BITCOIN ATOM

Bitcoin Atom (BCA) brings truly decentralized way of digital asset exchange - with-on-chain atomic swaps on board. By using built-in hash time-locked contract (HTLCs) and its own HTLC API, Bitcoin Atom attempts to disrupt the way we exchange cryptocurrencies today, giving independence from intermediaries and any centralized entities.

We beleive that most cryptocurrency trades should be conducted on-chain in a decentralized way, as per the original Bitcoin's approach to transacting in a completely trutless environment.

Atomic Swaps (AS), currently implemented via HTLCs on-chain and potentially Lightning Network (LN) off-chain, bring an ability to swap assets directly between blockchains without any intermediaries involved. This ability is called atomic cross-chain trading, and we propose the Bitcoin Atom's support for it at its core, by bringing AS API and a set of cross-chain trading utilities into the original Bitcoin core software and forking it into BCA.

Bitcoin Atom's AS model is expected to bring transparency to digital asset trading, as attempts to churn volume via on-chain atomic swaps will be detectable by passive observes. This means that users cannot show up with a small amount of coins and then create a ton of take volume covertly.

BCA network is additionally secured by utilizing the so-called hybrid consensus : both PoW and PoS models are put in place, increasing network stability and reducing the power of miners, hence lowering the 51% attact probability. Despite having Proof-of-Stake in addition to Proof-of-Work, Bitcoin Atom is not inflaniotary in terms of emission as PoS only serves the goal of decentralizing network power. Max supply of BCA remains the same as of the original Bitcoin (21M).

IMPLEMENTATION

Bitcoin Atom is a fork of the Bitcoin blockchain with major protocol upgrades that will occur in January (block number TBA). At the predetermined block number the original BTC blockchain will be forked into BCA,and any transaction made since then will be completely separate on Bitcoin and Bitcoin Atom networks. At that moment, Bitcoin Atom will go live on mainnet and become a fully funcional cryptocurrency.

All Bitcoin holders who possess their private keys at the moment of the fork (block number TBA) will receive Bitcoin Atom at the rate of 1 BTC = 1 BCA. You need to control your Bitcoin private keys in order to claim and transact Bitcoin Atom.

Subsequently, the BCA team will focus on atomic cross-chain trading toolkit developmnent, as well as integrating the LN model with off-chain swaps into Bitcoin Atom. the roadmap covering these milsetones will be published separately.

FEATURES

HYBRID CONSENSUS

BCA network is addionally secured by utilizing the so-called hybrid consensus: both PoW and PoS models are put in place, increasing network stability and reducing the power of miners, hence lowering the 51% attack probability.

LIGHTNING NETWORK SWAPS

Bitcoin Atom development team is working on the LN implementation, allowing for instant off-chain atomic swaps. LN transaction are cheaper, more useful for smaller transaction and have better privacy properties.