We'll be here for you all next week.
Hey everyone, glad you guys are able to join today.
We're really excited to present a exciting new feature
from Core, a few of the developers who helped create it
are actually here right now.
So I think if we can get the host to invite them,
they'll come up as speakers as well, in addition to myself.
And we can chat through some of the great stuff
Sweet, I think we have them here now, awesome.
So I'll probably hand this over to you guys in short order,
but today we are excited to have our first technical dev spaces
on the new Core Chain Devs channel.
The idea here is that we want to be talking
about more technically oriented topics.
We'll be doing a series of these spaces
over the coming weeks and months and years probably.
We have a bunch of really exciting stuff coming out,
this quarter, next quarter, et cetera.
And the first one of those things
is this pretty exciting cross-chain swapping feature
that we're bringing to Core and also to actually
So it's a blockchain agnostic and can really
change how assets are transferred around
and trading occurs throughout the entire industry.
So two of the developers who were working on it,
two contributors at Core, DAO, are oski.f and devbarnyard here.
So I'll let them introduce themselves
Looking forward to the chat.
I'm oski.f, Ethereum developer.
Been in the space for quite some time now.
I'm very excited to talk about this atomic swapping mechanism
that we've come up with at Core.
I'm devbarnyard, and I'm also a Core contributor at Core.
I'm building something very exciting with oski
that we're looking forward to explaining to you today.
Oski, did you want to maybe start the conversation
with explaining a little bit on a high level
So one of the main missions for Core
is to be as close to Bitcoin as possible
and maximize the feature set of Bitcoin
and provide some interesting features, something
that we've come up with as a way to really maximize
the use case of Bitcoin is a new swapping primitive that
can actually be applied to any chain architecture.
So this isn't just limited to Bitcoin.
It also works across EVM chains and other interesting chain
But it's basically a way to have a cross-chain swap
between two people without needing to bridge any funds.
So one of the main drawbacks to the cross-chain interoperability
space at the moment is the risk surface
that bridges introduce to the crypto space.
There's a massive risk surface, as we've all seen,
that can be attributed to bridges.
A lot of massive hacks have occurred.
So what we've come up with at Core
is a way to conduct cross-chain swaps between any two chains
without actually needing to have a bridging mechanism
within that swapping lifecycle.
It's a way for those two users who are swapping
to transfer those assets or make those assets available to each other
in a trustless way without any bridging whatsoever.
One of the really exciting things about this new protocol,
as you can call it, that we're going to be integrating into Core
is that it's actually quite an old style of cryptography that's
kind of been lost into the ages with all of the hybrid innovation
The protocol that we're integrating into Core
has lived on Bitcoin for probably six or seven years.
And nobody's really used it to its full extent, we feel.
It's a way that you can trustlessly interact
with another user on a blockchain or between multiple blockchains
and trustlessly swap two assets between two people
on one blockchain or on two blockchains.
And people have been doing this on Bitcoin for a long time
with something called a hash time lock contract
or script in the case of Bitcoin.
And what it's really going to enable us to integrate is a new protocol
swap between some asset between two chains with no intermediate.
The interoperability protocols around the space.
Basically, none of them are fully trouble
between true decentralized
Yeah, so I think Barney's internet is cutting out a little bit,
so I'll just pick up where he left off.
Basically, there's a few different advantages to the way
that we're implementing cross-chain swaps
compared to some of the other decentralized exchanges,
let's say, that are offering a similar kind of proposition.
So unlike something like Uniswap, there's no slippage in a Core
It's fully decentralized.
It doesn't even really require some kind of DAP
What we've come up with here, instead of thinking of it
like some kind of DEX DAP, we've really come up
with a new primitive for enabling cross-chain swaps
that can be built into new applications for people
who are building on Core.
It shouldn't be considered its own application layer.
It's more of an actual one layer deeper protocol level
primitive that can be integrated as a protocol
into other applications or future applications
that are going to be built in the future.
So in terms of how a user might experience this, right,
am I correct in saying that basically a user on, let's say,
Ethereum might put up some sort of offer
to say I'm willing to trade X amount of Ethereum
for like Y amount of Core.
And then a user on Core might show up
and accept that offer, so to speak.
And then that trade is executed trustlessly
between those two parties on the different blockchains.
So there's a couple of different matchmaking mechanisms
that we're coming up with.
There's a P2P version of the swap
where two people who agree in some off-chain fashion,
maybe they're talking to each other on Discord
or something like that, they agree they want to swap
two different assets on one chain to another.
So let's say Core to Ethereum.
Then they would come to a UI and be able to conduct
that cross-chain swap with each other in real time.
Both of them would be present
and going through a set of steps
to perform that trustless swap.
That's the first kind of very simple proof of concept version
of this system that we've come up with.
And that's all implemented as a proof of concept
and we have tested it and it works
and that's kind of where we are in our development process
with that particular version.
A second version which is going to be
a kind of more fleshed out compelling user experience
is we're going to create a set of software
such that anybody can come in as a market maker
and say I have these assets that I would be willing to swap
for this other set of assets at any moment
and then provide a set of sort of decentralized
trustless market makers who are able
to facilitate those swaps.
So those are the two versions.
Right now we have the kind of proof of concept level version
where two people who know that they want to swap
with each other and are responsible
for that matchmaking themselves
would be able to use that mechanism
that we've come up with through a UI
that's going to become shortly available.
But the kind of end goal here is to provide
a really compelling user experience
that's very similar to say something like Binance
but instead of it being a centralized,
let's call it a centralized exchange piece,
it's more of a fully decentralized system
that has a very kind of familiar
centralized exchange feel, let's say.
