Thanks! We've set the go-live date for Oct 29th on this new version.
This version is essentially a complete re-write from the beta with some serious refactoring to much of the back-end due to continued thought around security + efficiency.
With all that re-working, it's taken quite a bit longer than expected -- we apologize for that -- but we felt we couldn't go live with this next version without a solid base set of functionality from which we could build.
As the date gets closer, I'll update this post with an outline of the full set of functionality (some items are still in the works and might not quite make it in before we lock in).
Best,
Stephen
Topic: [ANNOUNCE] Elqnt -- Anonymous Peer-to-Peer Bitcoin Exchange - page 2. (Read 7327 times)
keep up, good work and good luck! 
Wow, this looks extremely promising.
Love your site and idea. Even includes Malaysian ringgit. Any offline messaging feature in the works (that would be awesome)?
Indeed, partially what's taking a while -- it's been a unique challenge to maintain anonymity while affording persistent messaging.
Love your site and idea. Even includes Malaysian ringgit. Any offline messaging feature in the works (that would be awesome)?
You should add a link to your "too cool for school" page to an alternative page that works on all browsers.
This would give access to things like your faq and a description of what your service actually does. You could have screenshots of the page in action.
Many people aren't going to download Chrome just to see what your service is about.
In fact, how does your service work? You should give a description of how a trade proceeds.
This would give access to things like your faq and a description of what your service actually does. You could have screenshots of the page in action.
Many people aren't going to download Chrome just to see what your service is about.
In fact, how does your service work? You should give a description of how a trade proceeds.
That's for the feedback -- The landing page will be cross-browser in the upcoming deploy, so the 'too cool for school' page will be going away -- It was actually a really quick late-night capability test until we got the next round of functionality out.
With the new landing page in place, users should have a solid idea of what the service is all about and how it works.
Please, keep up the good work!
Thanks!
Pushing hard to get this next group of functionality deployed. There is some tricky back-end work w/ the peer-to-peer encryption that is holding things up (along with the mapping server).
You should add a link to your "too cool for school" page to an alternative page that works on all browsers.
This would give access to things like your faq and a description of what your service actually does. You could have screenshots of the page in action.
Many people aren't going to download Chrome just to see what your service is about.
In fact, how does your service work? You should give a description of how a trade proceeds.
This would give access to things like your faq and a description of what your service actually does. You could have screenshots of the page in action.
Many people aren't going to download Chrome just to see what your service is about.
In fact, how does your service work? You should give a description of how a trade proceeds.
Please, keep up the good work!
v1.1 deployed - minor release
Here is a summary of the items included in this release --
note: this ended up mostly being a minor release in preparation for the subsequent major release next week
- Substantial Back-End Refactoring In Preparation for Major Functionality Inclusions
- Analytics Opt-Out
- Mobile UI Improvements (Will come into play more as mobile Chrome supports WebRTC)
Would love feedback to help make this thing what everybody really wants and would use in an anonymous p2p exchange.
Lists, written critique, or snapshots are all appreciated! Anything you can provide in the way of feedback will help shape this platform and make it more awesome.
Best,
Stephen
Here is a summary of the items included in this release --
note: this ended up mostly being a minor release in preparation for the subsequent major release next week
- Substantial Back-End Refactoring In Preparation for Major Functionality Inclusions
- Analytics Opt-Out
- Mobile UI Improvements (Will come into play more as mobile Chrome supports WebRTC)
Would love feedback to help make this thing what everybody really wants and would use in an anonymous p2p exchange.
Lists, written critique, or snapshots are all appreciated! Anything you can provide in the way of feedback will help shape this platform and make it more awesome.
Best,
Stephen
Even if you announce downtime on twitter, still best to have a static page (S3 works well for this) to let everyone know you are doing maintenance.
Good point, we'll put that in the backlog for implementation ahead of the brief downtime tonight.
Even if you announce downtime on twitter, still best to have a static page (S3 works well for this) to let everyone know you are doing maintenance.
The site doesn't load.
OSX 10.8.4
Chrome 28
OSX 10.8.4
Chrome 28
Thanks for the heads up, and sorry about that -- caught us right at the wrong moment
We just had some downtime (~30 minutes) as we were migrating the main production server temporarily to backup storage as we installed new hardware for the mapping server.
We're configuring a new RAID setup this afternoon, so once that's ready, we'll probably have just a couple minutes of downtime as we switch back over to that.
We try to keep things up to date on our twitter so everyone can have a heads up as to to any potential downtime -- @elqntdotorg
The site doesn't load.
OSX 10.8.4
Chrome 28
OSX 10.8.4
Chrome 28
Update in follow-up post.
Great!
It loads now - guess it was just down temporarily and I got unlucky.
Great!
I think this is a really interesting approach and your UI is great, so congratulations there. You might want to avoid using the custom E symbol outside of the logo though. Seeing it show up in the currency list is a bit jarring.
Makes sense, we'll work to clean things up re: typography. Thanks for the feedback! Using WebRTC as a way to do P2P traffic in a browser is a really neat hack, even if it's basically using Chrome as an app platform for now. How does it work with NAT? Do we end up bouncing connections off reflector servers, or does it use UPnP?
