English

Atomic Crosschain Transactions White Paper

Cryptography and Security 2020-04-03 v2

Abstract

Atomic Crosschain Transaction technology allows composable programming across private Ethereum blockchains. It allows for inter-contract and inter-blockchain function calls that are both synchronous and atomic: if one part fails, the whole call graph of function calls is rolled back. It is not based on existing techniques such as Hash Time Locked Contracts, relay chains, block header transfer, or trusted intermediaries. BLS Threshold Signatures are used to prove to validators on one blockchain that information came from another blockchain and that a majority of the validators of that blockchain agree on the information. Coordination Contracts are used to manage the state of a Crosschain Transaction and as a repository of Blockchain Public Keys. Dynamic code analysis and signed nested transactions are used together with live argument checking to ensure execution only occurs if the execution results in valid state changes. Contract Locking and Lockability enable atomic updates.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.00903,
  title  = {Atomic Crosschain Transactions White Paper},
  author = {Peter Robinson and Raghavendra Ramesh and John Brainard and Sandra Johnson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.00903},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

8 pages, 8 figures, 3 code listings. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1911.08083

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:00:22.999Z