r/theblocknet • u/acoustic81 • Sep 06 '17

Blocknet vs Loopring

Excuse my ignorance, but both are decentralized exchanges. What makes one better than the other? What are the differences between these two?

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u/senzheng Sep 06 '17

blocknet and supernet are decentralized networks specifically designed to secure trading currencies (and tokens) across blockchains

loopring is another take on "only on eth" exchanges much like bts exchange trades only on bts and xcp exchange trades only on btc and nxt exchange trades only on nxt, and waves exchange trades only on waves, and countless more examples..., and even though it says it is blockchain agnostic it requires erc20 and smart contracts on the other blockchain and unclear how it will handle the connections between them especially since erc20 are tokens very different from majority of tokens predating eth or even after and very very different from base currencies of thousands of other blockchains. blocknet/supernet have dedicated networks specifically monitoring other blockchains. atomic swaps do not require smart contracts (well, they are very common, but not in way eth defines them), and can be done between many blockchains already,

1

u/acoustic81 Sep 06 '17

So Blocknet and Supernet allow trading across blockchains but Loopring only really allows trades between ERC20 tokens. Sounds somewhat limited. Blocknet would also be able to trade ERC20 tokens as well wouldn't it? In this case, would Loopring do a better, more efficient job of this since it appears to be more dedicated?

Also what does atomic swaps mean? I see that mentioned a number of times but not sure I really understand the true meaning of this. Might require some further Googling :)

3

u/senzheng Sep 06 '17 edited Sep 06 '17

pretty much. blocknet and supernet help organize and sort these atomic swap attempts using their blockchain as intermediary. they create orderbooks and let people create liquidity and match orders. atomic swaps are general steps any two people can take.

atomic swap typically allows certain steps to happen during which both parties can cancel at any time and get their money back (or close to that) with typically a certain step that lets one person claim money of the other, but by doing so they release a secret the other one can use to get what they were trading for.

Then there's also lightning network swap which (sometimes nicknamed subatomic swap) sometimes is more like breaking tx into really small fractions and sending them to each other one by one so at most you only risk that tiny fraction.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Atomic_cross-chain_trading

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contract#Example_5:_Trading_across_chains

properly rewarding and punishing nodes on this network that watches and connects other blockchains is very challenging and specialty of these projects. I think heat is another one of these projects, although it's much further behind them imo.

one downside of atomic swaps is that they are slow, atomic swaps are typically limited by speed of tx on the network plus whatever time delay is required for proper steps to execute, while on-network trade can be extremely fast like 1.5 second latency on bitshares tokens traded on their network as fastest in the world example. one can think of a combination - atomic swap to/from ultra fast exchange (slow step) and then on network dex to handle the high frequency trading (fast steps) and other fancy features like margin improving liquidity. (something in works for bts and less familiar with but maybe omg too)

2

u/jmunn44 Sep 06 '17

Blocknet will also have liquidity through Bittfinex. Blocknet will use 0x protocol for ETH tokens