There is a very exciting trend going on in crypto these days and it has to do with decentralized crypto exchanges. Far too many centralized exchanges have been hacked in the past or fell victim to bad management thereby rendering them insolvent.
That's where decentralized, trust-less exchanges will come into play. There will be little need for a huge staff of people to man these exchanges. Also, with most of these decentralized exchanges the software sits on your computer or the exchange uses smart contracts to handle transactions.
There's a new kid on the block that is going to use the Atomic Swap tech that many have been working on for years. The 'company' is called Altcoin.io and they are building an exchange that will use this Atomic Swap tech. You can sign up for the beta by visting this link - http://www.altcoin.io?kid=JK9MG
They have also been working on an Atomic Swap wallet as well. Let me give you a brief definition of what the Atoic Swap protocol is about:
"Atomic swaps, or atomic cross-chain trading, is the exchange of one cryptocurrency to another cryptocurrency, without the need to trust a third-party. A relatively new piece of technology, atomic cross-chain trading is looking to revolutionize the way in which users transact with each other. For example, if Alice owned 5 Bitcoins but instead wanted 100 Litecoins, she would have to go through an exchange, i.e. a third-party. However, with atomic swaps, if Bob owned 100 Litecoins but instead wanted 5 Bitcoins, then Bob and Alice could make a trade. In order to prevent, for example, Alice accepting Bob’s 100 Litecoins but then failing to send over her 5 Bitcoins, atomic swaps utilizes what is known as hash time-locked contracts (HTLCs)."
If you want more detail you can visit this link - https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/guides/what-are-atomic-swaps/
Below is a screenshot of the beta Atomic Swap wallet:
I have tested the functionality of the wallet myself by using two different browsers and created two separate wallets. It worked beautifully and I easily exchanged Bitcoin to Litecoin with no problems. Basically, one wallet had Bitcoin in it and the other wallet had Litecoin. I sent Bitcoin from the first wallet and the other wallet popped up a message asking me if I wanted to confirm the request. I did and then it auto sent Litecoin to the first wallet.
This was all done over the respective coin's testnets as it is not quite ready for mainnet. But still, very exciting stuff. If you'd like to check it out for yourself then head on over to the link below:
When you get a test wallet set up; feel free to comment below and request that I help you test. I will try and keep up with as many test requests as I can so if I don't get to you right away then have patience. I am only one man lol.
Thanks for reading folks and if you have any questions or comments leave them below. Cheers!