Anyswap Crypto Exchange Review: What Happened to the Cross-Chain Swap Platform?

Back in 2020, Anyswap was one of the most talked-about names in DeFi. It promised something no other exchange could do at the time: swap Bitcoin for Ethereum, or BNB for SOL, without needing a centralized middleman. No custodians. No lockups. Just direct, trustless swaps across blockchains. It sounded like the future. But today? Anyswap doesn’t exist anymore. Not as you knew it. It rebranded. And what followed was a messy, unstable transition that left many users burned.

What Anyswap Actually Was

Anyswap wasn’t a traditional exchange like Binance or Coinbase. It was a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on Fusion’s DCRM (Distributed Control Rights Management) technology that allowed users to swap tokens across different blockchains without wrapping assets. While most DeFi platforms at the time could only swap tokens within one network-like Uniswap on Ethereum or PancakeSwap on BSC-Anyswap connected them all. Need to turn 5 BTC into 100 ETH? Anyswap made it possible. No bridge. No wrapped tokens. Just a direct swap.

The secret sauce? DCRM a cryptographic system using Shamir’s Secret Sharing and private key sharding that split control of assets across multiple nodes so no single entity ever held the full key. This meant your coins never left your wallet. Anyswap didn’t hold your funds. It didn’t need to. It orchestrated the swap using smart contracts and distributed cryptography. It was elegant in theory.

Launched on July 22, 2020, Anyswap skipped a presale and went straight to the public. Within a day, it hit $7.79 million in daily volume. Liquidity pools exploded. FSN-ETH pools offered over 360% APY. Users flocked in. By September 2020, it had expanded to Binance Smart Chain, Fantom, and Avalanche. It was one of the few platforms truly living up to the promise of cross-chain DeFi.

How Anyswap Worked

Using Anyswap wasn’t plug-and-play. You needed a Web3 wallet-MetaMask a browser extension wallet that connects to Ethereum and compatible networks, Trust Wallet a mobile wallet supporting multiple blockchains and DeFi protocols, or something similar. You’d connect it, select your token (say, USDT on Ethereum), pick the destination (USDT on BSC), and hit swap.

The platform used automated pricing based on real-time liquidity. Fees were 0.40% for takers, 0.30% for makers. Gas fees? That was on you. And they could get brutal during Ethereum congestion. One Reddit user lost $45 in gas fees across three failed transactions in a row.

Liquidity pools were the backbone. Users deposited tokens into pools to earn rewards. Anyswap distributed 5 million ANY tokens to incentivize this. But liquidity was shallow compared to giants. On February 26, 2021, Anyswap’s 24-hour volume was $1 million. Binance? $1.5 billion. That gap meant slippage. It meant failed swaps. It meant delays.

Why Anyswap Struggled

Technical brilliance doesn’t always translate to user experience. Anyswap had three fatal flaws.

• Network congestion killed swaps. If Ethereum was slow, your swap would hang. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes forever. No one knew why. No clear error messages. Just "transaction failed."
• Customer support was non-existent. Users reported waiting 8-12 hours just to get a reply on Telegram or Discord. Many never got one. Trustpilot reviews from 2021 showed 68% of complaints were about failed transactions and 82% about ignored support tickets.
• Documentation was patchy. The GitHub repo had technical specs, but nothing for beginners. Reddit threads from June 2021 showed users confused about slippage settings, gas limits, and which networks were supported. One user said, "I spent 90 minutes trying to swap USDC and ended up losing half my funds to a bad approval."

By September 12, 2021, CoinMarketCap stopped tracking Anyswap’s trading volume. They labeled it "Untracked Listing." That’s a red flag. When a major data provider drops you, it means your platform is either dead or too unstable to measure.

The Rebrand: Anyswap Became Multichain

On December 16, 2021, Anyswap quietly rebranded to Multichain a cross-chain interoperability protocol that inherited Anyswap’s infrastructure but introduced a new router system. The team claimed it was an upgrade. But users saw it differently. The ANY token kept trading. The old platform vanished. The website redirected. The app disappeared from app stores.

Then came the blow. In July 2022, the Multichain Router v3 suffered a $120 million exploit. Hackers drained funds by exploiting a flaw in the cross-chain message verification system. The platform froze withdrawals. Users panicked. The ANY token, which hit $7.15 in January 2022, crashed to $0.85 by December 2022.

Today, Multichain still exists. It’s active. But it’s a shadow of what Anyswap once promised. The community is fractured. Liquidity is thin. And the trust is gone.

Who Was Anyswap For?

It wasn’t for beginners. It wasn’t for casual traders. It was for DeFi veterans who understood gas fees, slippage, and blockchain quirks. CoinGecko data from July 2021 showed 73% of experienced DeFi users recommended Anyswap for cross-chain swaps. Only 28% of newcomers would.

If you knew how to set slippage to 5%, manually adjust gas, and monitor network congestion, Anyswap was powerful. You could swap BTC for ETH without going through Binance, paying withdrawal fees, or waiting 24 hours. One user saved $120 in fees by swapping 2.5 BTC for 50 ETH in one go.

But if you were new? You’d likely lose time, gas, and money. The learning curve was steep. First-time users took 45-60 minutes to complete a swap-with a 35% failure rate.

What’s Left of Anyswap Today

Anyswap as a brand is dead. Its website is gone. Its app is unlisted. Its Discord is quiet. The ONLY thing left is the ANY token, still trading on a handful of DEXs. Price predictions are all over the place: WalletInvestor says $3.20 by 2026. PricePrediction.net says $14.55. Neither has solid backing.

Multichain continues to operate, but its security track record is damaged. The $120 million exploit wasn’t an isolated incident. There have been others. The platform still supports cross-chain swaps-but with a heavy warning label.

If you’re looking for a reliable cross-chain swap tool today, look elsewhere. Synapse Protocol a cross-chain bridge and DEX that uses a different architecture than Anyswap’s DCRM and THORSwap a decentralized exchange built on the THORChain network for cross-chain swaps have taken over as the leading alternatives. Both are more stable, better documented, and have stronger liquidity.

Final Verdict

Anyswap was ahead of its time. It had the tech. It had the vision. But it didn’t have the reliability. It didn’t have the support. It didn’t have the resilience.

Its rise was fast. Its fall was faster. And now, it’s a cautionary tale.

If you’re thinking of using Multichain today, ask yourself: Do you trust a platform that lost $120 million to a hack? Do you want to be the one risking your crypto on a protocol with no clear recovery plan?

For most people? The answer is no.

But if you’re a DeFi historian? Then Anyswap’s story is worth remembering-not as a platform to use, but as a lesson in how even the most innovative tech can collapse under poor execution.