DeTrading: Enabling Trustless Cross-Chain Atomic Swaps Between Bitcoin and Fractal
What happens when you combine cross-chain innovation and Bitcoin's untapped liquidity potential?
DeTrading emerges as a project that pioneers the first fully trustless, decentralized, bidirectional atomic swaps between Bitcoin and Fractal Bitcoin.
In this builder's story, DeTrading reveals how they overcame Bitcoin's smart contract limitations using advanced cryptographic methods, and their breakthrough approach to making cross-chain transactions both secure and user-friendly.
What were you building before building on Fractal?
I started this project with the goal of making cross-chain transactions secure, convenient, and simple. As the largest digital asset by market capitalization, Bitcoin's liquidity could be significantly improved if it could be directly exchanged with other cryptocurrencies. This would also enhance interoperability across different blockchain networks.
Initially, we aimed to enable atomic swaps between Bitcoin and Ethereum. However, due to the significant differences between the two chains, the technical complexity was quite high. The emergence of Fractal greatly reduced our development challenges. It provided a solid foundation for us to prototype atomic swaps between Bitcoin and Fractal. After achieving this, we became confident in our ability to extend atomic swaps to other chains in the future.
What's the biggest technical challenge you faced, and how did you solve it?
The biggest technical challenge we faced was that neither Bitcoin nor Fractal supports smart contracts. This meant we had to rely purely on cryptographic methods, without any contract logic, to implement atomic swaps.
After extensive research and exploration, we discovered adaptor signatures, which turned out to be a powerful solution. However, the underlying cryptographic principles behind adaptor signatures are highly complex and not well-documented. We had to start with foundational mathematics and gradually build our understanding up to the level of Bitcoin Script.
Fortunately, since Fractal is isomorphic to Bitcoin, once we completed the Bitcoin Script implementation, adapting it for Fractal was straightforward. In the end, we successfully implemented atomic swaps between Bitcoin and Fractal.
When did you realize "this actually works"?
One of our biggest sticking points was the long duration of cross-chain transactions, which required users to stay online throughout the process. This created a poor user experience. After a long and difficult period of thinking, we had a breakthrough: we realized we could design our product with both synchronous and asynchronous versions.
The synchronous version offers a pure atomic swap experience for users who prioritize security and are willing to wait, while the asynchronous version offers more convenience by slightly compromising on trust assumptions. This product design unlocked our thinking and helped us see the problem from a whole new angle.
What's the coolest thing your app can do that surprises even you?
So far, we believe DeTrading is the only platform capable of achieving fully trustless, decentralized, bidirectional atomic swaps between Bitcoin and another cryptocurrency. This was a true breakthrough, a milestone in our development, and a source of great pride for our team.
The fact that we can facilitate secure cross-chain transactions without requiring users to trust intermediaries or rely on complex smart contract systems continues to exceed our expectations.
What mistakes did you make that others can avoid?
One mistake we made was over-engineering our infrastructure for security too early in the development process. While it's always good to prioritize security, especially in the blockchain space, we went too far, investing a disproportionate amount of time and resources into building extremely complex ops and security architecture.
In hindsight, we should have focused on delivering a functional product quickly, with a baseline level of security, and then gradually scaled our security measures as user adoption and risk increased. If we could do it again, we would still prioritize security, but with the right amount of investment at the right time, not excessive effort upfront.
Where do you see your project in 6 months?
We have high expectations for the next six months: we hope to secure sufficient funding to realize our vision of enabling secure, fast, and simple asset transfers between different blockchain projects. We plan to expand our support to more public chains and a wider variety of asset types. Additionally, in the near future, we aim to build a more secure and advanced cross-chain asset bridge.
Conclusion
DeTrading's implementation of adaptor signatures for trustless Bitcoin-Fractal atomic swaps represents a significant cryptographic breakthrough. As they expand support to additional chains and asset types, Detrading's cryptographic foundations could reshape how cross-chain value transfer operates across the entire blockchain landscape.
Explore DeTrading: https://detrading.com/
Follow DeTrading on X: https://x.com/DeTradingcom
