What Is the Swap Protocol?

The way we exchange digital assets and cryptocurrencies will undergo some radical changes in the future. In the case of Ethereum, multiple projects are working on this and finding it to be much easier said than done. ConsenSys, a respected entity in the Ethereum development world, has come up with a peer-to-peer exchange protocol known as Swap.

Swap Will Change the way we Exchange Assets

Using a centralized platform to exchange cryptocurrencies is not as fun or convenient as it could be. There is a distinct trade-off between being in control of your funds and using a service which does all of the legwork. This new breed of digital assets was designed to put customers in control of their money in the first place. However, that option is not there with centralized platforms. The companies are the custodians of your money at all times.

A decentralized solution for exchanging cryptocurrencies and digital assets will come to fruition at some point in the future. Some of these projects exist already, but they have experienced difficulty gaining traction. A project such as Coinffeine, for example, is what decentralized peer-to-peer exchanges may look like in a few years from now. The only downside is how people must run the software on their computer in order to perform exchanges, whereas a normal exchange is seemingly always accessible.

Thankfully, various developers around the world have been coming up with new ideas for creating P2P exchange protocols. Swap is one of the latest projects, having been developed by the Ethereum development community known as ConsenSys. Swap is a new protocol which seeks to facilitate the trustless exchange of various assets using the Ethereum network. Users will no longer need to use centralized exchanges or over-the-counter settings whatsoever.

Although this concept is still just a white paper at this point, it is obvious some people will compare it to 0x. The latter protocol was also recently introduced and focuses on decentralized exchange services as well. A decentralized order book, such as that used by 0x, is quite significant. Swap, on the other hand, will connect buyers and sellers directly, removing the need for any exchange-like structure.

It appears ConsenSys has put together some code to power the Swap protocol, though it has not been made open source at this time. Right now, the plan is to keep improving the code base and release it to the public at “some point in the future.” For now, the main focus is bringing additional developers on board to continue developing this new protocol and introducing additional features and tools. Making Swap as extensible as possible will take months – if not years – to finish.

All of this goes to show that decentralized exchange solutions will take over from their centralized counterparts at some point. This is good news for all cryptocurrency and digital asset enthusiasts. We need some new solutions to cut out intermediaries at every possible turn. Swap may be the solution that finally brings this concept to the masses, although it is still too early to tell what the future may hold for this project. We look forward to seeing the source code being made public.