PFS Member Q&A: BasicSwapDEX
In this first Q&A with one of our member projects, BasicSwapDEX, a cross-chain, private decentralized exchange protocol, and trading app, you will learn about their product, their mission and more!
Q: What is BasicSwapDEX?
A: BasicSwapDEX is a privacy-first atomic swap-based DEX that lets you swap different cryptocurrencies using a user-friendly UI. Our goal is to provide everyone with the ability to anonymously trade cryptocurrencies without having to use a centralized platform, doxing yourself, or giving custody of your coins to some company, but our overarching mission is really about contributing to building a completely independent and resilient digital economy that's completely separated from the global fiat system and also completely anonymous from the ground up.
Q: Who is behind BasicSwapDEX, what is the story behind the project?
A: At the moment, the Particl team is behind BasicSwap. However, as we grow, we do have plans to add BasicSwap DEX-exclusive developers to the team. The story behind it is quite interesting in my opinion. You must first know that our true mission at Particl is really to build a decentralized, private economy powered by cryptocurrencies, preferably privacy coins.
Still to this day, so much of the current crypto infrastructure is still so reliant on centralized parties (i.e., exchanges, payment processors, online shops, etc), it still can't separate itself completely from the global fiat system. You're almost always going to have to resort to using centralized services whenever you want to use or spend your crypto.
We thought that was really going against the core ethos of cryptocurrencies, so we focused our efforts towards building an ecosystem of decentralized services/infrastructure to allow cryptocurrencies to thrive and leverage their full potential, without having to rely on any third-party at all. With that in mind, we first released the Particl Marketplace, a decentralized, privacy-first ebay-like marketplace.
The vision for that dApp was to enable trustless and anonymous eCommerce, essentially allowing vendors and buyers to connect with each other without having to rely on trusted parties or even pay fees. The "issue" with it was that it exclusively worked using the PART coin, a privacy coin that uses RingCT for its privacy, but with the Bitcoin codebase due to its extra flexibility compared to the more rigid Cryptonote codebase used by Monero.
And while PART is certainly an innovative privacy coin on its own — we’ve really put a lot of effort into its design — our mission is really to provide a decentralized, private economy for as many cryptocurrencies as possible, not just PART. So fixing that "issue" was the first motivation behind building BasicSwap DEX. With it, we could allow trustless, private, and fee-less swaps to take place between two peers, without any middleman.
And by integrating BasicSwap-powered services into our marketplace, we would then be able to not only offer free, anonymous swap services to multiple privacy coin communities via the DEX, but also the ability for them to leverage our eCommerce platform as well, granting them a vital use-case at the same time.
The second motivation behind BasicSwap was when Monero contributor h4sh3d published his paper on Bitcoin <> Monero atomic swaps using adaptor signature. This made it possible — even though the process was anything but user-friendly at the time — to swap BTC (and other currencies) for Monero, a major milestone towards enabling "Monero-friendly dApps" (e.g., using Monero as a form of payment on Particl Marketplace).
So we got to work and built a whole DEX around that protocol and the more regular atomic swaps (Secret Hash) as well. We did it using Particl's SMSG mixnet, and even improved on the initial scope of Monero atomic swaps by giving it bidirectional capabilities.
We've actually written a few articles about the history and evolution of atomic swaps, which may be of interest to some of you: https://particl.news/tag/stories/ and https://particl.news/bidirectional-part-anon-and-xmr-atomic-swaps-now-live-on-basicswap-de x/
We've also presented on it at Monerokon this summer:
If you want a more in-depth dive into the history and mission of BasicSwap, I would recommend this presentation we gave at Monerotopia back in May: https://particl.news/basicswap-monerotopia-presentation/
Q: What were the issues you encountered when creating BasicSwapDEX and how did you solve them?
A: We didn't encounter many major roadblocks while developing BasicSwap, but working with so many different codebases is definitely a challenge and can take up time, both in terms of integrating them, but maintaining them as well. That’s because each integration has to be done on a case by case basis, and there’s no straightforward, one-size-fits-all process that can be blindly followed. On the up side, it enables us to explore different architectures and learn more about the projects we integrate.
Q: Do you track any data of your users, at all?
A: No. BasicSwap runs locally on your computer. There is no central server or any parts in the code that tracks anything you do. We do not even have trackers on BasicSwapDEX.com, we're simply not interested in capturing any of your data. The less we know, the better it is!
Q: What is your take on the upcoming (over-)regulation, especially when it comes to privacy coins?
A: They would be terrible if there weren't any DEX that are compatible with privacy coins in the works. But since there are, we think these will ultimately prove to be quite beneficial (in the long run) to privacy coins as it will drive their usage away from centralized parties, as it should. That being said, we do foresee challenging times ahead while this transition towards decentralized services takes place. But with everything currently happening in the world, notably the advent of spy coins (CBDCs), social scores, increase in censorship, and etc, privacy coins will evolve from what is vastly considered by the public to be a "fancy feature" to a necessity to most people.
