Private Bitcoin is coming!
The first expansion of the year is coming soon and it marks a big technical, product and exposure milestone for us as it sets the foundation for us to expand into other NON EVM chains such as Solana later this year. Within the first expansion we’ll be enabling the integration between EVM chains and native BTC, allowing users to swap privately between any EVM chain and the Bitcoin network
Our Unique Value Proposition
Currently in order to stay private on-chain, crypto users are required to interact with custodial and centralised products like FixedFloat, ChangeNOW, CEXes and others.
By using a centralised solution you can indeed remove the link between a source crypto address and a destination crypto address from the average viewer, because all the information linking the addresses together is stored on a centralised service’s database, however this means that this centralised entity may still see those links.
When you send funds to a centralised service, you are giving away custody of the funds to them by sending it to their wallet address, and trusting there won’t be any issues, such as insolvency due to an exploit when you wish to get those funds back.
The Illuminex team believes there should be a way to exchange and store your crypto assets privately with no need to use centralised solutions for it. Utilising Oasis Sapphire’s unique confidential features, we are building a solution!
What we already provide and the role of our Bitcoin integration
Right now illumineX is already capable of doing cross-chain swaps between various EVM chains and assets on those chains, such as Ethereum, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Oasis Sapphire and Polygon.
But our vision is far broader than just providing cross-chain EVM private swaps. We are now actively moving through our roadmap, with the next key component being support for native non-EVM chains and Bitcoin being first on that list.
For a long time, it has been difficult for Bitcoin users, the majority of who prefer privacy, to convert their Bitcoins into other types of assets, especially EVM chain based assets, such as ETH, stable coins etc., without interacting with centralised exchanges.
At some point, ThorChain appeared as a solution to swap Bitcoin for EVM assets in a non-custodial manner, which was a massive success for it. However, ThorChain doesn’t cover the privacy demand, and all your transactions (swaps) remain public there.
With the Bitcoin integration into illumineX, we will bring a seamless, non-custodial and private wallet of Bitcoin and other assets, integrated with our cross-chain private swapping engine that already supports many EVM chains and assets. This means that Bitcoin users will be able to natively swap and hold BTC, with privacy by default!
Comparison Table of Bitcoin Swap Services
How does illumineX enhance privacy?
illumineX is achieving privacy of asset transitions by wrapping all the bridged tokens into a special type of ERC20 private tokens on Oasis Sapphire Privacy Layer.
With Bitcoin, this will remain the core concept of privacy. We are developing a protocol that allows us to implement a lightweight Bitcoin node to verify blocks and transactions from the real Bitcoin blockchain.
A deposit transaction goes to a P2SH Bitcoin address that is controlled primarily by the smart contract, with a confidential state on Oasis Sapphire Privacy Layer.
When the transaction is confirmed to be included into a valid Bitcoin block with 5–6 confirmations, the contract will mint pegged BTC tokens on Oasis Sapphire, and credit this BTC to a wallet according to the depositor’s instructions.
When Bitcoins are withdrawn from illumineX (e.g. user swaps into BTC from any other cross-chain token) — pegged BTC tokens are being burnt and the smart contract builds a signed transaction to send native BTC to the receiver address.
In case you want to swap your BTC into any other cross-chain asset such as ETH, USDC, USDT, BNB, etc. , it will wrap pegged BTC on Oasis Sapphire Privacy Layer into Private Wrapped version, swap using illumineX AMM Engine into Private Wrapped ETH (pETH), and put the received Private Wrapped ETH (pETH) into the output buffering queue before unwrapping it and sending to Ethereum Mainnet to the destination.
More details about the buffering process and why it is important can be found here
But how about a private BTC wallet?
Now the user owns Private BTC on their stealth, gas-less wallet and can store it there as long as needed, and send it back to the native Bitcoin network at any time, or swap it into another supported asset privately right from the gas-less stealth wallet.
In both cases the end result is that the user receives Bitcoin with no public connection between the initial depositor(s) and the receiver(s), introducing a private solution for a Bitcoin wallet integrated with private cross-chain swaps!
How will the Bitcoin integration impact illumineX?
Bitcoin integration is eagerly anticipated by our community. We believe that being able to offer the only private, decentralised and non-custodial platform for Bitcoin <> EVM swaps, to a user base (Bitcoin users) that is very privacy-minded, will let illumineX satisfy a strong market demand and achieve product-market fit.
This in turn means increased adoption, and with it increased and more sustainable revenues, enabling larger and more frequent buyback & burns.
Compliance
illumineX is built upon the principle of compliant privacy. To read more about our approach to fulfilling our compliance obligations while offering confidentiality to our users, read our compliance page here.
