Blockstream Announces Liquid Atomic Swaps for Bitcoin and Crypto Assets

Blockstream has announced the creation of an atomic swap platform called Liquid Swap Tool according to official documentation on its website, announced in a Tweet, July 1, 2019. The Bitcoin infrastructure developer says the Liquid Swap tool enables users to carry out atomic swaps on all assets hosted on the Liquid Network.

Atomic Swaps on the Liquid Network

According to the documentation published on the Blockstream website, platform users can use the Liquid Swap Tool to execute atomic swaps for assets like L-Bitcoin and other tokens live on the Liquid Network.

Atomic swaps refer to the direct exchange of cryptocurrencies without the need for a centralized third party. The process usually proceeds via a smart contract written to facilitate the swap.

The Liquid Swap Tool is available to users running Linux, MacOS, and Windows operating systems. Nodes running older versions of the Liquid wallet may have to perform an upgrade before being compatible with the swap tool. The official documentation also includes an installation guide for users.

Blockstream CEO Adam Back took to Twitter to talk up the advantages of atomic swaps on the Liquid Network as against their cross-chain counterpart. According to Back:

“Atomic swap between native assets on Liquid L-BTC, L-USDT, etc is simpler than cross-chain atomic swap, because the Bitcoin UTXO model transaction rule “inputs add up to outputs” is extended to add up inputs of each type, and types/assets are natively understood.”

Debuting atomic swaps on Liquid is yet another move by Blockstream to enhance the utility of its sidechain. Back in October 2018, the company launched the Liquid Network with the goal of reducing transactional traffic on the Bitcoin blockchain by moving some transactions off-chain.

Exchanges like BitMEX are reportedly ready to explore the idea of leveraging the Liquid Network to reduce fees by clearing up their contribution to the Bitcoin mempool spamming. Coinbase, another exchange giant has previously come in for heavy criticism for its contribution to the Bitcoin mempool spamming problem.

As reported by BTCManager, the company released a ‘plug-and-play’ security token issuance platform on the Liquid Network. The move is part of the company’s drive of enabling users to tokenize all manner of assets.

There has been some controversy over the security of bitcoin held on the Liquid Network. In May, the company reacted to these reports saying it only possessed emergency keys to bitcoin held on the network.