Not another bitcoin fork
Bitcoin Atom is not just another fork, but it's bringing additional value to bitcoin users. As per the ANN:
Bitcoin Atom (BCA) brings a truly decentralized way of digital asset exchange – with on-chain atomic swaps on board. By using built-in hash time-locked contracts (HTLCs) and its own HTLC API, Bitcoin Atom attempts to disrupt the way we exchange cryptocurrencies today, giving independence from intermediaries and any centralized entities.
We believe that most cryptocurrency trades should be conducted on-chain in a decentralized way, as per the original Bitcoin’s approach to transacting in a completely trustless environment.
Atomic Swaps (AS), currently implemented via HTLCs on-chain and potentially via Lightning Network (LN) off-chain, bring an ability to swap assets directly between blockchains without any intermediaries involved. This ability is called atomic cross-chain trading, and we propose the Bitcoin Atom’s support for it at its core, by bringing AS API and a set of cross-chain trading utilities into the original Bitcoin core software and forking it into BCA.