Building depouch: Why We Chose Permissionless Swaps Over KYC

Thorbjørn "BubbiByte" Breum recently joined the THORChain Podcast to share the story behind depouch, our approach to building a truly permissionless exchange, and our vision for making cross-chain swaps accessible to everyone.

The conversation covered everything from the origins of Bitcoin in our lives to user experience, protocol integrations, Monero (XMR), and even why the industry may need a new term beyond "DEX."

Discovering Bitcoin Before Banking

For Thorbjørn, Bitcoin wasn't just another technology, it solved a real problem.

He first discovered Bitcoin when he was around 11 or 12 years old through his father, Carsten. At the time, he wasn't even legally old enough to have a traditional bank account. Bitcoin showed him that money didn't need permission from a bank or government to exist. Anyone with an internet connection could participate.

That early experience fundamentally shaped how Thorbjørn thinks about financial freedom and ultimately influenced the creation of depouch.

Why We Built depouch

Carsten and Thorbjørn's first project wasn't depouch.

Back in 2020, Carsten and Thorbjørn built a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange. By 2023, however, regulations meant they would have to implement full Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements in order to continue operating legally.

They weren't interested in becoming an extension of the surveillance system or acting as "eyes and ears for the state." Rather than compromise on principles, they shut the platform down.

In 2025, they started depouch as a hobby project they could build together, this time with a completely different approach.

Instead of holding custody of user funds or collecting personal information, depouch simply connects users directly to decentralized cross-chain liquidity.

Making Cross-Chain Swaps Simple

One of the biggest challenges in crypto isn't technology, it's usability.

Many decentralized exchanges provide enormous flexibility, but that flexibility often comes at the cost of complexity. Users encounter unsupported token combinations, wallet conflicts, and confusing interfaces.

To make cross-chain swaps more approachable, depouch intentionally made different design decisions.

Instead of supporting every imaginable token, they maintain a carefully curated list of pre-tested assets so users can swap with confidence.

They also simplified wallet connections. Rather than requiring users to connect multiple wallets, depouch only asks them to connect the wallet they're sending funds from. The destination is simply entered as an address.

The goal is simple: remove unnecessary complexity so first-time users can complete swaps successfully.

Integrating Directly with THORChain

Another important design decision was avoiding unnecessary intermediaries.

Instead of relying on centralized APIs and API keys, depouch integrates directly with THORChain and Maya Protocol.

The integration process turned out to be refreshingly straightforward, thanks to THORChain's well-documented architecture.

During the podcast, Denny and Kenton highlighted why this matters.

If an application depends on a centralized API, regulators or infrastructure providers could potentially shut that API down. Applications that communicate directly with the underlying protocol remain significantly more resilient because there is no centralized gateway that can become a single point of failure.

For truly decentralized infrastructure, direct protocol integration simply makes sense.

Growing Through Education Instead of Competition

There are already many excellent decentralized exchanges.

Instead of trying to convince existing DEX users to switch platforms, depouch marketing strategy focuses on educating people who don't even realize cross-chain decentralized swaps exist.

That means creating highly targeted tutorials, blog posts, and videos around real search queries such as:

• How to swap Ethereum to Bitcoin using MetaMask
• How to swap Bitcoin to USDT without KYC
• Cross-chain crypto swaps explained

By helping users solve specific problems they're already searching for, depouch introduces entirely new audiences to permissionless cross-chain trading.

Designing a Better User Experience

User experience was another major topic of discussion.

One principle depouch follows throughout the platform is that each user action should trigger only one subtle animation. Multiple animations happening simultaneously often create confusion, making interfaces feel more complicated than they really are.

Another feature that was discussed is the ability to perform multiple swaps simultaneously. Users don't need to wait for one transaction to finish before starting another, creating a smoother experience for active traders.

Small design decisions like these help reduce friction and make decentralized trading feel much more approachable.

Looking Beyond Slippage

One particularly interesting discussion came from Kenton around price protection.

Most decentralized exchanges allow users to configure slippage tolerance, but slippage only measures how much the execution price changes after the quote has been shown.

The problem is that the initial quote itself could already represent poor value.

Kenton described a concept he calls Price Protection, which combines both the quality of the initial quote and subsequent slippage into a single protection mechanism.

The concept offers significantly better protection against poor execution prices, and depouch plans to implement a similar Price Protection mechanism in the future.

Why We're Excited About Monero

One topic that generated a lot of excitement was THORChain's upcoming Monero (XMR) integration.

depouch is already preparing to support memoless swaps, which will appear as a dedicated Convert feature within the interface.

Monero (XMR) occupies a unique position in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

There are currently very few truly decentralized ways to swap into and out of Monero (XMR), making THORChain's implementation particularly significant.

Because of this, Thorbjørn believes Monero (XMR) has the potential to become one of the highest-volume liquidity pools on THORChain as users increasingly seek stronger financial privacy.

DEX or PEX?

The conversation ended with an interesting philosophical discussion.

Today, many platforms are labeled as decentralized exchanges, yet parts of their infrastructure may still enforce centralized rules such as OFAC compliance or transaction censorship.

That raises an important question:

Can something truly be called decentralized if it still has the ability to censor transactions?

Following a suggestion from community member Boone, everyone on the podcast agreed that the industry could benefit from a more precise term:

PEX — Permissionless Exchange.

The term emphasizes what really matters: whether a protocol can operate without centralized permission or censorship.

It's a distinction that could become increasingly important as decentralized infrastructure continues to mature.

Final Thoughts

The future of crypto isn't just about adding more features, it's about removing unnecessary barriers.

At depouch, our focus remains the same:

• Build intuitive experiences that anyone can use.
• Integrate directly with permissionless protocols.
• Eliminate unnecessary intermediaries.
• Help more people discover the power of cross-chain decentralized trading.

The ecosystem is evolving rapidly, and we're excited to continue building alongside THORChain, Maya Protocol, and the broader permissionless community.

depouch - experience financial freedom

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhG3y64rVDs
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2LWh5vXdx8cShyACqBbEvu?si=b40a7467164642ca