But the important part to recognize here
is that the underlying cryptographic mechanism,
the underlying swapping mechanism,
is fully trustless, it's fully decentralized
and it doesn't require any intermediary
or third party to orchestrate that swap.
So by using this brand new primitive
that we've invented for cross-chain swapping,
we'll be able to kind of provide
or enable other developers to provide
a really familiar, very friendly experience
that feels like a centralized exchange
but is taking advantages of all of the trustlessness
that is inherent in the Bitcoin blockchain
or any of the EVM blockchains like Ethereum.
So you really end up with the best of both worlds.
You get a really nice user experience
that you might be familiar with on a centralized exchange
but with all of the assurances
that you're fully in control
using this cryptographic mechanism that we're employing
called a hash timelock contract,
which is facilitating the underlying swap.
It's super interesting, as you're talking,
I can't help but kind of feel that analogy
might be something like transfer-wise,
where if I wanted to, let's say,
send money from the UK to the US
and you want it to go from British pounds to US dollars,
how transfer-wise does it is,
they're kind of like matching up two people.
Let's say there's one in the UK with the pounds
and one with the dollars,
and they kind of like send to each other's bank accounts,
And transfer-wise, it's kind of like this intermediary
that's doing this matching.
Is that like an interesting kind of analogy for this system
except for that in the initial version,
there kind of won't be this intermediary,
which is why you need to just have like a P2P,
like peer-to-peer kind of bi-directional trade.
instead of like a, let's say,
a transfer-wise corporate entity,
there's just like this set of existing offers
coming from these decentralized market makers
that can be accepted by any users on either side.
Yeah, I think that's a nice analogy.
Like if I was going to explain it in very simple terms,
the main advantage of this system
compared to the traditional cross-chain systems
that use bridges is that there's a massive introduction
of risk when you introduce a bridge
to the cross-chain ecosystem.
Because what a bridge does is basically
it allows you to lock up assets on one chain,
and then it gives you, let's say,
a synthetic version of that asset on another chain.
But while you're using that synthetic version
your locked assets are at the mercy of hackers
that might be able to exploit that bridge.
And you're really trusting that the developers
have implemented that bridge in a way
such that your assets are safe.
With this atomic swapping mechanism
that we've come up with, there is no bridge.
There's no way that you lock your funds
for a massive period of time
while you're using some other synthetic version of funds
It's literally, you lock up your funds,
the person you're trading with locks up their funds,
and then the cryptographic mechanism
allows you to unlock each other's funds simultaneously
so that it's an instant swap with instant settlement.
You're never relying on some third-party bridge
where you don't know what the risk of using that bridge is.
You don't know when they're gonna get hacked next.
You don't have to trust the operators of the bridge.
It's a completely trustless system
that has removed that bridge entirely,
and you're able to just trustlessly,
you and somebody else, facilitate a swap,
and there is no risk surface
with regards to a malicious actor coming in
and saying, well, I only want a half complete swap,
or I want to try to steal your funds.
There's a full cryptographic assurance there,
and you're able to facilitate that swap instantly
with someone else, just the two of you.
So that's the important part.
You're completely eliminating the risk surface
that bridges traditionally would introduce
in a cross-chain swapping system
because of this new primitive that we've come up with.
And this primitive, one of the exciting things about it is
that essentially we're now able to couple core with Bitcoin
more closely than any other scaling solution,
and we're basically enabling core
to have a fully trustless way to attach itself to Bitcoin
in a way that's not tamperable by anybody,
that is a true scaling solution for Bitcoin
and a way that people can move between Bitcoin and core
in a purely decentralized and trustless way,
which has never been done before.
Yeah, that's super exciting.
Kind of want to dig in a little bit
to some more of the advantages.
I know you guys were describing
it's a little better than other solutions
that might require a bridging layer
where obviously there's another vector for your funds
to get lost or hacked or et cetera,
and a variety of other things.
It seems like we've talked about
how this could connect core with Bitcoin.
I think we also were talking about Ethereum here,
but in terms of how many chains it supports,
would this be entirely chain agnostic
such that any blockchain could come and participate in this?
And could it be that, let's say,
a swap could occur between Bitcoin and Ethereum,
or does core always have to be in the middle here?
How exactly does that all work
and how scalable out to the whole industry is this?
Yeah, so the cool thing about this is that
it's completely chain agnostic.
It's actually just a cryptography primitive
much in the same way that SHA-256,
which is a hashing algorithm,
can be used on Ethereum or it can be used on Bitcoin
or Solana can implement SHA-256.
It's very similar in the way
that it's just a protocol level mechanism.
It doesn't actually know what chain it is being used on.
It's completely agnostic to what chain it's being used on.
So you could, in theory, do a cross-chain swap
between core and Cardano or Solana and Avalanche
using this mechanism that we've come up with.
And so a way to look at it is just,
it's a way to lock your assets in a cryptographic fashion
and enable someone else to lock theirs
in a similar cryptographic fashion
and then simultaneously unlock each other's assets
in a purely trustless way.
So even weird and wonderful chain architectures
that we haven't even come up with yet,
as long as they can support very basic cryptography
on a kind of protocol level,
they will be able to implement this primitive
and we will have immediate interoperability
between core and that chain.
