132 sats \ 11 replies \ @k00b 7 Jan \ on: Are Atomic Swaps Still Experimental? tech
It’s not experimental. They’re actually just relatively simple contacts that guarantee one asset is swapped for another. Unfortunately they don’t do much more than that. They’re like adding bridges in a city and something like drivechains tries to make the buildings in the city taller so the city can house more people (among other things).
Wondering why its not more widely used if its a simple contract.
Wouldn't projects that want to attach themselves to bitcoins glory all be integrating it instead of going through an exchange?
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I’m not sure what you mean that they only work in one direction. If Alice has some Monero, Bob has some Bitcoin, and they do an atomic swap, wouldn’t Alice have some Bitcoin and Bob have some Monero after that? So, whenever there is a swap, it’s in one direction for one participant, and the other direction for the other?
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I made an error in my initial breakdown so deleted.
Basically, in its current state, you can’t “buy” bitcoin with XMR. You must “sell” XMR for bitcoin, and the actual on-chain swap has to be initiated by the Bitcoin/buy side. The difference may seem trivial (Bob and Alice each exchange their funds in the end) but it’s an important distinction.
exactly. if it's only in one direction at the end user level... whose monero are they getting? Is it a nominal atomic swap that actually uses a centralized wallet?
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I made an error in my initial attempt to break it down, so deleted.
The goal is definitely to have it work both ways (at least it was in 2021, tbh I don’t follow Monero development closely) but it will take a hard fork of Monero for it to work.
Here is a link to a post by Comit breaking it down, but basically in its current form you cannot “buy” Bitcoin with XMR. You must “offer” then “sell” your XMR for Bitcoin. The actual on-chain swap must be initiated by the Bitcoin/buy side.