Linkswap Crypto Exchange Review: Why It Shut Down and What Happened to Your Funds

Linkswap was never meant to be a household name in crypto. It didn’t have the backing of a major team, a viral marketing campaign, or even a clear reason to exist when it launched in early 2021. But for a few months, it was there - a quiet, unassuming decentralized exchange built on Ethereum, promising to reward liquidity providers and $YFL token holders with a slice of trading fees. Today, it’s gone. No website. No app. No trading pairs. Just a warning on CoinCodex that says: "This exchange is no longer operational." If you’re reading this because you’re wondering if Linkswap still works, the answer is simple: it doesn’t.

What Was Linkswap?

Linkswap was a decentralized exchange (DEX) built by YF Link, a project that tried to combine elements of Chainlink’s oracle network and Yearn Finance’s yield strategies. It didn’t hold your crypto. You didn’t deposit funds into a central server. Instead, you connected your wallet - MetaMask, Trust Wallet, or another Web3 wallet - and traded directly on the Ethereum blockchain. That’s the standard for DEXs like Uniswap or SushiSwap. But unlike those platforms, Linkswap had almost no users, almost no liquidity, and no real innovation.

It only supported trading between ETH and ERC-20 tokens. No BNB. No SOL. No MATIC. Nothing outside Ethereum. That alone made it a tough sell in 2021, when users were already jumping to cheaper chains like Polygon and BSC to avoid $50 gas fees. Linkswap didn’t offer cross-chain swaps, didn’t have a mobile app, and didn’t even have a decent documentation page. You were on your own.

How It Worked (When It Worked)

Linkswap used the same Automated Market Maker (AMM) model as Uniswap: a formula where the product of two token reserves stays constant (x * y = k). When you swapped ETH for $YFL, the price shifted based on how much was in the pool. Simple. Predictable. But also boring.

It charged a flat 0.30% fee on every trade - same as Uniswap. But here’s where it tried to stand out: 83% of that fee went to liquidity providers. The other 17% was used to buy back $YFL tokens and distribute them to stakers. Sounds fair, right? Except there were only 50,000 $YFL tokens ever created. That’s less than the supply of some single NFT collections. Artificial scarcity doesn’t work if no one wants to hold the token. And no one did.

There were no big partnerships. No venture capital backing. No influencers pushing it. Just a small team and a whitepaper that didn’t explain why you should care more about Linkswap than any other DEX.

Why It Failed

Linkswap didn’t fail because it was hacked. It didn’t fail because the code was buggy. It failed because nobody used it.

By mid-2021, the DEX market was already dominated. Uniswap had 61% of all decentralized trading volume. SushiSwap had 18%. The rest - hundreds of other DEXs - fought over the leftover crumbs. Linkswap didn’t even make it onto the radar. No one talked about it on Reddit. No one wrote tutorials about it. No one listed it on CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap as a top exchange.

Even its tokenomics were flawed. $YFL had a tiny supply, but no real utility beyond fee sharing. There was no governance voting, no roadmap, no community treasury. If you staked $YFL, you got a small reward. But if you tried to sell it, there was no liquidity. The price didn’t move because no one was buying or selling.

By late 2021, trading volume dropped to near zero. Liquidity pools dried up. Developers stopped updating the code. The website became unreachable. Today, Holder.io - a crypto analytics site - shows "0 cryptocurrencies are traded on Linkswap." CoinCodex, which once listed it, now flags it as defunct. Even Symbiosis.finance, which lists obscure DEXs still running in 2025, doesn’t mention Linkswap.

What Happened to Your Funds?

If you had ETH or tokens in a Linkswap liquidity pool, they’re still on the blockchain. You didn’t lose them to a hack. You didn’t lose them to a scam. But you can’t access them anymore.

Here’s why: Linkswap’s smart contracts still exist on Ethereum. Your tokens are locked in them. But without the frontend - the website you used to connect your wallet - you can’t interact with those contracts. There’s no official way to withdraw. No support team. No guide. No documentation.

Some users might have managed to interact with the contracts directly using tools like Etherscan or Tenderly. But that requires deep technical knowledge. Most people just gave up. If you held $YFL, it’s now worthless. No exchange lists it. No wallet supports it. No one will buy it.

This isn’t uncommon in DeFi. Hundreds of DEXs launched in 2020-2021. Less than 10% are still active. Linkswap was one of the many that didn’t survive the market crash.

How It Compared to Other Exchanges in 2021

Uniswap had the edge because of its massive user base and community. SushiSwap had better tokenomics and a stronger marketing team. Linkswap had nothing but a name that sounded like a mix of Chainlink and Yearn - and that wasn’t enough.

What You Should Learn From Linkswap

Linkswap’s story isn’t about a bad product. It’s about a product with no reason to exist.

If you’re thinking about using a new DEX today, ask yourself:

• Does it have real trading volume? (Check Dune Analytics or DeFiLlama)
• Is the token supply realistic? (50,000 tokens? That’s not a currency, that’s a collectible.)
• Is there a community? (Check Twitter, Discord, Reddit - if no one’s talking, it’s dead or dying.)
• Can you withdraw your funds if the site goes down?

Don’t get lured by high APYs on new tokens. Those are often just marketing traps. Linkswap offered 15% APY on $YFL staking. It didn’t matter. No one was trading. No one was earning. The whole thing collapsed under its own weight.

What to Use Instead in 2025

If you need a decentralized exchange today, stick with the ones that survived:

• Uniswap - Still the largest DEX. Supports 10,000+ tokens and multiple chains.
• Curve - Best for stablecoin swaps with low slippage.
• THORSwap - Cross-chain swaps across 30+ blockchains.
• Symbiosis.finance - Fast, low-fee swaps between chains.

All of these have active development, real liquidity, and communities that still post about them daily. Linkswap? You won’t find a single thread about it on Reddit anymore.

Final Verdict

Linkswap was a ghost project. It launched with hype, faded quietly, and disappeared without a trace. It didn’t get hacked. It didn’t get shut down by regulators. It just lost interest.

If you’re looking for a crypto exchange to use today, avoid anything that doesn’t have:

• Active trading volume
• A clear roadmap
• A community that’s still talking
• A team that’s still updating code

Linkswap had none of those. And now, it’s just a footnote in crypto history - a warning sign for anyone chasing the next big thing that never really existed.