So the prospect of scaling this to new chains,
even unknown chains that might have different ways
of implementing their primitives,
it's kind of evergreen in that sense
that we can hook up our swapping mechanism with them
as long as they support basic cryptography,
Yeah, and once we have implemented
and distributed the initial version onto core,
anyone is gonna be able to integrate their chains
into our protocol themselves
because the system is centralized and trustless.
It won't require the core team
to necessarily integrate other chains on behalf of the chain.
That chain can just by themselves integrate into our system
and then our system will become fully interoperable
and trustless with them by default.
Yeah, I think it's interesting the comparisons
you were making about like no slippage
and no bridging in a way, right?
You just kind of have this mental model of,
if I wanna go from, let's say Ethereum over to Solana
or something, you can go through this like
centralized exchange, of course,
there's like risks and benefits to that.
You can use like a cross-chain bridge
and then when you arrive,
and so you wanna go from Solana over to Bonk, right?
You wanna swap on some decentralized exchange that exists.
There's then slippage due to the nature
of how the decentralized exchange is structured.
There's also like NEV, right?
Where someone can kind of front run your transaction
and basically you get that a worse deal
and they take some off the top.
I think almost any crypto user has experienced
that happening to some degree, right?
I think the solution here you're describing is exciting
because you're solving all of those problems at once,
It sounds like you're basically solving all of them
by approaching the problem in a brand new way.
It's almost like it's like a zero to one type of improvement
as opposed to maybe improving a little bit
upon the existing structure.
It's an entirely different approach.
So I find that really exciting in terms of the potential
scale and then like the utility that this can provide
both the core and core relationship to Bitcoin,
but also between any two chains, right?
As we're just saying, whether it's Ethereum to Solana,
it could use this same system.
I think it's really exciting in how it unlocks potential
for every blockchain, which is a very exciting kind of range
of how impactful the product can be.
At its base, this protocol is very simple
and the beauty of the protocol is in its simplicity.
So if you look at something like Uniswap V3,
you have liquidity pools of assets
and the price of those assets compared to each other
is on a spectrum like an automatic price calculated scale.
And so the Uniswap model, for example, has the issue of slippage.
So if you purchase a large amount, the price will change a lot.
MEV, as you said, people can look at the mempool
and see you've done a transaction
and then put their own transaction before you
so that they get some of the value of the slippage
All of these complicated AMMs have all of these downfalls,
but because of the simplicity of the protocol
that we're building, which is essentially
just two people getting together and swapping two assets,
there is no one to come in and perform a MEV attack on you.
There is no slippage between the assets
that two people are swapping using this protocol.
And so due to its simplicity, it doesn't
have all of the caveats of current decentralized exchanges
when we're talking in particular about swapping.
And that's the beauty of this technology.
We've defined a protocol now that at its base
is very simple, but enables us to now build complicated things
on top of it that can provide the user experience people
are used to with swapping assets on a centralized exchange
like Coinbase or Binance or on a decentralized exchange
like Uniswap, but without the caveats of centralization
or a MEV attacks or slippage.
And so that's what we're really excited about.
Even though this protocol itself is very low level
and very simple, it removes all of the headaches
of traditional decentralized exchanges in particular
Yeah, and let me add a little bit of color to that as well.
If you look at something like Uniswap v2, Uniswap v3,
it's very specific as to what assets it supports.
So it would just support ERC 20s.
Whereas this swapping mechanism that we're talking about now,
it doesn't just have to support fungible tokens.
It can support a swap between some fungible tokens
and an NFT or maybe a rare sat on Bitcoin
So it's also, it's not just agnostic
as to which chain it is operating on,
but it's also agnostic as to which asset it is swapping,
like what kind, what class of asset it is swapping
for another class of asset.
Really, it just boils down to a mechanism
for trustlessly locking and trustlessly unlocking
So if you're conducting a swap with somebody else,
with your assets, our protocol that we've come up with
is really just a clever cryptographically secure way
of you locking your assets, them locking their assets,
and then both having the assurance of being able
to unlock each other's assets.
And so if nobody unlocks each other's assets,
you can refund yourself and they can refund themselves.
But if they unlock your assets,
it makes their assets available to you
using a special cryptographic technique.
So it really doesn't matter what the class of assets
It can be ERC20, can be ERC721, 1.55,
or even some strange new asset
that may come out in the future,
like, or 404 or something like that.
So it's an extremely powerful mechanism for swapping
because it really eliminates the notion of asset class
and which chain you're on.
So it really pulls in the idea of full interoperability
between any chain architectures
because the mechanism itself doesn't care
what is being swapped and where it's being swapped.
It can just guarantee that the assets do get swapped.
That's insanely exciting.
That's really, really cool
in terms of the global interoperability
and how it brings the entire industry of blockchains closer.
And you start breaking down these barriers
and these walls between these parallel blockchains
that kind of run in isolation, right?
And we have to have all these different mechanisms
so they can communicate with each other
or share data or transfer assets, right?
Whether you do that through different bridging mechanisms
or through a centralized exchange,
which is just kind of like hopping
from one parallel track to another, right?
I think it's really, really exciting
I also am pretty happy that,
well, this is incredible for Core.
I think it's amazing that the product addresses
the entire set of parallel blockchains.
Every single blockchain can benefit from this
and it brings the whole industry a lot closer together
as opposed to just saying,
oh, well, Core can talk to every blockchain.
No, actually, every blockchain
can now talk to every other blockchain.
I think that's a really novel breakthrough
and could potentially really change
the types of applications that can be built
and the direction of different protocols and applications
from a technological standpoint.
