Altcoin Exchange executes atomic swap between Ethereum and Bitcoin

Altcoin Exchange, a currently under development crypto trading application announced today they have completed an Atomic Swap between the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains. In a historic first step towards developing its decentralized exchange, Altcoin Exchange transferred 0.12345 ETH for 0.12345 BTC using its on-chain open source process.

So far only Bitcoin, Litecoin, Decred, and Vertcoin have successfully completed Atomic Swaps.

The Atlcoin Exchange team said they are “extremely proud to be the first to add Ethereum to this short list and hope to see many more Atomic Swaps soon.”

More details are in the following links below:

ALICE ETH INITIATE TX: goo.gl/8t42dg
BOB BTC PARTICIPATE TX: goo.gl/DoHYPD
ALICE BTC REDEEM TX: goo.gl/aE5wwZ
BOB ETH REDEEM TX: goo.gl/hEF5Jq

The company has open sourced its Github repository so others in the community can build upon the success.

Decentralized exchanges are a big part of the future of cryptocurrency trading and Atomic Swaps are part of this process.

What are Atomic Swaps?

The technology essentially allows two people holding tokens on two different blockchains to trade directly — and instantly — without the risk of one party running off with the other’s money before the trade is complete. In computer programming, atomic denotes a unitary action or object that is indivisible, unchangeable, whole, and irreducible. So, atomic swap means that the trade either completes in full or it is canceled, the trade blows up and doesn’t happen and both users get their coins back.

These swaps will replace centralized exchange transactions with equally fast swaps while keeping assets secure (and essentially in the blockchain) until the final clock cycles of the swap.

The team said they still have much work to do on critical issues like privacy, options, and order matching, but is close to overcoming these challenges.

Andrew Gazdecki, CEO at Altcoin Exchange, Inc. said:

“We’ve benefited from the work done by others before us and would like to specifically recognize Charlie Lee and the Decred team. Without their initial Atomic Swap between Decred and Litecoin, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve such fast results. I’d also like to mention Sulejman Sarajlija, Anto Brajkovićis, and Djenad Razic from the Altcoin Exchange team who were critical in making this swap successful. So with that being said, thank you.”

“Altcoin Exchange’s mission is to bring the entire altcoin community together in creating a transparent, trustworthy, and honest market. Altcoin Exchange stands out when compared to other cryptocurrency projects. We’re less concerned with writing a white paper or conducting an ICO as we are with delivering on our promise to build a truly decentralized exchange. Today’s milestone brings us one step closer to delivering on this promise and we’re glad to have you all along for the journey.”