View source for CoinSwap

'''CoinSwap''' is a non-custodial privacy technique for bitcoin based on the idea of [[atomic swap]]s. If Alice and Bob want to do a coinswap; then it can be understood as Alice exchanging her bitcoin for the same amount (minus [[miner fees|fees]]) of Bob's bitcoins, but done with [[Contracts|bitcoin smart contracts]] to eliminate the possibility of cheating by either side. The closely-related idea of [[atomic swap]]s has the important property of ''atomicity'', where an exchange of blockchain tokens either happens or not at all, there is no possibility of one side cheating the other.

CoinSwaps break the transaction graph between the sent and received bitcoins. On the [[block chain]] it looks like two sets of completely disconnected transactions:

 Alice's Address ---> 2of2 multisig escrow address 1 ---> Bob's Address
 Bob's Address   ---> 2of2 multisig escrow address 2 ---> Alice's Address

Obviously Alice and Bob generate new [[address]]es each to avoid the privacy loss due to [[address reuse]].

In this example the only distinguishing mark of CoinSwap transactions is that they involve a 2-of-2 [[multisignature]] address. As 2-of-3 multisig is far more common as of 2018, CoinSwaps could be done with a 2-of-3 multisig using one fake public key, so it is really a 2-of-2 multisig between Alice and Bob. With [[script]] techniques like ECDSA-2P or [[Schnorr]] signatures it would become possible to have coinswaps that are completely indistinguishable from any other transaction on the blockchain. CoinSwap could be said to allow bitcoins to teleport undetectably to anywhere else on the blockchain. Non-CoinSwap transactions would benefit because a blockchain analyst could never be sure that ordinary transactions are not actually CoinSwaps. They also do not require much block space compared to the amount of privacy they provide.

CoinSwaps require a lot of interaction between the involved parties, which can make this kind of system tricky to design while avoiding denial-of-service. They also have a liveness requirement and non-censorship requirement, meaning that the entities taking part must always be able to freely access the bitcoin network; If the internet was down for days or weeks then half-completed CoinSwaps could end with one side having their money stolen<ref>https://joinmarket.me/blog/blog/the-half-scriptless-swap/</ref>.

== History ==

CoinSwap was first proposed by Greg Maxwell in October 2013.<ref>[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=321228.0  CoinSwap: Transaction graph disjoint trustless trading]</ref>. In February 2022 '''MercuryWallet''' was the first CoinSwap implementation has been deployed<ref>[https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2020-May/017898.html Design for a CoinSwap implementation for massively improving Bitcoin privacy and fungibility]</ref><ref>[https://gist.github.com/chris-belcher/9144bd57a91c194e332fb5ca371d0964 Coinswap design document]</ref>. In June 2020, the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Foundation Human Rights Foundation] (a New York-based nonprofit that promotes and protects human rights globally) granted $50,000 to [https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Belcher Chris Belcher] (one of the main contributors to the [[Privacy]] page) to work on the project.<ref>[https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/the-human-rights-foundation-is-now-funding-bitcoin-privacy-development-starting-with-coinswap The Human Rights Foundation Is Now Funding Bitcoin Privacy Development, Starting With CoinSwap]</ref>

== External links ==
* [https://gist.github.com/chris-belcher/9144bd57a91c194e332fb5ca371d0964 CoinSwap implementation design document] by Chris Belcher, May 2020
* [https://joinmarket.me/blog/blog/coinswaps/ Technical explanation], July 2017
* [https://github.com/AdamISZ/CoinSwapCS Implementation in Python], abandoned since 2017
* [https://www.mercurywallet.com Statechain & CoinSwap Wallet], February 2022

== See also ==

* [[Privacy]]
* [[Atomic swap]]
* [[Hash Time Locked Contracts]]
* [[CoinJoin]]

==References==
<references />

[[Category:Privacy]]