# COMIT — BTC ↔ XMR Atomic Swap

Category: educational · Protocol & Lineage
Grade: B
KYC: anonymous_signup
Highlights: PROTOCOL, OPEN SOURCE, LINEAGE
Features: non_custodial, open_source, atomic_swap, xmr_native
Fees: Protocol page — no fees apply at this layer. Per-swap pricing depends on the implementation: see EigenWallet.
Web: https://comit.network
Last verified: 2026-05-27
Also listed at: Web3Privacy

> The COMIT open protocol behind trustless BTC ↔ XMR atomic swaps. Research home; the active end-user implementation is EigenWallet.

## Review

**The protocol home and lineage page for the canonical Bitcoin ↔ Monero atomic-swap stack.** COMIT Network published the open cryptographic protocol (HTLCs + Scriptless Scripts) and authored the original `xmr-btc-swap` Rust reference implementation; the COMIT team has since stepped back from active maintenance and the community fork — now branded **EigenWallet** — is the working continuation. This entry exists to document the lineage so the technology, the research, and the active product don't get conflated. **If you want to actually swap BTC ↔ XMR today, go to [EigenWallet](/wallets/eigenwallet).** This page is for understanding where the technology came from.

**What it is.** COMIT (Cryptographically-secure Off-chain Multi-asset Instant Transactions) is an **open protocol** designed at `comit.network` for trustless cross-blockchain swaps. The protocol's signature properties — *pure* (no extra chain, no extra token), *native* (uses each blockchain's own scripting primitives), *trustless* (no third-party arbiter), *accountless* (no signup, no deposit) — informed several concrete implementations: BTC ↔ Ethereum / ERC20 (early COMIT focus), BTC ↔ Lightning, BTC ↔ Grin, and the one that mattered most for the Monero ecosystem: **BTC ↔ Monero** via `comit-network/xmr-btc-swap`.

**Background.** COMIT was incubated around 2018-2020 as a research-grade protocol effort with associated reference implementations. **xmr-btc-swap** (Rust) was the BTC-XMR implementation — the first production-grade trustless swap between Bitcoin and Monero. After a CCS-funded maturity push and several production releases, the **COMIT team shifted focus to other projects** and stopped actively maintaining the BTC ↔ XMR repo (`github.com/comit-network/xmr-btc-swap` carries an `unmaintained` notice today, with an explicit pointer to `eigenwallet/core`).

The baton was picked up by community maintainers (binarybaron and others), who **forked the codebase as UnstoppableSwap**, added a Tauri GUI on top of the CLI, broadened the ASB (Atomic Swap Backend) maker tooling, and shipped continuously through 2024-2025. In **2025 the project rebranded to EigenWallet** while keeping the same codebase, Matrix room, and maker community intact. Today the active end-user product is **eigenwallet.org**; the COMIT protocol page (`comit.network`) is the research / spec / history reference.

**What you trust.**

- **Open protocol specs.** The COMIT protocol primitives (HTLCs, Scriptless Scripts) are published, peer-reviewed, and free to implement. The trustlessness is mathematical — no party can cheat without breaking discrete-log assumptions.
- **Open-source reference implementation.** `comit-network/xmr-btc-swap` is GPL'd and forkable. The fork lineage (UnstoppableSwap → EigenWallet) keeps the same license.
- **Battle-tested.** The protocol has settled tens of thousands of BTC ↔ XMR swaps over ~3+ years across implementations. No protocol-level vulnerability has resulted in a loss for users who waited out the refund timelocks.
- **Curator note: no operator on the data path.** This is true at the protocol layer. At the implementation layer, you trust the binary you run and the maker you pair with — see EigenWallet's entry for the implementation-specific incident history (including the active 2026-05 maker-side advisory).

**Operational specs.**

- **Active end-user product:** [EigenWallet](/wallets/eigenwallet) — desktop GUI + ASB CLI, Linux / macOS / Windows. SEPA on-ramp for EU users.
- **Original reference repo:** `github.com/comit-network/xmr-btc-swap` — marked **unmaintained**, points at EigenWallet as the maintained successor.
- **Other COMIT-protocol implementations (historical):** BTC ↔ ETH/ERC20, BTC ↔ Lightning, BTC ↔ Grin. None of these are currently active end-user products under the COMIT brand; their codebases remain on the COMIT GitHub for research reference.
- **Protocol home:** [comit.network](https://comit.network) — Matrix room + mailing list + blog. Specs, building blocks ("Native", "Instant", "Privacy-Preserving Atomic Swaps"), and historical research output.
- **Pricing.** Protocol page — no fees at this layer. End-user swap pricing is set per-maker on the implementation side.

**Operator philosophy.** COMIT's stated framing — *"Connecting all the blockchains without adding yet another one"* — was a counter-position to the early-stage "swap chain" approach (Cosmos, Polkadot, ThorChain, every wrapped-asset bridge). COMIT's bet was that **trustless cross-chain settlement should be done on each chain's own primitives**, not on a third blockchain that introduces new trust assumptions. That bet aged well for the Bitcoin ↔ Monero pair, where the resulting protocol delivered a working trustless swap years before any bridged-token approach could honestly claim the same property for XMR.

**Grade rationale.** Listed at **Grade B** as a protocol/lineage page — the underlying cryptography is sound and the lineage is documented, but COMIT itself no longer ships an end-user product for the BTC ↔ XMR pair. Users looking for an A-grade end-user wallet should use [EigenWallet](/wallets/eigenwallet). If you're a researcher or an integrator building on the COMIT primitives directly, the protocol home and the original `xmr-btc-swap` codebase remain useful references.

**Useful when:**

- You want to **understand where EigenWallet's trustless swap mechanism comes from** before trusting it with funds.
- You're a **protocol researcher** studying production-grade atomic-swap implementations between heterogeneous chains.
- You're **building a new cross-chain implementation** and want a peer-reviewed primitive (HTLC + Scriptless Scripts) as a starting point rather than rolling your own.
- You're writing about the **history of Bitcoin ↔ Monero atomic swaps** and need authoritative source links for the COMIT → UnstoppableSwap → EigenWallet lineage.

**Caveats:**

- **Not an end-user product.** This page is documentation + lineage. For actually swapping BTC ↔ XMR today, see [EigenWallet](/wallets/eigenwallet).
- **The original `xmr-btc-swap` repo is unmaintained.** Don't run those binaries directly — they may have known bugs that EigenWallet has since patched, and the ASB protocol versioning has moved on.
- **COMIT brand activity is low.** The website is up, the Matrix room is reachable, but new protocol work + active development happens on the EigenWallet side now.
- **Implementation-specific incidents apply.** The protocol layer is sound; the implementation layer (EigenWallet's ASB) has an active 2026-05 vulnerability advisory — see the [EigenWallet incident banner](/wallets/eigenwallet).

Source: https://xmr.club/educational/atomic-swap-btc-xmr