In terms of like how users can experience this,
you mentioned kind of the initial version
will be a P2P or a peer-to-peer kind of version
where let's say you and I are different blockchains
and we agree, we're in some Discord channel
and we find each other and we agree to do this swap.
Of course, that's not as scalable as some sort of system
where an order book, per se,
where users can actually just go find whatever asset
they need on whatever chain, right?
So in terms of how this product gets rolled out
and how users actually experience it,
you spoke a little bit about the initial version,
but what does that ideal version look like
and what kind of networks
are gonna be supported initially?
How's it all really gonna work?
Yes, so in the base case,
we'll be launching a fully P2P version,
like you said, which is just two people coordinate
with each other and say, I want to swap my asset.
For your asset, do you agree?
And they say yes, and then they start the swap
That's kind of a proof of concept
that we're gonna enable the community to kind of test out
and gain an understanding of how it works
and that's kind of the most basic and simple manifestation
But once that's rolled out and people get used to it,
then we get feedback on it,
then we'll be launching an order book version
which is going to look very similar
to a centralized exchange such as Coinbase or Binance,
but it will be using the fully trustless,
fully decentralized mechanism that we've come up with.
The idea is to provide a very familiar user experience
that just feels just like a centralized exchange,
but really there's nothing centralized about it.
It's using the fully decentralized protocol
One thing I just wanna add as well
with respect to the advantages of this system
when compared to some other exchange mechanisms out there
is the idea of going back to the fully decentralized
And I guess one of the kind of highest goods
that crypto strives for is the idea of self custody
and self management of assets.
And with HCLC, given that there is no kind of intermediary
who has to be part of the swapping mechanism,
it really lends itself to the idea
of self custody of your assets.
You never have to put your assets into Coinbase
or into Binance or Kraken or what have you,
and you never risk having, let's say like an FTX situation
where your assets are in an exchange
and then something goes horribly wrong with the exchange.
It's a fully kind of self custody,
where you're always completely in control of your assets
and you never have to delegate your control to an exchange
and you never have to delegate control
So I think maybe the most compelling outcome
of implementing this system is that anybody who uses it
will be able to use it in a way
where they completely have control of the assets all the time
and they never have to delegate any control
or responsibility to any third party system whatsoever.
So just going back to like kind of how we're gonna roll
this system out, the first kind of iteration
that's gonna be available is going to be
the P2P swapping mechanism between Core and Ethereum.
So you'll be able to have assets on Core
and swap them for assets on Ethereum
or have assets on Ethereum and swap them for assets on Core.
And there are a few ideas around how we're going to roll out
the matchmaking portion of this system
so that people can find other people
that want to swap their assets
and then they can conduct that swap together.
We're thinking that the first kind of simple way
that we'll introduce this is we'll have a channel
on Discord where people can kind of convey their intents
and say what assets they have and what they're willing
to swap and we can get clever about how that will look
and make sure it's kind of a user friendly experience.
But basically it'll just be a channel for users
who have certain assets to come in and say,
I want to swap this asset for that asset.
And if there's anyone around who also wants to swap
at that particular price,
they'll be able to do a P2P swap
and test out that instant settlement idea.
But the next version of that swapping mechanism
will be a lovely fleshed out user experience
that feels very similar to Coinbase or Binance.
So yeah, as Oscar said, Ethereum and Core
and then with that you'll be able to swap
between like the native gas assets,
so like Ether, for example,
and then also some ERC20 tokens.
And while that's being released,
we'll be working very hard on the Bitcoin to Core side.
And that's, in my opinion, the most exciting part
which will be the second iteration of the protocol.
And this kind of matching mechanism that you're describing,
like the improvement on the Discord channel, so to speak,
like the Discord channel is really intended to,
it sounds like, prove that the fundamental
like cryptographic locking mechanism works
for people to P2P swap between them, right?
And after we've proved that,
we move to this kind of more,
you've used the phrase like user fluid experience, right?
What does that look like?
How are users getting their trades, so to speak, fulfilled?
So essentially under the hood,
every single transaction in this protocol
is gonna be a peer-to-peer transaction
where two people come together and interact
And so the next level above that,
to make it more of a like order book experience,
similar to something on Coinbase or Binance,
who are going to be there all the time
to facilitate trading between people
who are interested in making swaps.
And these market makers can be anybody in the community.
I'm gonna become a market maker, for example,
and provide some liquidity to the system.
you're essentially providing liquidity of an asset,
let's say Ethereum on the Ethereum blockchain,
and then anyone who wants to swap their assets
if you're also happy to do that swap as a market maker,
you can then facilitate that trade.
And so when we have a whole bunch of market makers
who are willing to provide liquidity into the system
and generate revenue for themselves,
that will then create an order book,
very similar to an order book you would see
on a centralized exchange.
And that will basically facilitate the experience
that people are very used to
when trading on centralized exchanges.
In terms of the like supported networks
and supported coins, you're trying to pull out there.
Could this then be expanded even further
to stuff like BRT20 and Ordinals?
Is there like a limit here in terms of like assets
that would not be compatible?
It sounds like it's so generalized,
it's going to work across the board.
Yeah, any derivative asset on Bitcoin will work just fine.
The only like constraint, let's say, or requirement,
is that the underlying chain has a, you know,
mechanism for a time lock.
So Bitcoin has the idea of a time lock.
On Ethereum, you have smart contracts
that have the idea of a time lock as well.
So really any chain that can support a time lock
for a particular asset can support that asset
in our swapping mechanism.
And so that applies to any kind of derivative asset
on that particular chain.
So Ordinals on Bitcoin will work just fine.
