Nowadays, the bulk of cryptocurrency transactions take place through centralised exchanges. These intermediaries generally store their users funds in centralised repositories, exposing them to theft. Hackers stole USD 927 million from centralised exchanges in the first nine months of 2018. Atomic swaps aim to remove these middlemen, offering a secure and private method of transferring digital assets between individuals.
Atomic swaps would allow peer-to-peer trading while still securing every transaction with blockchain certainty. This solution uses a special type of contract called a Hashed Time-Locked Contract (HTLC). More specifically, when two or more parties agree to trade, their funds are locked into the HTLC until both parties confirm receipt of their new tokens via a cryptographic code. Hence, it is difficult for one party to defraud another.
Moreover, Altcoin.io has been working on a Plasma-like sidechain architecture for their decentralised exchange, as Plasma offers secure, scalable transactions without sacrificing speed.
By open-sourcing the Atomic Swap Wallet, Altcoin.io aims to help other blockchain projects achieve their goals through atomic swap technology, and even take the wallet to a mainnet launch. Developers who wish to test the atomic swap wallet can do it on the Altcoin.io website, and the open-sourced code and documentation is available on the Altcoin.io GitHub repository.
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