Version 2 of our extension has been released. It's a major release with changes to the look and feel, the technology and how everything works. Here are 10 reasons to use this extension.

Before we get into that, let´s start with a quick rundown for those who don´t know what our extension does. If you´re wondering if this is for you, read this:

• converts links to your preferred agent while you browse Reddit or Yupoo
• adds a toolbar to agent pages, which allows jumping to the same product on another agent
• also adds links to QC pics both on Reddit/Yupoo and the toolbar
• for Chromium (Google Chrome, Brave and Edge) Browsers and Firefox
• no support for mobile (extensions don't really exist for mobile devices)

With the v2 release, I make the claim that there are ten reasons to choose this extension. They are briefly mentioned on the store page and we´ll go into more detail here.

When I mention "other extensions", of course I only refer to other link converter extensions and not the whole Chrome Web Store catalog.

#1 Uses Jadeship´s Universal Link Converter, the most popular & battle-proven link converter

Our link converter is the gold standard.

• It was the first universal link converter that allowed converting links between agents. Jadeship invented it, everyone else is copying it.
• It allows decrypting shortened links, a feature that´s very important but still unique to this day. Other link converters fail here.
• We have lots of users and a good feedback loop, any changes and issues get patched very quickly
• 100% legacy support. There are lots of old links still floating around. Our test-driven approach ensures that when we add support for new kinds of links, support for old links remains 100% intact.
• It might not matter to you as an extension user, but it´s also available as a bulk converter or via API.

#2 Decrypt shortened links - the only extension able to do so

Thanks to the power of the link converter, we can also decrypt shortened links, e.g. k.youshop10.com links.

Agents like to encrypt their links to hide affiliate links and make it harder to convert them to another agent.

We also have a huge cache of old links, e.g. pandabuy.allapp.link links, that wouldn´t work if you click on them, but thanks to the cache, you can convert them via the extension.

#3 No affiliate link hijacking - clean links, no referral codes

All other extensions use affiliate link injection and hijacking. That means, that they automatically insert their affiliate link for each agent.

You might´ve watched the extremely popular video calling out the "Honey" extension for this practice. These extensions overwrite links from other creators, that might´ve done more to deserve the attribution, and most would agree that it´s just a shady way to extract money from your users, without them noticing.

I would really go as far as saying that some extensions are nothing more than copies of the Jadeship extension with their affiliate links added to the links.

Here´s how we handle affiliate links: First, there´s a clear disclaimer and you can disable any affiliate links in the extension settings. The item links that you visit and share are always clean - never an affiliate link on items. Cookies remain untouched. On specific registration pages only, it now asks you in a dialog (can be permanently disabled), if you want to use our affiliate links. This dialog can conveniently be closed by clicking anywhere else on the page.

So we have affiliate links on registration pages that you can opt out from and that ask for your consent, and other extensions have secret affiliate link hijacking that's forced on you on both item pages and registration pages.

We follow the Chrome Web Store TOS by actually requiring your specific consent at that exact moment, transparent disclaimer and mentioning it in the description and the actual extension.

I think it's fair, that we ask for some support, considering the Jadeship extension is actually full of original ideas that took a lot of effort to put into code.

#4 Most agents to choose from

The extension supports 30+ agents. All of them can be converted from and all of them can be converted to.

There are quite a few that we wouldn´t recommend as conversion targets, but ultimately we leave the choice to you. You have a settings option to enable or disable legacy agents. That´s what Jadeship has been about since 2017.

#5 Clean toolbar - automatically hidden and customizable

The toolbar is another great Jadeship invention. It allows you to jump between any agent´s item page, to any specific agent you want. In case it´s not clear: this completely eliminates the problem of people sending or posting links to an agent that you aren't using.

The toolbar auto-hides when you scroll down, it just leaves a little "bean" that you can hover over to make it reappear.

The choice of which agent or agents you want is yours, this is fully customizable and with v2, you can include any number of agents.

The toolbar also includes a link to the item on Jadeship ("stats"), where you can see statistics for the historical purchase volume and price, inclusion in spreadsheets, for example.

#6 QC pic feature - checks for available QC pics

Also included in the toolbar and on Reddit is direct integration with our QC provider. That means you can see if QC pics are available and look at them with a single click, no matter where you find the link, cross agent.