EST20, EST721 on Ethereum will work just fine.
And really any weird and wonderful asset design,
asset class, should work just fine
as long as the underlying chain on which it is supported
also supports the very, very basic cryptographic primitives
like time lock, like SHA256.
And so I don't see any asset class that currently exists
that wouldn't be supported by this HTLC mechanism
we've invented simply because it just falls
under the class of cryptographic mechanism
that all of these blockchains just support
So it's really any asset.
The crazy thing as well is that it's not even necessarily
just swapping, it's fully decentralized
and trustless data sharing between blockchains.
So you could even do crazy things like purchase
a new ENS name on Ethereum with Bitcoin
because you'll be able to trustlessly swap with somebody
on Ethereum who could then purchase it for you
and then transfer the ownership of that ENS
to the person that they're swapping with.
So not only could you do these very simple swaps
that are agnostic to the type of assets on either side,
you can do any kind of like agnostic data sharing
and really arbitrary code running or anything
between these two chains.
That's really interesting.
So the example that you mentioned with purchasing
the ENS name and then transferring it back
to kind of the purchaser, right?
How does this work in terms of sequence of steps
for this like arbitrary data that's being transferred, right?
Because I'm just wondering how complex can that code
or that data that's being shared really be?
Obviously it's incredible that it can be generalized.
I think it completely changes how you can use your capital
that exists on one blockchain to basically use
any application or service on any other blockchain
right away, which is absolutely insane, right?
What are the limitations there?
So for example, in the example of purchasing an ENS name,
instead of locking up an asset
as part of a swap on Ethereum,
a user could lock up an arbitrary call data
into like a contract that stores this call data.
And then when you perform the swap,
the cryptographic mechanism basically releases a password
that enables you then to unlock an asset
or run arbitrary code on the side
that you're swapping with.
So in this case, instead of the user
that you're swapping with locking up assets,
they could lock up call data in a contract.
And then as part of that swap,
you could then call that call data as part of that swap,
It's kind of an abstract idea,
but it basically means that not only
could you swap two assets,
you can have contracts with other people
that enable you to run code,
which just opens the floodgates
to a billion different opportunities
to write interesting applications.
Yeah, quite literally a billion
in terms of the opportunities
if you have generalized data passing between blockchains.
I think it is an entirely new infrastructure,
kind of architecture for how you can then compose
cross-chain blockchain applications.
It almost to me sounds like the term cross-chain
because chains no longer in a real sense
They'll all kind of work together in a way.
You can have arbitrary data passing,
which of course includes value,
whether it's a native gas token or ERC20 tokens,
NFTs, everything's on the table.
I think it's really interesting.
I'm sure as the engineers who have built this,
you guys have thought deeply about the implications
of that shift in the industry.
What kind of applications do you think
are completely novel that will be enabled
I think, obviously, sometimes it's hard to predict those.
You get the internet and you can't always
immediately jump to, okay, Uber is gonna be on a phone
and I can call a taxi with it.
These things take some iterations,
but what kind of areas do you think
that it unlocks that were previously closed?
I think it enables, yeah, like you say,
a multitude of different things.
One of the things I'm most excited about,
because this protocol to me feels like basically a mesh
that ties all blockchains together,
you could have a DAO that was over every blockchain
instead of just one blockchain.
You could have a protocol that could interact
with any blockchain and be the glue
that ties everything together.
And so that's the thing that I'm most excited about.
This technology kind of encapsulates
the final piece of the puzzle when it comes to
tying all of these very fragmented chains
with fragmented liquidity and fragmented data
into one cohesive set of blockchains
that can interact with each other, talk to each other
and be truly interoperable for the first time.
Yeah, just add a little bit of color to that as well.
I think those are kind of like long-term goals
And I think all of those ideas there are valid.
But I would speak to a more kind of short-term advantage
that we have right now, which is the idea
of having the ability to swap assets across chain
and move assets across chain
without introducing the massive risk surface of bridges.
So one thing for context is before contributing to Core,
Dev Barnard and I had a bridging platform
and we were kind of exposed to the massive array
of catastrophic hacks that have happened
to all these different kinds of bridges in the space.
And it really feels to us or it felt to us at the time
that the Achilles heel in the crypto space
was just how vulnerable the bridging infrastructure was
and just how catastrophic and disastrous
some of the hacks to the bridging infrastructure has been
and the existential risk ongoing
for the current bridging infrastructure.
But with this swapping mechanism
that we have now, we've just completely eliminated
the need for bridges per se.
And so there's such a massive reduced risk
and such a huge increase in the viability
of the self custody of your assets
and the ability to swap them
and be in total control of your assets
throughout the lifetime of that swap
and throughout the lifetime
of you holding assets on different chains.
That this is a really, really exciting development
just from the perspective of security.
I think I'd love to get some of the audience members up here.
I know some people have requested to ask them questions.
We'd love to hear what you guys are thinking about
whether they want to take it in a more technical direction
Yeah, so if the host could just approve
some of the folks that come up
and we can ask them back and forth, I think.
Cool, yeah, that sounds great.
We'll see, I think they're working on it now.
But basically for the folks who are just joining,
we've been going on for maybe 40 minutes here,
but basically we've been introducing a new trustless
kind of cross-chain swapping primitive
that allows for these trustless cross-chain swaps
to occur between any blockchain.
