A Privacy-Preserving and Highly Fault-Tolerant Cross-Chain Atomic Swap Scheme

Abstract

As the blockchain ecosystem continues to diversify, the lack of interoperability among heterogeneous blockchain systems has become a critical bottleneck, leading to fragmented data silos and limited collaboration. Although numerous cross-chain protocols—such as atomic swaps, sidechains, and relay-based mechanisms—have been introduced to address this issue, they often face significant challenges related to privacy, security, and decentralization. In this paper, we propose a novel cross-chain protocol that enhances traditional hash-locking mechanisms by integrating zero-knowledge proofs and chameleon hash functions. Our approach ensures strong path confidentiality, such that reconstructing the payment path is computationally infeasible under the discrete logarithm assumption, even in partially compromised networks. Additionally, we introduce a multi-path atomic swap framework that supports concurrent routing and preserves transactional autonomy, enabling users to flexibly select preferred payment paths. We evaluate the performance through theoretical analysis and simulation. Comparative results demonstrate that our solution achieves secure atomicity with minimal trust assumptions and improved latency compared to existing methods.