Thread by @Ethan_Heilman

Today the beta of Arwen went live on KuCoin. In this thread I want to talk about the goals of Arwen and why they are important to me. /1

Arwen enables people to trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies without having to trust a third party. Unlike most DEXes Arwen is cross-chain allowing a user to buy or sell BCH, LTC, BCH. Why should anyone care about this? /2

Cryptocurrencies empower individuals to custody/transact their assets without relying on anything but the cryptographic assumptions of the underlying blockchain. This transfer of responsibility to users is the central feature of cryptocurrencies. /3

Currently when people trade cryptocurrencies they surrender this responsibility to third parties. This is not necessarily bad, however if cryptocurrencies are going to fulfill their promise we need trading protocols which do not require ceding custody and control. /4

DEXes aim to provide non-custodial trading but at present they don't offer a good trading experience. They have limited liquidity on their order books, trades are not instant and most have no or very limited cross-chain functionality. /5

Arwen provides instant trades (using escrows/payment channels), enables highly liquid order books as Arwen's non-custodial users can trade with custodial users at an exchange. Arwen is a cross-chain protocol that supports BTC, LTC, BCH. /6

The thesis of Arwen is that non-custodial trading is critical to maintaining the grand promise of cryptocurrencies but this requires making non-custodial trading more functional than custodial trading. We have a long road to get there. /7

If preserving this vision of cryptocurrencies is important to you I would ask that you download our beta and give us feedback. You can even trade testnet coins if you are unable to sign up at kucoin. kucoin.com/page/arwen /8

I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about Arwen in this thread. If you want to know more about the limitations of the beta and our roadmap see /9
medium.com/arwensecure/us…

Arwen white paper can be found here:
arwen.io/whitepaper.pdf /10