So that can be core of Ethereum, Ethereum to Bitcoin,
It can work for native gas tokens
or any assets on the chain,
whether that's PRC20 tokens for EVM compatible chains
or NFTs in the case of Bitcoin would work for stuff
like BRC20s and ordinals, all without slippage,
which is a huge problem of kind of traditional AMMs,
completely trustless in terms of bridging.
So you don't have to trust whether it's a centralized entity
like a centralized exchange to sit in the middle
as you transfer between two different blockchains
or whether it's a decentralized bridge,
which as we've seen sometimes have their own flaws
in terms of surface area to be hacked, right?
Just provide a little like color and context
for folks that are just joining.
We'll see if we can get folks up here to ask some questions.
It looks like no one's been approved to be a speaker yet.
Host, are you able to approve someone
to come up and ask a question?
It looks like they're accepting the request now.
I think we have Maruf Hussein.
Not sure if you are with us at the moment.
If not, we can just grab another one of our requesters
and maybe bring them up to ask.
Great, thank you very much.
Everything is fine working on our game.
I would like to note that this is very important
for battery games since many games are multi-chain
and many users, what is more important,
many users have NFT assets on different networks.
And for utility in the game, it's very great
then you can easily integrate some NFT activities
from other chains, for example,
user by some NFT on Ethereum or Ordinald
and you can use the same NFT in the game
with some kind of integration.
That's why I think it's very important topic
not only for DeFi, but for GameFi
or we love to call it better Web 2.5 game.
And my question is, do you plan some initiative
about especially gaming and to move different NFT
from different networks to make the process
of integrating NFT assets in current games on core easily?
Yeah, it's a good question.
So the best way to look at this mechanism
that we've come up with today is less about moving assets
between chains and it's more about trading one asset
on one chain for another asset on another chain.
So normally when you would use bridging infrastructure,
the idea is you would bridge one asset on one chain
and then get that same asset or a version of that asset
And the motivation for doing that would be so that
you can then interact with that asset on that chain
for something like lending or swapping
So really like the only reason you would bridge an asset
is so that you can use it in some other fashion,
mostly for trading on the destination chain.
So our philosophy behind this mechanism is that,
well, if your idea is that you want to take one asset
from one chain and trade it for another asset
on another chain, which is basically fundamentally
what you're going to do at the end of the day
when you bridge is just going to take another step.
Why don't we remove that bridging mechanism altogether
and just stick to the trading and introduce a new mechanism
that kind of eradicates the need for a bridge
and enables the facilitation of that trade
that you were going to do anyway.
So coming back to your question,
which is like integrations for assets in gaming,
I can see a couple of advantages there for the idea
of introducing a massive amount of liquidity
that is agnostic as which chain it's on.
Like, let's say you have some gaming asset on polygon.
Traditionally, you would be restricted
to the amount of liquidity on polygon
that would be available to trade for that asset.
But by using this mechanism, somebody could come along
and say, I want to trade this very specific
niche gaming asset on this very specific niche chain
for, let's say, USDT on a more general chain
that has a lot more liquidity.
So it's really just breaking down the barrier
between chains and saying, you know,
the liquidity that would not necessarily be available
on a particular chain, that doesn't really matter anymore
because it's available on this other chain.
And we now have a mechanism to kind of,
for lack of a better word, bridge that liquidity together
or take advantage of all the liquidity
across all the different chains
without having to care what chain per se
our original asset is on.
So you could swap your gaming asset on Avalanche,
let's say, for some other asset on Binance Smart Chain
without having to worry about where those assets are situated
and where they're coming from.
Yes, thank you for your answer.
And another utility which I have in my mind
that also you can, a user can have some bonuses.
For example, you make a promotion
that if you transfer or bridge your NFT assets
from one game or from one network to our game,
you will be able to get some bonuses in our game
And it can be some kind of utility like reward system
and it will be great for this feature.
Sweet, thanks so much for the question.
I see a few more speakers.
Do any of you guys have questions for us?
If not, maybe we could get a few other folks up.
I know the hosts are doing a good job of kind of
allowing people up and if they're not maybe unmuting
or with us at the moment, kind of transferring them out.
But if anyone is a speaker and has a question
that we haven't gotten to yet, feel free to ask it.
In the meantime, we can either see
if Murad Hussein, are you still with us or no?
If not, maybe host, we can invite some people up.
And just again, for the people that have just joined,
can kind of give a similar little shield
to the one I gave recently.
I have a recap of the future that we're introducing,
which is a trustless way to swap not only assets
but also arbitrary data between any two blockchains.
It's done by basically locking your assets
into a kind of time-locked contract
is a good way to think about it.
And then you agree with someone
who has a similar kind of time-locked contract
on another blockchain to unlock each other's assets.
And you can make that agreement all cryptographically
and it's trustless such that
either you both get your stuff or no one does.
I think an interesting analogy we were talking about earlier
in terms of translating this back to maybe like,
quote unquote, like real world or like traditional finance
would be something that looks like TransferWise,
where you are moving something like British pounds
instead of like going through the whole infrastructure
of banking and wire transfers.
The analogy here on for blockchains
would be something like centralized exchanges or bridges.
Instead of doing that TransferWise allows you
to basically send your pounds to directly to someone else
and they then send their dollars to you over in the US
and TransferWise just sits in the middle
and kind of like matches up those two users
which is kind of similar to like a P2P transaction,
just that like P2P nature is attracted away
In that way, it's pretty similar to what we're introducing,
which is pretty exciting.
I think obviously we've seen how much traction that got.
And I think when you're moving assets
and especially generalized data between blockchains,
it's been a very intractable problem for the industry.
We've just seen so many different hacks,
all the biggest hacks have really been related to bridging.
