Sharon Goldberg: Arwen – Centralized Exchange Trading Without Counterparty Risk

We're joined by Sharon Goldberg, CEO of Arwen, a protocol solution for non-custodial trading. From communications engineering to Internet protocol security, to then becoming a Professor at Boston University, she shares her journey into the world of cryptography. Beginning as a whitepaper on eclipse attacks, Arwen has grown into a platform enabling atomic swaps on centralized exchanges. Sharon chats about Arwen's integration with KuCoin, how it compares to ShapeShift, Interledger, and Lightning, and the exciting new release of the Layer-2 atomic swaps from Ethereum into Bitcoin.

Topics covered in this episode:

- How Sharon became interested in blockchain technology
- The meaning of an eclipse attack
- Arwen's co-founder Ethan Heilman
- The backbone of Arwen
- The Arwen protocol and how it uses atomic swaps
- How trading takes place on the exchange
- Arwen vs Shapeshift and Interledger
- Creating multiple orders using the same channel
- Arwen vs Lightning and the use of SegWit
- How the relationship with KuCoin was formed

Episode links: 

- [Arwen website](https://www.arwen.io/)
- [Arwen's first white paper on eclipse attacks](https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/263.pdf)
- [Arwen's Trading Protocol whitepaper](https://arwen.io/whitepaper.pdf)
- [Announcement of Arwen's partnership with KuCoin](https://medium.com/arwensecure/arwen-partners-with-kucoin-to-offer-secure-non-custodial-trading-24af298d5dbd)
- [Arwen's Twitter](https://twitter.com/arwensecure)
- [Sharon Goldberg on Twitter](https://twitter.com/goldbe)

Sponsors: 
- Cosmos: Join the most interoperable ecosystem of connected blockchains - http://cosmos.network/epicenter

This episode is hosted by Sunny Aggarwal & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: [epicenter.tv/305](https://epicenter.tv/305)