Somewhat-forgotten “Ethereum killer” Qtum has roared back into the spotlight with the news that Bitcoin (BTC) atomic swaps are now available on the platform’s mainnet.
The news were shared via a blog post made on the project’s official Medium account, revealing that Qtum users are now able to perform cross-chain swaps of cryptocurrencies with the help of atomic swap technology. Atomic swaps technology is crucial for cryptocurrency exchanging as it makes sure no trusted third parties are required to guarantee that both sides of the cryptocurrency swap will honor their obligations.
Qtum will implement a so-called HTLC (Hash Time-Locked Contract) solution which delivers highly secure atomicity of cross-chain transactions. HTLC code is apparently based on the open-source technology developed by another cryptocurrency project Decred. The solution has already found application in environments like the Lightning Network and is expected to eliminate the need for centralized exchanges, which are currently the biggest banes of the cryptocurrency market (mostly thanks to their high fees and centralized points of failure).
The project notes that they’ll initially be implementing Bitcoin payment script-based swaps, which will enable swaps between Bitcoin-like cryptocurrencies (BTC, BCH, LTC and others). But since Qtum supports both Bitcoin payment scripts and Solidity, atomic swaps for Solidity-based cryptocurrencies like Ethereum or a number of ERC-20 tokens can be expected in the future. Check out Qtum’s blog post here to learn how this newly-introduced Bitcoin atomic swap technology will work.