I think the ability to trustlessly transfer
not only assets but generalized data to,
they're very exciting in terms of the potential applications
that can be built on top of that.
It is a new swapping primitive
that completely removes the need for a bridge
and it doesn't care what chains the assets are on.
So you can swap any asset of any asset class
between any two chains completely trustlessly.
You don't need to worry about any bridging whatsoever.
custodies your assets for any part of the swap.
You are always completely in control of your assets.
And the swap between those two chains
or those particular assets is guaranteed
to happen for both parties or for nobody at all.
it's a game changer with regards to
how smooth and seamlessly you can trade one asset
on one chain for another asset on another chain.
And finally, it provides true interoperability
in a way that no other project or platform
has ever been able to do.
And it tightly couples core to Bitcoin
in a truly trustless and decentralized way.
Yeah, I think it's absolutely massive.
I really liked the question that was asked earlier
by Pipsudy as well related to gaming.
the concept of like transferring NFTs between blockchains
and then the understanding coming from Oscar
that we're not actually transferring the same asset
and making a copy of it on the other chain,
which is how we kind of think about bridging now.
But every asset that goes in
is kind of the native original version of that asset.
And then out off on the other side
is basically another native original version of that asset.
what we say sometimes about bridging, right?
It's like a mint and lock bridge.
It's, there's no like burning of the assets
and these kind of like more complex kind of processes
that develop these honey pots.
I suppose a potential honey pot
could be the actual time lock contracts themselves, right?
If I lock up my funds in this like safety vault,
now that's a potentially,
potentially an attack vector, right?
Where some hacker can come in
and they manipulate the code to some degree,
maybe similar to a bridge, they could get access to that.
How do you guys feel about that potential attack vector
in terms of like the trustlessness?
I know we're saying that it solves bridging problems, right?
is that basically the same like category problem
that bridges already have?
Like how is this solution different or better in that case?
There's only really two, go ahead, Brian.
Yeah, there's only really two vectors of attack
with this particular protocol.
The first one is, let's say that you're swapping
between two stable coins on two different networks.
If the network of the other party gets hacked
or the asset gets de pegged on that other blockchain,
there's really nothing you can do with any protocol
to stop yourself from getting wrecked in that instance.
And the other vector of attack is
when you initiate one of these swaps cross-chain,
a user is setting like a secret password
which gets cryptographically hashed
and then that hash is what's used by the other party
to facilitate this swapping.
And so if you choose a password that's weak
or the person you're swapping with or anyone,
well, just the person you're swapping with actually,
gets that password before they're meant to,
then that is another vector of attack.
But it's similar to storing your private key,
you're never meant to give your private key to anyone,
you're meant to make sure that that stays secure.
So as long as you follow best practices
when you're using this cryptographic primitive,
and as long as you're swapping between networks
that are trusted and not unstable,
it really is one of the best, if not the best
and most secure way to transfer assets,
swap assets between chains.
Yeah, maybe we should spend a little bit of time
very briefly at a high level explaining the mechanism
of this swapping protocol.
Basically let's, when two people come together
and they agree that they want to swap,
their assets for each other's assets,
let's say person A has ETH on Ethereum
and person B has, let's say MATIC on Polygon.
The first person would come along and say,
okay, I'm going to lock up my assets on Ethereum
and I'm going to use this special cryptographic lock
And now I'm going to invite you to lock up your assets
using the same lock on your chain.
So then both people have locked up their assets
on their respective chains
using the same cryptographic lock
that the first person knows the answer to.
When they unlock the second person's assets,
they're exposing the mechanism,
they're exposing the secret that unlocks that lock.
And in turn, they're exposing the secret
that unlocks their assets
because both users lock up their assets
in exactly the same way cryptographically.
When the first person unlocks the other guy's assets,
they're exposing the way for the other person
So it basically guarantees
that if the first person unlocks the second person's assets,
the second person is definitely guaranteed
to be able to unlock the first person's assets.
So either nobody unlocks anybody's assets
or both people are able to unlock each other's assets
in a fully trustless way.
So you can see as a consequence of that,
the actual locking mechanism itself
doesn't care what assets it's unlocking.
It doesn't care what chains the assets are locked up on.
It can be both assets are on the same chain,
both assets are on different chains,
both chains are different architectures.
It really just guarantees
that if the person who initiated the swap
unlocks the second person's assets,
that second person now knows exactly
how that unlocking mechanism works
and is able to replicate it on the first person's assets.
So there's always a guarantee
that both parties within that trade
are able to unlock each other's assets.
And that way you can facilitate cross-chain swaps
between any assets on any chains
because the locking mechanism in and of itself
doesn't care what assets it's unlocking.
Yeah, thanks for the explanation.
I think it is nice to dig a little bit
into the more technical side
of how the feature really works,
given that we are on like the core chain devs channel.
I think it's just an exciting, great feature.
Like knowing that you two kind of came up with this,
so to speak, in terms of recognizing
the underutilized primitive of these
like a hash time-locked contracts
that have existed on Bitcoin for years
and then extrapolating that out
such that it makes it interoperable with core,
you get going to the entire ecosystem of blockchains, right?
For any generalized asset
and then any generalized data as well.
I just like the scope and scale I think of the solution
is really, really interesting and exciting.
I think it really helps to put core on the map
in terms of like technical contributions.
Already we have some pretty impressive stuff
with the Satoshi plus consensus
and obviously how everything works
with like delegation of hash power from Bitcoin miners
and every chain has its own most chains to be honest
and not every chain, but most chains have it,
they have their own kind of interesting technical perspective
and interesting things that they're doing.
