Atomic Swaps — The Interoperability Revolution in Cryptos

The developers of the Cryptocurrencies have been working to introduce the revolutionary & much-needed feature of Atomic swaps for quite some time now. A broad-based implementation is still a little further down the road but the experimentation with the micro-level projects has shown the great potential of this feature. Atomic swaps can come in really handy if you are trying to move from one cryptocurrency to another.

The ability of individual blockchains to interact with each other — for example, cross-chain transactions between Bitcoin & Ethereum networks is extremely limited — mostly due to the fact that individual blockchains employ varying protocols, algorithms & security procedures to conduct transactions.

Most of the digital exchanges still expect you to convert to a base currency which is usually Bitcoin (being the most liquid & easily available) before converting to another digital asset. With the kind of volatility that we have in Cryptocurrencies, this means you might end up paying a higher amount for your choice of the digital asset. Don’t forget all the transaction fees that you would rack up in executing these back & forth transactions.

Atomic swaps are basically a smart contract enabled technology that gives you the ability to exchange digital assets on-chain or off-chain…