Q: What coins are/could get listed in the near future?
A: While we do focus mostly on privacy coins, we also have a list of transparent coins we'd like to integrate moving forward, including Ethereum and similar blockchains just due to the sheer size of their communities and the liquidity they can bring. Besides, we strongly believe that users of transparent coins should have tools at their disposal to improve their privacy, even if a specific coin does not provide any natively. In that sense, BasicSwap can act as a “layer-2 privacy solution” if users start initiating swaps with some of the privacy coins available on BasicSwap. So while some may argue that BasicSwap should only prioritize privacy coins, we instead believe that we should strive to make privacy as accessible as possible to as many different chains as possible. However, for the moment, we prefer not to comment too specifically on what coins we will add as each integration has to be done on a case by case basis and we don't know what possible challenges we may face working on them.
Q: Does BasicSwapDEX charge any listing fees?
A: No listing fee. No swap fee. The only fee you pay is the usual on-chain transaction fee of the coin you're sending in exchange for another coin.
Q: Where do you see PriFi & BasicSwapDEX in five years?
A: With the current trajectory of world events and anti-liberty regulations, it is only logical that more and more projects will start uniting and working together under the guise of preserving our freedoms and privacy. At BasicSwap, we certainly aim to be a conduit for that, being the bridge between different privacy coin communities and enabling each of them to leverage the best products and aspects of other privacy projects. Essentially, we want BasicSwap to help craft an intricate web of interoperability between privacy projects in order to make them as resilient as ever and impossible to take down.
Q: Since BasicSwapDEX is hosted on GitHub (owned by Microsoft), is there an intention to switch to GitLab?
A: This is something we've discussed internally. In all likelihood, we'll keep using Github as our main code collaboration platform but will likely start publicly mirroring the code on Gitlab soon as well. We already have backups on Gitlab in case.
Q: Is BasicSwapDEX performing any kind of address screening, similar to what THOR Swap has introduced?
A: No, we are deeply opposed to it. However, we've been discussing potentially adding some code to detect Bitcoin "taint". Not that we give this concept any credence, but users of other DEXs (BISQ for example) have had problems with tainted Bitcoin being exchanged for Monero, and when they deposit these coins on exchanges or other services, they end up being hit with requests to prove the source of the coins or get their account outright frozen.
So by adding a way for people to verify the taint of a Bitcoin before swapping, it can help users determine the level of risks they want to take on before committing to the swap. Additionally, it could create a market for tainted coins; if a user has a way to use tainted coins, they may benefit from a discount from a tainted Bitcoin seller. Mind you, a tainted Bitcoin doesn't mean they're coming from illegal activities. There are a lot of false positives or outright "victims" that got sent tainted Bitcoin against their will and that are now stuck with them.
We really hate even the concept of tainted coins and blockchain tracing, but it's part of reality and may be an issue for some of our users if nothing is done about it, so we are considering this as an option later on. We're open for comments and thoughts on this, we haven't yet made up our mind.
Q: What is the actual BasicSwap volume? I mean real. According to BasicSwap website front-page, about 4kkk$ only BTC trades per 24h.
A: We cannot know for certain because, for one, all swaps are inherently anonymous and there's no data being fed to BasicSwap about it. That's by design. Additionally, anyone can run its own order book. There is, of course, the main/default order book which everyone has access to, but if you want, you can create your own order book, put liquidity on there, and share its viewkey with only a few select individuals.
Without its key, it's impossible to tell if this order book even exists, so in reality, there could be dozens of live order books, some could even have 1,000x more transactions happening on them than on the default one, and no one would ever be able to know. This is privacy cranked up to ridiculous levels, and we certainly see a ton of use cases for it, notably large private OTC deals between organizations and wealthy individuals. You basically get all the benefits of BasicSwap, but without your offers being publicly exposed on the default order book.
But to be a bit more direct in regards to your question, if I had to make a guess, I would say the volume and liquidity is still relatively low due to how early we are. We are, however, working on light services and web access, and we strongly believe once these are ready and the DEX is as easy to use as regular, centralized exchanges (or really, at this point it'll probably be even easier and quicker to get started) is when we'll see usage of BasicSwap explode.
Nonetheless, we’ve observed a steady increase in the number of offers on the public/default order book in the last few weeks. This is really the only metric we can use to determine adoption.
Q: Why did you become a member of the PFS?
A: It was a no-brainer as our missions are completely aligned. We are fighting and striving for the same finality, and we do see collaboration, not tribalistic competition, as the answer facing the current and ramping challenges privacy coins face. Most of us that operate and dedicate our lives to improving online privacy rarely do it out of an intention to get rich, but rather operate on an ideological level. As such, uniting forces and working together is the only logical way ahead if we are to stand a chance against the behemoths that oppose human liberties.
Getting Started
If you are interested in trading on the BasicSwapDEX, here are tutorials on how to set it up: BasicSwap Installation Guide
Links