Zcoin became one of the first coins to engage with Decred project to establish cross chain atomic swap. Decred has already established cross chain atomic swap with BTC and LTC late last year.
What this means is you can send Zcoin to Decred wallets without a third party helping the process. This process is more suitable for large transactions and when it's not frequent as it's not a cheap transaction. The process involves on-chain transactions and the speed of the process depends on mining of blocks. It takes roughly an hour for a transaction to go through for Bitcoin currently.
Users at both side of the chain will pay for the transaction. To send the coins and to redeem the coins.
atomic-swap is a crucial piece of development in the blockchain technology and will help mass adaption of crypto currencies in 2018. When you perform a task and want to get paid for it, the person who pays you should be able to pay you in any token and you should be able to redeem it into your wallet.
Decred performed its first atomic swap in September with Bitcoins. Decred has positioned itself as a competitor to bitcoin with a strong focus on community input and open governance. Zcoin announced the integration on twitter on 13 May.