CITADEL Team,
I thought I'd give the bitshares platform my first try using your interface, and I'm not seeing my CITADEL.MONERO balance.
[snip]
beetjuicesundae, the transaction has finally been finalized
http://cryptofresh.com/tx/9975e8aa5d13067e26cc4946ca8a04096a0b4493.
I cannot recommend using CITADEL. I've tried reaching out on this forum, r/monero, r/xmrtrader, and steemit.com about my attempt to get XMR on the bitshares exchange using citadel. There's been zero response from anyone connected to the project after 10 days. I'm very disappointed, and it's soured my outlook on the bitshares platform, which I was looking forward to using. If users have to trust the Gateways (like CITADEL) as much as they have to trust centralized exchanges, then what's the point??
I'm profoundly sorry for you bad experience. We're a very young gateway and we're still working out bugs ALONG with adding new features (on a daily basis). You might've also noticed, that we haven't yet established a dedicated support channel, nor ran any ad campaigns. We're still in alpha stage, and rely on people like you for the time being. I have to personally thank you for being this patient, and for staying civil in your posts.
Almost a month passed since your request, so that's definitely some terrible support. We'll try to improve our services, and we'll definitely hire a dedicated support team at some point in the future.
As for you general sentiment regarding BitShares wrt Gateways. Your analysis is indeed correct. In BitShares, the trust is shifted out of the exchange platform itself and onto external gateways. On the first glance, that might look like exactly the same thing -- but it does provide some solid benefits. Even if some gateway turns rogue (or simply goes out of business), the whole system is not going down with it. In fact, some other gateway may pick up the tokens and continue to withdraw/deposit them. For example, both BlockTrades and OpenLedger support OPEN.BTC token. CITADEL plans to support some other external tokens as well (given they pass the requirements, not all bitshares tokens are created equal). Even if that doesn't happen, it's still nice to spread your eggs among different baskets. When some centralized exchange goes down, you lose ALL your tokens. Lastly, BitShares protects you from other kinds of fraud, not directly related to withdrawal or deposit -- in particular, it ensures there are no fake orders, and it never goes "out of service" just when you need it the most.
Summing it all up - if our reputation continues to suffer, some other gateway trading Monero will appear and the show will go on. Of course we'll try our best to enhance our reputation (along with support services) aiming to be THE monero gateway.