Settlement Providers

Ten seconds of mechanism first:

        Alice                          Settlement Provider
          │                                     │
          │  wants native BTC                   │  quotes a price
          │                                     │
          ▼                                     ▼
          ────────────  the swap  ───────────────
          │                                     │
   Alice pays on the                   SP pays native BTC
   settlement state                    on Bitcoin
          │                                     │
          └────────── one shared secret ────────┘
                 claiming either leg reveals it —
                 both legs settle, or neither does

No custody, no credit, no counterparty risk: an unfinished swap refunds, it does not lose money.

Who are Settlement Providers?

Market makers. Anyone holding native BTC who wants to earn a spread can quote prices for moving value between Bitcoin and the settlement state. There is no license, no whitelist, no protocol-blessed operator.

Why do they exist?

Because the protocol refuses to do their job. BATHRON can read and consume Bitcoin but cannot move it — so native BTC liquidity must come from someone who has it. Making that someone an open, competing market (rather than a federation, a bridge, or the protocol itself) is a design decision: liquidity is an economic problem, and markets solve economic problems.

How do they earn fees?

The spread between their quoted price and par. Competition between SPs compresses it. The protocol takes nothing.

Liquidity and inventory

An SP manages two inventories — native BTC on one side, settlement-state value on the other — and rebalances via burns (in) and its own swaps (out). Pricing that inventory is the SP's actual craft; the protocol guarantees only that settlement is atomic.

API and reference implementation

A reference SP — quoting service, swap API, dashboard — runs on the private testnet and will be published with the public testnet. The API surface is small: publish quotes, accept a swap, settle the legs.

Want to run one? Contact us.