When you got a server infrastructure, it’s alway easy to get hacked and unfortunately it happened to Shapeshift.io. 
Luckily thanks to their setup customers where not affected, still it’s a shame that something like this happened. Always built with security first in mind and always have a security audit if possible.
I hope to see the Shapeshifters be back online soon, because it’s one of the easiest exchange to translate coins
looks like they are rebuilding the whole architecture…seeing them on SAFE as well would be EPIC!!!
The people using Shapeshift should have used OpenLedger orr MetaExchange both which are P2P and decwentralized.
Why would anyone think Shapeshift was going to be secure when it’s barely compliant?
Most people (number-wise) don’t care about the compliance, and with ShapeShift only “in-flight-tokens” are ever exposed.
In this case just few hundred K (would have been much less if they discovered earlier) for which they’ll compensate customers in full. A non-event, essentially.
The convenience of not having to use an exchange (compliant, decentralized, whatever) is a huge win. If one needs a small amount of any popular token, ShapeShift is the best solution out there.
Noone except thieves would use ShapeShift to flip an equivalent of $5K (or such). I’ve used it to exchange crypto in amounts of under $50, especially when in a hurry. That’s the kind of use it’s made for and it works very well for that.
I would even say that the lack of compliance is a big feature. No compliance, no hassle (meaning, normally I would have to report gain on the $50 in BTC or whatever that I exchanged for MAID or whatever, but because there’s no record of it, it’s reasonably safe to say that I don’t have to (a record still exists somewhere, but it’s hard to track and it’s simply no feasible to catch the small fish).
If i used an exchange (especially a compliant one), I’d have to spend 20 mins to get the tokens in an out, plus another 10 to report the stupid transaction (if I gained from it). 30 wasted minutes!
the saga (drama) continues
Jippy Shapeshift is back 
Funny enough only with bitcoin and ether
So basically they were/are a kind of digital currency bank and not really an exchange, and therefore vulnerable to the attacks (insider or outsider) that are the curse of such institutions.
On a stock exchange, say, or a commodity exchange, the exchange is simply a listing board of bids and offers and doesn’t hold any goods. Even Poloniex is not an exchange in the true sense, but pretends to be one, since the trader has to first deposit into a Poloniex account the amount he wishes to trade.
Bitsquare, on the other hand, is a true exchange (I have no vested interest in saying so).
Should they start recovering the least popular currency pairs first?
Shapeshift is back up, but without Maidsafecoin.