Burst and Qora announced yesterday that the first ever trustless atomic cross-chain transfer of coins has taken place between the blockchains of the two digital currencies.Burst and Qora announced yesterday that the first ever trustless atomic cross-chain transfer of coins has taken place between the blockchains of the two digital currencies.

An atomic cross-chain transfer is when two users with different digital currencies, on separate blockchains, are able to complete an exchange of coins without having to trust a each other or any third party exchange or escrow service. It is seen by many as the first major step towards the development of a truly decentralized exchange, allowing users to buy, sell and trade coins in a secure and trustless way.

The transfer was completed using Burst’s smart contract system. Here is how it works, in the words of its developers:

To perform an Atomic Cross­Chain Transfer (ACCT) two ATs are created (one for

each of the two blockchains). A hashed secret (lock) is published by the creator of

the first AT (known as the Initiator) and the creator of the second AT includes this

same hashed secret (the second creator does not know the secret ( key ) ­ only its

hash).Refund timeouts are in place for both ATs should things not proceed but

assuming all is good the secret is revealed by the Initiator in a message sent to the

Responder’s AT which transfers the funds in the “other blockchain”. The Responder

then sends the secret back to the Initiator’s AT to complete the transfer.

– ACCT Press Release

Other digital currencies are free to integrate the same code into their own code, to enable ACCT of their coins with other blockchains and contribute towards the development of a decentralized exchange.

The next step for Burst and Qora developers is to create a convenient graphical user interface for regular coin users to take advantage of everything that ACCT has to offer.