Gorshok

What it is. Gorshok is a no-KYC crypto exchange operated by a Russian-founded team, positioning as *"an honest and predictable exchange service you're not ashamed to recommend."* Site is trilingual (Russian / English / Ukrainian). Advertised at 100+ swap directions including a first-class XMR pair (confirmed in the currency picker: XMR ↔ USDT-ERC20, BTC, and others). Fixed + floating rates, optional account, public API on the roadmap. Ships with a distinctive Oblivion Mode — an ephemeral no-log session UI ("Nothing is saved or recorded while you're here — complete anonymous freedom of action") that is unusual to see explicitly surfaced on a swap exchange.

Operator narrative. Gorshok's own `/about` page publishes a 4-milestone history + a "who builds Gorshok" panel: 2022-11 manual Telegram-only launch → 2025-09 first Telegram bot → 2025-11 website build → Q1 2026 core launch of gorshok.io → 2026+ ecosystem (public API + mobile apps). The current *website* is only ~6 months old; the *business* is claimed to be from Nov 2022 as a manual Telegram operation. The operator does not hide this — the About page states it explicitly. The team framing: *"a small team of developers and product people who use crypto every day and hate magic black boxes"* with an explicit refusal to become an all-in-one super app.

Peer signal. A Monero-focused peer directory currently flags Gorshok as ❓ Questionable with the note *"claims to be from 2022 but site is from 2026."* That note is technically accurate but reads harsher than the operator's own transparent disclosure of the manual-2022 → website-2026 trajectory. We surface the peer's flag honestly here and note that our own read of the operator's public surface came out materially more positive on this specific point.

Grade C on publish. New to xmr.club and only ~6 months on the current website infrastructure. Exchange tenure floor per our methodology — this is a high-loss-asymmetric category regardless of how honest the public surface looks. Grade movement: (a) 90-day clean track record on the current site + a curator-executed round-trip test-swap that completes without any late-stage surprises → lift toward B; (b) any incident, exit-scam pattern, or emergence of shotgun-KYC behaviour → immediate downgrade.

How AML screening actually works. Gorshok's own FAQ answer is verbatim: *"In most cases the exchange happens automatically. To protect users and comply with international standards we screen every transaction for AML, but we do not perform KYC and do not request documents. If a transaction is flagged as high-risk, you decide: refund the deposit or continue the exchange with an increased fee."* — This is address-blacklist / risk-scoring screening followed by a user-choice fork, not the shotgun-KYC pattern where funds are held pending document verification. No ID demand, no source-of-funds request, no frozen-funds threat. That is materially better than the industry norm for "AML" language, and worth calling out.

Caveats.

• Only ~6 months on the current gorshok.io infrastructure. The manual-Telegram-2022 origin is honest but not directly transferable — the exchange-under-a-website is what we grade against.
• Peer-directory Questionable flag on file. We do not endorse that flag but you should factor it into your own trust posture.
• No curator round-trip test-swap on record yet — grade lift toward B is gated on that (plus the 90-day clean-track-record window).