One of the most prominent decentralized exchange for AltCoins aptly named Altcoin.io recently announced that they have open-sourced their Atomic Swap Wallet to help blockchain developers learn from and build upon the technology.

A vast majority of crypto transactions have been supported by centralized exchanges which are vulnerable to hacking. Theft from crypto exchanges is estimated to be as high as $900 million in just the first 9 months of this year which is 2.5 times higher than that of 2017. Atomic swaps look to solve this issue by removing these entities which pretty much act like middlemen. They offer a safe, anonymous and cheap solution of making transactions of virtual assets.

Atomic Swaps fall under a type of smart contract called a Hashed Time-Locked Contract (HTLC). When two or more users want to trade, their assets are locked into the HTLC until the involved parties verify receipt of their new tokens via a cryptographic code. This essentially diminishes the possibilities of fraud.

In theory, atomic swaps can be performed across different blockchains which provides flexible trading possibilities without third-parties getting involved. That makes them ideal for Over-The-Counter (OTC) trades where fast-as-possible settlement isn’t necessarily a priority but security and confidentiality is.

Making the Atomic Swap wallet open source is, in fact, an exercise in decentralization. Altcoin.io CEO Andrew Gazdecki said:

“As developers of a decentralized exchange, it was really important for us to ensure users stayed in control of their tokens at all times. Atomic swaps would allow peer-to-peer trading while still securing every transaction with blockchain certainty, so we were naturally very excited to begin developing our very own atomic swap wallet.”

Gazdecki hopes that the move to make the wallet open sourced will not only help developers in the space but other projects which use similar technology too. If you are a developer or just want to see how atomic swaps work, you can head over to their GitHub.