The Otomic UX
With the edge LP nodes, Otomic can shift most of the complex interactions in the atomic swap to the automated software agents. That means Otomic can provide a UX on par with pool-based cross-chain bridges, but with much-improved safety, withdrawal speed, gas cost, capital efficiency, and censorship resistance.
The HTLC atomic swap approach is complex for the user to grasp. There are multiple steps of interactions, each requiring a different cryptographic key, a different wallet, and a different chain, that must happen in the precisely correct order for an exchange to succeed. The Otomic hides most of the complexity through an innovative product design. When a retail investor / user comes to Otomic to send tokens from chain A to chain B, the Otomic node network takes care of all the work in finding an exchange counterparty and ensuring the counterparty performs the correct on-chain transaction at the right time. The user just needs to click through the user interface on a simple web page. To illustrate how it works, below are the exchange steps displayed on the Otomic UI.
An especially nice UX feature of the Otomic is that the user can optionally request a small change in the target chain's native token. When a novice user sends tokens from chain A to chain B, he is oftentimes a new user on chain B and has no native tokens there. But in order to move or use the bridged tokens on chain B, he will need some native tokens to pay gas fees. It is a major hassle to then exchange and to transfer a small amount of native tokens to the chain B account. With the Otomic, the user can now bridge and exchange for a small amount of native tokens in a single transaction.
Approve token. The user clicks on a Metamask button to pay for gas to create an HTLC on chain A.
Lock token. The user clicks on a Metamask button to deposit tokens into the HTLC on chain A.
Bridge node locks token. Otomic finds a counterparty (ie node or liquidity provider, LP) who is willing to trade tokens on chain B. The HTLC on chain B is set up by this node. The user just needs to wait for one minute in this step while the UI shows progress.
Release token. If the user is satisfied with the tokens locked in chain B HTLC by the node, the user clicks on a wallet button to retrieve the tokens in chain B HTLC.
Bridge node releases token. Once the user retrieved chain B tokens, the node would receive information from the HTLC, allowing it to retrieve chain A tokens. The bridge exchange is now complete!
The video demo shows the entire bridge exchange process from the user’s point of view.
As you might have noticed, the Otomic UX improves and simplifies the standard HTLC atomic swap flow in two major ways.
First, the user who requested the bridge exchange (i.e, Alice) only needs to interact with the source chain (i.e., chain A) wallet. There is no confusing switch between wallets and chains for the user. That is because we slightly improved the HTLC atomic swap flow as follows. Now, Alice only needs to operate on chain A. If Bob does not perform step 8 and sends the B tokens to Alice, Alice still has the proof of withdrawal from Bob's step 7 and can withdraw B tokens herself.
A second key feature of this UX is that Bob must be always available and the system relies on Bob to perform most of the complex tasks. In the Otomic system, Bob is called a liquidity provider (LP) node. It is incentivized by both the transaction fee and the OBT token. We will cover LP nodes in the next section.
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