Monero 

XMR

$172

, the largest privacy-focused cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has posted a 20% price surge following the launch of the Atomic Swap implementation program last week.

On Friday, the Monero Project officially announced a rollout of the Atomic Swap implementation developed by the cross-blockchain protocol COMIT Network, aiming to simplify trades between XMR and Bitcoin 

BTC

$21,082

.

Following the launch of Monero Atomic Swaps, XMR has seen a notable surge, with its price rising from around $265 on the launch day to an intra-week high of $331. At the time of writing, the privacy-centric cryptocurrency is trading at $318, down around 2.4% over the past 24 hours, according to crypto tracking website CoinGecko. Following a solid bullish trend on major crypto markets, XMR is up over 50% over the past 30 days.

Monero Project contributor ErCiccione said that the newly introduced swap deployment is a brand new technology that allows users to exchange BTC and XMR without relying on a trusted third party like a cryptocurrency exchange. “These swaps are called ‘atomic’ because they only have two possible outcomes: either the trade is successfully completed and each trader receives the other one’s funds, or nothing happens and both traders keep the funds they started with,” he explained.

Related: Newly found Monero bug may impact transaction privacy, developers warn

According to the announcement, users can now proceed with testing out XMR Atomic Swaps by downloading the COMIT-designed software. ErCiccione cautioned users that the new swaps “might have unexpected bugs” and recommended testing with small amounts.

Launched in 2014, XMR is a major privacy-focused cryptocurrency designed to support private and untrackable transactions. At the time of writing, Monero is the 30th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, valued at $5.7 billion.