Gracefully hiding in the #tradebots channel in Komodo slack are the pioneers of the latest atomic swap, that of Bitcoin Cash. This is the very first Bitcoin Cash atomic swap ever made. A cross chain atomic swap refers to a swap between two blockchains that does not go through a medium of exchange or on a centralized server. The most common medium of exchange is Bitcoin.

In the process, Komodo received some positive press from major media outlets including Reddit.

Contrary to some articles BTC won’t disabled in BarterDex, except during periods of high mempool congestion (when BTC atomic swaps are very likely to fail). Meanwhile BCH will soon be integrated: https://t.co/2v5LS4O8kL $kmd $komodo $dex $atomicswaps pic.twitter.com/ouXm2oHiEF — BarterDEX (@BarterDex) December 14, 2017

The motivation behind adding Bitcoin Cash was that of a high degree of traffic on the Bitcoin network; congestion of unconfirmed transactions. Unfortunately, in this case, atomic swaps are impossible to do and they must be put on hold until the transactions clear. All of these problems are occurring due to the Bitcoin communities unwillingness to increase the block size to allow more transactions per second to occur. As of December 8th, there is a total of 200,000 unconfirmed transactions waiting to be processed on the Bitcoin network. Komodo’s hand was forced, adding Bitcoin Cash to BarterDEX was essential.

“BCH is a high volume bitcoin protocol coin and is poised to become the payments coin that is used; as bitcoin, itself won’t be able to due to the tx fee problem caused by the mempool backlog. But we are coin agnostic and just want to provide the ability for people to trade the coins they want to trade. By giving people the most choices I believe it makes it the most attractive” – JL777

With a market cap of 15 billion, Bitcoin Cash certainly made a splash upon its arrival. To be the very first to make an atomic swap for such an important coin in the cryptocurrency space is quite some achievement. Bitcoin Cash, unlike its twin Bitcoin, is an alternative, or some might say a hedge, against large transactions fees and long transaction times on the Bitcoin network. With the Bitcoin network coming very so bloated with transactions, some large names such as Roger Ver have backed the rebellion against Bitcoin and are pushing for Bitcoin Cash. Unfortunately, it may take time for Bitcoin Cash to become a household name like Bitcoin is.

Another coin that made its first atomic swap is legacy coin Blackcoin. Blackcoin has existed for quite some time dating back to 2014. Blackcoin states that it is “original Proof of Stake” coin and it has overtime updated the Proof of Stake protocol which is now in version 3.0.

All of these cross chain atomic swaps are of course made on the Komodo BarterDEX. The BarterDEX is a piece of software that allows users to do atomic swaps easily. BarterDEX has just had another upgrade, that of v0.7.7-beta. If you wish to give it a try, head here to download it.