Uniswap Labs, the company tied to popular decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap, announced the launch of its own self-custody wallet on Friday. The news is significant because Uniswap’s trading platform is probably the best-known brand in the field of DeFi and is used by millions of investors to swap one form of crypto for another.
Uniswap, which announced the wallet at the EthDenver conference, called attention to the wallet’s ability to seamlessly switch between various Ethereum networks, including Polygon and Optimism. The wallet also has tools to discover prices and monitor trends, and to follow the trading activity of other Uniswap wallet users.
In an interview with Fortune, lead designer Cal Capuozzo said Uniswap had made the wallet as accessible and intuitive as possible. He explained this process entailed learning from the help requests users had posted when trying to connect other wallets, including MetaMask, to Uniswap’s platform.
The new Uniswap wallet also includes a feature to store its seed phrase—a secret password typically composed of 12 or 16 random words—in Apple’s iCloud. The feature is opt-in, which will assuage crypto privacy hawks who warn against sharing one’s seed phrase with anyone, but is likely to prove popular with users who favor convenience.
Ironically, despite the iCloud feature, the wallet will remain largely inaccessible since Apple refuses to grant Uniswap permission to add it to the company’s App Store. In a blog post, Uniswap expressed puzzlement with Apple’s decision.
“We’ve responded to their concerns, answered every question, and reiterated that we are 100% compliant with their specifications. Other self-custody swapping wallets have been approved, but Apple won’t green-light our launch and we don’t know why. We are stuck in limbo,” Uniswap wrote.
Apple has been wary of crypto apps in the past and years ago blocked Coinbase and other services that offered trading. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its refusal to approve Uniswap’s wallet, but the decision may be tied to recent government scrutiny of crypto—though some may also view the move as part of a strategy to protect its own growing payments empire.
The Uniswap wallet is currently not available on Android platforms. For now, those determined to use it will have to request permission from the company, and then operate it through Apple’s trial software platform known as TestFlight.
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