I am happy to report progress since the last update on supporting Hush, DragonX and any other Zcash Protocol coins that use Sapling Shielded Addresses (zaddrs) on BasicSwap. The pyjubjub python module is now on PyPI! This makes it easy to install and use pyjubjub from any project. It is as easy as typing pip install pyjubjub. Imagine a world if privacy coins worked together against surveillance dystopia instead of fighting against each other! What a world it would be.
Currently BasicSwap is the best decentralized exchange that supports privacy coins. It uses technology called Adaptor Signatures that is exponentially better than the original way of doing atomic swaps between coins, called Hashed Time Lock Contracts (HTLCs). It supports Monero and various other privacy coins, but not any Zcash Protocol coins. pyjubjub brings us one step closer to many new coins being supported by BasicSwap, such as Hush, DragonX, Zcash, Pirate, Ycash and any other coins that use Sapling zaddrs.
The reason this helps all these different coins is because they all use the same Elliptic Curve, called Jubjub. Bitcoin and Monero use different elliptic curves which are much more widely used. That means supporting Bitcoin forks and Monero forks is very easy in BasicSwap, no low-level cryptography code needs to be written, it already exists and is shared across all forks. Adding a new Bitcoin fork or Monero fork is mostly adding a new GUI and code to manage the full nodes, which have similar structures. Adding Zcash Protocol support to BasicSwap is a large undertaking, but it's worth it. I have been researching how to do it for about a year and pyjubjub is the culmination of that research. Now BasicSwap (which is written in Python) can do low-level elliptic curve operations, in Python, on the curve we need. There is still more work to do, but this was likely the hardest hurdle to overcome. Without these elliptic curve operations, like generating a public key, nothing else can be built.
If you are a fan or developer of any Zcash Protocol coin that would like to work with us to make this happen, we would love to have you. We don't only need developers, we could really use people willing to test code. Come join us:
-- Duke
June 17 2025