[ slippage ]
I think that an important point with regard to this matter is that its significance depends entirely on the service in question. Services that only require a one-way transaction will not have this as even a potential problem.
But yes they will, the problem is 50% less than when exchanging back and forth, but it's still there.
Equally important is the fact that the issue is entirely addressable by the design of any given service (i.e. by a coin, not by the Blocknet), and these services have not been designed/optimised for the Blocknet.
For example, if a service requires that coins be returned to the client, then they don't actually have to be exchanged, and so an escrow service might work better.
This would eliminate slippage and thereby present a competitive advantage to any service that offers it.
And what would this do to anonymity set?
The point is that you're worried about something that is (a) readily surmountable and (b) hasn't arisen yet. You're pre-empting an issue and then worrying about it as if it's a real problem.
In my opinion, you should've worried about it beforehand (if you want to portray a professional and competent image to potential investors that is), and not after some people start realizing it's going to be a problem.
It isn't. In a free market of coin-based services, there'll be competition on a new level. Coins will have no problem inventing clever ways of rendering quality services and rising to the top of the pile.
The issue of slippage should be something that blocknet solves, so every coin can benefit from it. If it isn't, then a whole lot of perceived usefulness of blocknet just disappears.
Let's just get some perspective here.
There are 3 matters that have been raised:
1) The remarks above are based on a mistaken understanding of the relationship between the Blocknet and the services that run on it.
Like the internet, it is the Blocknet's role to provide a platform for potentially any service at all to run on it.
But it is not the Blocknet's role to also ensure that the services provided are all optimally designed. Imagine TCP/IP was supposed to ensure that websites never loaded slowly. No, that's the role of the web designer.
This is where similar services compete for customers.
2) Slippage:
Slippage is a natural and irremovable function of liquidity and trade size. It's downright weird to expect the Blocknet to eradicate slippage, when its role is to provide a framework or toolset, not a service. If a given service requires no slippage, well then its creators will need to have a way of avoiding slippage.
Off the top of my head I've come up with a couple of ways in which slippage can either be removed or reduced to insignificant levels. To these (above), I'll add another, just for fun: services might want to use only the most liquid currency pairing in order to remove slippage. To do this and also accept any currency, they could receive payment, automatically sell/buy an equivalent unit of a very liquid currency, perform the service, buy/sell the liquid currency again if necessary, and then return/send an equivalent amount of the original currency to wherever it needs to go. Just throwing it out there. It's not really my problem, given section (1) above.
3) Cost of using the Blocknet vs. cost of personally just buying another coin.
The commenters above have suggested that slippage somehow disincentivises users from using the Blocknet. Let's just set things straight: that's ridiculous. I'll give an example:
A service is rendered. Microfee: 0.002 XC.
Let's suppose a whopping 20% slippage (bad service design)
This would require that the user pays a further 0.0004 XC for the service due to slippage.
That's $0.000098 USD.
Cost of buying another currency from a centralised exchange, downloading the wallet, figuring it out, and getting the service you want: umm... rather a lot higher. And you'd still have to *buy* the other currency, which would still involve slippage. So *zero*incentive there. Now try doing the same for the innumerable other currencies whose services you might want. Not gonna happen.
Finally, this is not a case of us somehow failing to think about this beforehand and then looking unprofessional when asked about it.
It's a case of people misunderstanding the nature of the Blocknet's function, then thinking up scenarios that don't pertain to the Blocknet (and aren't a problem anyway for Blocknet services), and then erroneously attributing incompetence to us for not addressing a non-issue.
The issue is one of understanding the Blocknet's function. I'm addressing it here, now.
P.S. The Blocknet will have a decentralised exchange. I mean, a decentralised exchange? And one that exists in an ecosystem of multiple (and potentially any) currency? Awesome!!
This, in my opinion, is a realistic recognition of what the Blocknet is doing. It's an exceptionally well-positioned decentralised exchange. Best thing ever. Insufficient warrant to appear unhappy with what we're building.
