding. A load-bearing partnership is a dependency, not a logo — and the test Stefan offers is to unplug it and see what stops working.
If users notice the partnership at all, it is infrastructure rather than marketing.
The most quotable material comes from what broke.
Stefan's principle arrived after an outage: the blockchain does not pause while you fix your integration, so a provider failure is not a rare exception to handle by hand.
Vasily's came from chasing the best price until that provider ran into trouble.
The conclusion both reach is the same, and it cuts against the instinct to optimise for headline rates: the best route is not the one with the most favourable quote, but the one that reliably completes the transaction.
“If users notice the partnership, it's infrastructure, not marketing.”
Key Takeaways
- Five years of routing between SimpleSwap and SwapSpace, told by both infrastructure leads.
- SimpleSwap aggregates 20+ CEX and DEX sources while appearing as one quote among many on SwapSpace.
- SwapSpace routes across 45+ providers and 3,300+ cryptocurrencies.
- A partnership that users notice is marketing; one they rely on unknowingly is infrastructure.
- Provider outages are treated as normal operating conditions, not exceptions.
- The best route is the one that completes reliably, not the one quoting the best rate.
Start Swapping Crypto
Just make the first exchange to see how easy it is.
