h4sh3d-atomic-swap-research.md

layout: cp
title: "Monero Atomic Swaps research funding"
author: h4sh3d
date: 19 May 2020
amount: 18
milestones:
  - name: Work is done
    funds: 100% (18 XMR)
    done: 26 August 2020
    status: finished
payouts:
  - date: 27 August 2020
    amount: 18

Monero Atomic Swaps research funding

From https://github.com/h4sh3d/xmr-btc-atomic-swap:

In blockchains where hashed timelock contracts are doable atomic swaps are already deployed, but when one blockchain doesn't have this capability it becomes a challenge. This protocol describes how to achieve atomic swaps between Bitcoin and Monero with two transactions per chain without trusting any central authority, servers, nor the other swap participant.

Motivation:

Two years ago (Dec 2017), I published a draft to swap between Bitcoin and Monero.

In March 2019 I rewrote the protocol in more details, specifying what kind of zero-knowledge proofs were needed to guarantee the "trustlessness" of the protocol and the known limitations of the scheme, funded by my previous employer.

zkao and I presented the protocol at 36C3 in December 2019 (link here). After discussing it during March and April on #monero-research-lab IRC, andytoshi's idea of using "discrete logarithm equality across groups" that sarang has a write-up here, I changed the zero-knowledge requirements by adapting the protocol, but the protocol, thus on-paper complete, was still not implementable as it used an inactive bitcoin op-code: OP_AND.

Recently I learned some new cryptographic tricks with ECDSA that should make the protocol complete and implementable with today's tools without requiring hash pre-image zero knowledge proofs.

This research will update the draft protocol to completely remove hash pre-image zero-knowledge proof requirement.