I am trying to create a converter for cglib. The initial idea was to do just like XStream is already doing for JDK dynamic proxies. The problem is that XStream is cheating a lot to have proxies working. First you need an alias to replace the class name. Then you need this alias to return a Dummy class that will allow the wanted converter to be called. After that, you need to override DefaultClassMapper to replicate this hack in DefaultClassMapper: if (result == null && Proxy.isProxyClass(type)) { result = (String) typeToNameMap.get(DynamicProxy.class); } And finally, you need to register the converter in your new mapper because the converter needs the mapper. All this is not really obvious. And it's not possible to provide a generic converter since you also need a ClassMapper. So we really need something better. There are loads of solutions. All requiring more of less refactoring. I think the question should be: If I want to remove all the Dynamic proxy's hacks, what should I do? The solution I can think of: 1- To pass a class name instead of a Class to canConvert. It will remove the need to have a dummy class and putting an alias will be made easy. 2- Allow the converter to have a converter to have the mapper injected in some kind of way when we register it to XStream. 3- Have something more powerful than aliases. Maybe have a new method on Converters that perform the lookup. If this is not efficient, be at least able to have a lookup hook where we can put code like Proxy.isProxyClass(type)