Atomic cross-chain trades, explained: a hands-on walkthrough of HTLCs

Cross-chain trading has a hard problem at its core: how do you move value between two ledgers that don't speak to each other, without either side getting cheated and without parking the funds with a third party? The answer the industry settled on, years before "intent-based DeFi" was a phrase, is the Hash Time-Locked Contract — an HTLC. It's the primitive underneath atomic swaps, the Lightning Network, most cross-chain bridges that don't trust an oracle, and the settlement leg of Hashlock Market