Announcement: Upcoming Non-Custodial Account Upgrade: 23rd December 2019

by Nathan Worsley

Dear community, As many of you know, LocalCoinSwap is soon launching non-custodial trading - making us the first ever custodial exchange to switch to a non-custodial model. This feature has been in the works for some time now, and we are excited to deliver it.

As you can imagine, switching from a custodial to non-custodial system is a lot of work - and in fact this feature required us to rewrite almost our entire backend infrastructure. The positive side of these changes was that we were able to eliminate huge amounts of accumulated technical debt, and therefore we expect to be able to launch major feature updates much faster in the future. This type of change has never been performed by any other exchange, but LocalCoinSwap is committed to staying up to date with technological innovation.

This type of change has never been performed by any other exchange, but LocalCoinSwap is committed to staying up to date with technological innovation.

The first part of the non-custodial rollout will occur next week: Monday 23rd December, at 10am GMT+0:00.

The first rollout will be an account security upgrade, which switches everyones accounts from our current model to an end-to-end encrypted model.

When you log in for the first time after this upgrade, a password change will be required. This is because your account will now use your password for client-side encryption of your account, meaning your private keys for non-custodial currencies will be in your hands - and your hands only.

Once this account upgrade is performed: LocalCoinSwap staff will not be able to recover your account if you forget your password. If you remember your password you can change it, but if you lose your password you will lose access to your account.

This is necessary as it is the only way we can create a trustless and non-custodial exchange - if we are able to recover your password then you have to trust us with your cryptocurrency. With non-custodial trading: you are your own bank, and no-one else can access your private keys.

Once this account upgrade occurs, there will be no further interruptions to the user experience as we rollout new currencies into the non-custodial system. All future changes will occur automatically - and no future password resets will be required.

Thank you.