#7 Over-the-air updates

Apart from the visual redesign and the less intrusive affiliate links, over-the-air updates are the biggest change in v2.

Conversions and decryptions are now done in the Jadeship cloud. The big advantage is, that we don´t have to roll out patches via the Chrome Web Store or Mozilla Addons, which takes days for approvals and many manual clicks.

Over the years of publishing this extension, I have to admit, that often times I did not find the time to go through all of this for every patch, so only every other patch of the website was released for the extension, some significantly delayed. With the cloud, changes on the website are automatically available in the extension. This is the only sustainable way to do it.

The downside is, that we have to rate limit this. Otherwise, people are abusing our Cloud to power their own websites for free. We have proof that this is happening: All browsers should long have updated the extension to v2, the amount of traffic still going through the v1 route is a clear indication that those are not extension users but scrapers and bots.

After a little bit of testing back and forth, we have decided to with the following model for the rate limit: Everyone gets 1000 weekly cloud requests. The advantage of setting a weekly limit compared to a daily limit is that a real person, who only shops from the sites two days a week, has 500 requests on those days. While a bot that's running 24/7 only gets 143 requests per day. That's precisely what we want, no limits for real people but hard on bots and scrapers.

We now see a block rate of less than 3%, and this number is inflated because once you're blocked, you get blocked over and over again in the background, without noticing.

Adding higher limits for users that have free accounts or even higher limits for Plus and Pro users makes perfect sense and is planned. Not to sell more memberships, but because that traffic is easier to attribute and thus we can respond to abuse more effectively, which makes it less likely to happen.

The conclusion: We will adjust the rate limit as needed so that real users can use the extension uninterrupted. This leaves you with a new version that's automatically updated when agent links change, to improve the reliability and stability of the conversions.

#8 "Featured" by the Chrome Web Store, an award for adhering to code best practices

The Chrome Web Store features our extension with a "Featured" badge.

Featured extensions follow our technical best practices and meet a high standard of user experience and design.

This award is given after a manual review.

I´m extremely honored by this badge of approval by one of the biggest tech companies in the world, and honestly, I´m going to put this in my CV. Needless to say, our extension is the only extension that is featured like this.

#9 The oldest extension - copied many times

The whole idea to convert links right on the page instead of having to copy the link and visiting converter pages, was my idea. This extension was the first one that does this.

If you think about it, when I first published this extension, it actually solved a problem. Now, this problem has been solved. The only reason, someone would now put effort into releasing their own extensions, with the same or less supported agents, is that they want to spread the affiliate links. It's never in your interest.

I didn´t make this an 11th point, but the fact that our extension is probably the only one distributed for Firefox is also noteworthy.

#10 Open source - no malware, not infected with affiliate links

I understand that not everyone is a technical user, but this might be the most important point, and I´m shocked by the amount of people who just install closed source extensions.

Extensions can potentially steal your info, your passwords, switch payment links, track you across the web and inject affiliate links.

Just like we read the links on a agent site and send it to our cloud to convert it, they can take control of the password field and send it to their database.

I really didn´t want to call anyone out, but for example the FashionReps Link Converter can read all your data, including passwords, on any Google page, including but not limited to gmail. If your email is compromised, everything is compromised (use 2FA!). This is a huge security risk. To be fair, I decompiled their extension and reviewed the code and they are not doing anything evil with the permission at the moment, it might be an honest mistake, but anyone using their extension has already accepted the requested permissions and in the next update they could start stealing passwords.

This isn´t just about what site the extension requires permission for; even on pages that wouldn´t raise eyebrows, say an agent page, they could still replace payment links.

With the jadeship extension, you can review the source code at any time, and even if you don´t have the knowledge to review software, at least someone else is doing it. We have also added a very nice script to verify the source code against the published extension, so you can make sure that we aren´t adding malware later.

Another nice perk of an open-source model is that we accept community contributions. The whole visual redesign was done by a community member, who we can´t thank enough. Community members also open issues on our Github, that way we have a much better feedback loop than closed source extensions.

There are bad faith actors out there. Think of all the data leaks we had in recent years, all the hacked agents and all the exit scams. Blindly trusting extensions is a bad idea.

Bottom line: Extensions can swap out payment links and steal passwords on any page that you give them permission for. Don´t just install them in good faith, use open source software.

Github Link: https://github.com/cachho/jadeship-browser-extension

Get the extension

Download links for Chrome and Firefox