But I really love also about this specific feature
is that it's beneficial of course to core,
but also it's a really technical thought
like leadership piece for the entire industry.
So that everyone can benefit from.
I just really, really love that approach.
And I think there's gonna be a lot more positive things
that come out of really removing these barriers and walls
that currently exists between blockchains.
And I don't just mean in terms of like,
socially or like the communities,
they disagree with each other.
But even in terms of like your assets are stuck
on this chain, you can't really get under the other chain
without going through some intermediary
that has its own downsides.
They'll have different ones.
If we're able to get rid of that,
I think the whole industry is gonna be a little bit more
closer in terms of the community side.
And then on the application side,
the potential for applications to be built here,
which as we've highlighted a few times,
like really, really exciting to me.
Yeah, I think for me, so I was familiar
with like the asset transfer aspects here,
but in terms of the generalized data passing,
I think that really kind of got hit home for me
with like hearing you guys explain it.
And yeah, I'm having trouble with and wrapping my mind
around the potential applications that can now
in reality be built, right?
I do have a kind of a final question here for you guys.
Like what kind of timeline are we talking about
for people to actually participate in both
like the P2P asset swapping and then like this order book,
more like fluid user experience version.
Is this stuff, you know, ready to go?
Or are we talking about, yeah, when exactly?
So I'm not sure exactly whether Core has released
kind of an official timeline for any of these products,
but what I can say is that a proof of concept
for this P2P system has already been developed
and deployed across numerous chains.
And we have conducted fully trustless atomic swaps
with instant settlement internally as kind of as tests.
And so those contracts are kind of out there
in the wild now and the transactions
that we've tested on them are, you know,
burned into respective blockchains.
And so we know for sure that this mechanism works.
And like you said, I think you alluded to a point
that's very important just a moment ago,
which is this actual HGLC mechanism that we're employing
for this particular use case,
the mechanism in and of itself
is not a new paradigm in cryptography.
It is a well-tested, well-understood
And we're just applying it in a novel way
with regards to, you know, different EVM chains
and eventually integrating it with Bitcoin.
So something that's really exciting about this mechanism
is that it's already existed for, you know,
And so it's very well understood
and its edge cases are also very well understood.
So as far as development progress is concerned,
we have the first, internally,
we have the first P2P version of the system
And that could be released and deployed at any moment.
And we would be satisfied as developers
that it is in a good spot to be used effectively.
As far as the order book kind of next generation,
more user-friendly version of this system is concerned,
we have a prototype for the market maker software
where anybody could spin up that software
and become a market maker in the order book system,
that system that looks very similar to, you know,
And that will be probably rolled out, you know,
a few months after we roll out the P2P version.
But the P2P version core functionality
is all working alive and well.
And that will be rolled out pretty shortly.
Yeah, I know with like the official launch,
it's obviously probably more in the realm of, you know,
business and marketing folks.
But in terms of where we're at
from a technical perspective,
really exciting that the hard kind of process
of putting all of these software pieces together
and implementing the full architecture is well on the way
and in the very final stages here.
I think that's nice because it really does open the path
for users to start knocking around at this and using it.
And also for builders to start implementing
different applications and playing around with it
to see what does it really mean to have generalized data
passing and value passing between different blockchains.
I think there we can, you know, start to wrap up.
Not sure if you guys have any final thoughts.
I just wanna say on my side, you know, really great work
in terms of bringing this feature to market
and really excited for how this is gonna change things
between different blockchains and the whole industry.
I think there's absolutely massive potential here.
We'll be hearing a lot more about this feature
in various ways over the coming months and years.
Yeah, well, closing remarks from me would be that
one of the major bottlenecks in the cryptocurrency space
right now is the lack of true interoperability.
And the interoperability that we do have is constrained
by the massive existential risk of bridges getting hacked
and other kind of malevolent forces in the space
with regards to custody of assets.
What we've got here is a way to forego all of those risks
by enabling people on an individual basis
to trustlessly swap and communicate on a crypto level
such that they are in full control of their assets
to all of the different chain architectures
that they would have to rely on bridging for traditionally.
So this is, you know, a new kind of next gen way
to full interoperability without many of the caveats
that are currently inherent in the bridging infrastructure.
So in that sense, I think this is a next gen take
on having interoperability between chains.
And that's what I'm excited about
mostly from the security perspective as well.
One final thing I will say is that
just in terms of research and innovation
in the Bitcoin space, as a community,
we're getting very close to some, you know, big milestones
like, for example, truly pairing Bitcoin and Core together
in a trustless and decentralized way.
And there's never been a better time
to be a contributor to Bitcoin,
to be a contributor to Core.
There's, you know, a lot of very clever
and ambitious people here at Core.
And we're building some, you know,
very interesting technology.
So just what you've heard today is really just like
the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what Core
as a organization, as a DAO,
is looking to build and is building.
And so there's never been a better time
to become part of that journey.
Yeah, couldn't agree more.
I just wanna thank you guys for coming on
and also everyone who listened in and asked a few questions.
This was the first of a series
of kind of technical talks we'll do.
As Deb Barnyard is saying, you know,
this is really the tip of the iceberg.
We do have even more cool protocol level features
coming out for Core, and we'll walk through them,
both releasing documentation about them
and doing these kind of X spaces
to make sure that the community is aware
of what we're building and that developers can get excited
about jumping in and contributing.
So thanks everyone for your time.