ChangeHero

What it is. Instant crypto swap service operating since 2017. 300+ assets across many chains including Monero. Crypto-to-crypto swaps don't require an account, an email, or KYC at signup — pick the pair, choose Float Rate (best market price) or Fixed Rate (locked for 15 minutes), provide your receive address, and send to a one-time deposit address. Fiat purchases are routed through licensed providers (Mercuryo, FinchPay) and are KYC'd by them, not by ChangeHero.

Fees. The homepage discloses up to 0.5% with Best Rate (Float) and up to 0.7% with Fixed Rate, both inclusive of the spread. That puts ChangeHero on the cheaper end of the swap-aggregator market.

Peer position — the disagreement that matters. kycnot.me lists ChangeHero at 5/10 and tags the service as a "KYC Level 3 Aggregator", with the explicit description: *"It may request KYC during risk checks."* That is the shotgun-KYC pattern — marketed as no-KYC, but the service reserves the right to ask for identity verification (often after the deposit lands) when its internal risk engine flags the trade. monerica.com lists ChangeHero too, going back to 2017. The operator's own pitch to xmr.club calls ChangeHero "non-custodial, no-KYC" — that framing is at tension with the published kycnot finding, and we are mirroring kycnot's framing in this listing because it is the one that changes the reader's behavior.

What this means for a reader. Most swaps complete without anyone asking for ID. The risk engine fires unpredictably — high amounts, certain source-chain combinations, certain destination addresses, certain IPs — and when it fires, you can be asked for documents after your funds are already at ChangeHero. Refusing means the swap can be held until refund. This is fundamentally different from a structurally non-custodial atomic-swap protocol, where the engine cannot pause your trade because the engine does not hold your funds.

Refund policy — the specifics. ChangeHero's operator-published FAQ names two clauses worth reading before depositing. First, if a reader refuses KYC after a risk-check flag, the operator returns funds "subtracting the network fee and ChangeHero operational fee in the amount of 10% from transferred assets but not less than 100 USD equivalent." The $100 floor is the sharp edge — a $200 swap refused for KYC returns $80 (a 60% refund haircut), and a $50 swap returns nothing (the floor exceeds the deposit). Small-swap readers should treat any risk-check-triggered KYC as a total-loss scenario, not a refund. Second, if the operator concludes a deposit may be involved in fraud, money laundering, or "other suspicious activity," the FAQ text states ChangeHero "reserves the right not to conduct any activity with the customer's funds for the investigation period" — no cap is placed on that period. These two clauses are why the shotgun-KYC concern above matters materially, not just theoretically.

Grade C- — why C-. Nine years of operation is real tenure and the fee disclosure is honest, but two grade-inputs stack: (a) the kycnot Level-3 / shotgun-KYC tag reflects an unpredictable risk engine that can hold funds mid-swap, and (b) the 10% / $100-minimum refund penalty means a KYC-refusal outcome is not neutral — it is a materially taxed exit, and below roughly $1,000 the flat $100 floor eats a double-digit percentage of the deposit. Together these push the grade below the C midpoint. Path back to C: a public, dated change to either the risk-check process (kycnot retracts the Level-3 tag) or the refund-penalty formula (the $100 floor removed or made proportional). Path to B or higher: both changes plus several months of operator-published statistics on risk-check pause frequency and documented thresholds. Path to a recommendation flag of any kind: not without those changes.

Tenure. Publicly verified on xmr.club since 2026-06-29 — 5 days as of this note. For exchange-class services, tenure is a grade input: even a clean publishable surface defaults to Grade C, and any lift needs both independent corroboration from other privacy-focused directories AND a sustained track record of unproblematic swaps observed over time. First scheduled re-check: 2026-09-27.