A much easier way to exchange Minds tokens (more decentralized too)

I was a little surprised logging in recently and seeing that the generally accepted way of trading in and out of Minds tokens was still ether/forkdelta (a terrible experience by today's standards).

Since the end of 2018 there has been a newer and improved decentralized exchange called Uniswap that owes it's origins to a developer inspired by a forum post by Vitalik Buterin and $100k grant from the Etherium Foundation.

While I could spend go on about how it completely democratizes trading fees and is one of the few DEXes that is truly decentralized (the entire functionality is contained in a procedural smart contract), there is an abundance of information already out there. But these interviews are a good starting point if you want more background:

https://unchainedpodcast.com/how-uniswap-quickly-became-one-of-the-most-popular-dexes/
https://epicenter.tv/episode/292/

Also this project is entirely open source and if you wanted to, you could fork your own custom frontend for interacting with the smart contract:
https://github.com/Uniswap

To begin exchanging Minds tokens, go to https://uniswap.exchange/swap

Next you will select what tokens you are trading by clicking on the dropdown menus.

You will then be presented with a list of the established/popular tokens. For others (ie. the Minds token), you will have to execute a search by pasting the smart contract address
[ 0xB26631c6dda06aD89B93C71400D25692de89c068 ] in the search bar.

Select the result and you will now be able to enter in the amount of tokens you would like to purchase (or sell).

One thing to note is that your trades affect the price. You will see a "slippage warning" if the amount you are trading is significant compared to the smart contract's "liquidity pool." See how there are diminishing returns in the estimated value of Minds tokens when the purchase quantity grows drastically.

The exchange rate is completely automated based on supply and demand. You could spend an infinite amount and never completely buy all of the available tokens.

You can easily trade in reverse by switching the input/output tokens via the dropdown menus.

Once everything is ready, click "swap" and Metamask will prompt you to verify.

Don't forget to that you can always check out https://ethgasstation.info/ to get an estimate for lower priced gas fees that will still get confirmed relatively quickly on the network.

And that's all there is to it. This should be fast with better available prices; a huge improvement over the clunk, low liquidity, centralized order books, and sketchy trading bots that came with the Etherdelta way of doing things. If this has helped you, please remind and get the word out.