NAT traversal shouldn't be a problem, barring a blocked port. Basically what happens is there is what's called a STUN server that helps each individual peer know their public IP and port. The ID that the user assigns itself (done automatically), becomes the route to communicate with that user. All communication is done directly peer-to-peer via JSON calls. We have our own schema for how those JSON calls are structured.That said, whilst I think there's great potential for WebRTC for p2p bitcoin browser apps, I'm not sure a localbitcoins competitor is the right place to start. The fact that my ad disappears if I close my browser window is rather questionable. Also, presumably if I leave it open all the time (e.g. at work) then at weekends I have no way to see messages that get sent to me, etc. This sort of thing really needs persistent storage and asynchronous messaging, like email.
Many other apps that are more real time in nature could benefit from your approach though.
We're working on a method to handle persistence, but haven't yet implemented this. We already have the functionality basically spec'd, but aren't yet sure with what release it makes the most sense for. Many other apps that are more real time in nature could benefit from your approach though.
Just ran through some tests this evening w/ Tor and everything still works great, albeit a little slow (to be expected when using Tor).
Let me know if there are any issues on your end when traversing w/ Tor.
Update in follow-up post.
Great!
It loads now - guess it was just down temporarily and I got unlucky.
Great!
I think this is a really interesting approach and your UI is great, so congratulations there. You might want to avoid using the custom E symbol outside of the logo though. Seeing it show up in the currency list is a bit jarring.
Makes sense, we'll work to clean things up re: typography. Thanks for the feedback! Using WebRTC as a way to do P2P traffic in a browser is a really neat hack, even if it's basically using Chrome as an app platform for now. How does it work with NAT? Do we end up bouncing connections off reflector servers, or does it use UPnP?
NAT traversal shouldn't be a problem, barring a blocked port. Basically what happens is there is what's called a STUN server that helps each individual peer know their public IP and port. The ID that the user assigns itself (done automatically), becomes the route to communicate with that user. All communication is done directly peer-to-peer via JSON calls. We have our own schema for how those JSON calls are structured.That said, whilst I think there's great potential for WebRTC for p2p bitcoin browser apps, I'm not sure a localbitcoins competitor is the right place to start. The fact that my ad disappears if I close my browser window is rather questionable. Also, presumably if I leave it open all the time (e.g. at work) then at weekends I have no way to see messages that get sent to me, etc. This sort of thing really needs persistent storage and asynchronous messaging, like email.
Many other apps that are more real time in nature could benefit from your approach though.
We're working on a method to handle persistence, but haven't yet implemented this. We already have the functionality basically spec'd, but aren't yet sure with what release it makes the most sense for. Many other apps that are more real time in nature could benefit from your approach though.
It loads now - guess it was just down temporarily and I got unlucky.
I think this is a really interesting approach and your UI is great, so congratulations there. You might want to avoid using the custom E symbol outside of the logo though. Seeing it show up in the currency list is a bit jarring.
Using WebRTC as a way to do P2P traffic in a browser is a really neat hack, even if it's basically using Chrome as an app platform for now. How does it work with NAT? Do we end up bouncing connections off reflector servers, or does it use UPnP?
That said, whilst I think there's great potential for WebRTC for p2p bitcoin browser apps, I'm not sure a localbitcoins competitor is the right place to start. The fact that my ad disappears if I close my browser window is rather questionable. Also, presumably if I leave it open all the time (e.g. at work) then at weekends I have no way to see messages that get sent to me, etc. This sort of thing really needs persistent storage and asynchronous messaging, like email.
Many other apps that are more real time in nature could benefit from your approach though.
I think this is a really interesting approach and your UI is great, so congratulations there. You might want to avoid using the custom E symbol outside of the logo though. Seeing it show up in the currency list is a bit jarring.
Using WebRTC as a way to do P2P traffic in a browser is a really neat hack, even if it's basically using Chrome as an app platform for now. How does it work with NAT? Do we end up bouncing connections off reflector servers, or does it use UPnP?
That said, whilst I think there's great potential for WebRTC for p2p bitcoin browser apps, I'm not sure a localbitcoins competitor is the right place to start. The fact that my ad disappears if I close my browser window is rather questionable. Also, presumably if I leave it open all the time (e.g. at work) then at weekends I have no way to see messages that get sent to me, etc. This sort of thing really needs persistent storage and asynchronous messaging, like email.
Many other apps that are more real time in nature could benefit from your approach though.
Finally! A P2P exchange!
= Version Changelog Archive =
*This is linked to in the first post*
v1.1 - minor release (7.27.13)
- Substantial Back-End Refactoring In Preparation for Major Functionality Inclusions
- Analytics Opt-Out
- Mobile UI Improvements (Will come into play more as mobile Chrome supports WebRTC)
v1 (7.19.13) --
- As a buyer, find local sellers of Bitcoin
- As a seller, list either an exchange area or a specific location for which you would like to sell Bitcoins within
- early currency I18n (still needs work)
- All data + communication is conducted directly p2p utilizing WebRTC -- the only data our server collects is peer Id's (volatile - i.e. once you leave we remove the ID from memory)
- Mobile compatibility w/ Chrome (still mostly broken, but working to clean this up very soon)
*This is linked to in the first post*
v1.1 - minor release (7.27.13)
- Substantial Back-End Refactoring In Preparation for Major Functionality Inclusions
- Analytics Opt-Out
- Mobile UI Improvements (Will come into play more as mobile Chrome supports WebRTC)
v1 (7.19.13) --
- As a buyer, find local sellers of Bitcoin
- As a seller, list either an exchange area or a specific location for which you would like to sell Bitcoins within
- early currency I18n (still needs work)
- All data + communication is conducted directly p2p utilizing WebRTC -- the only data our server collects is peer Id's (volatile - i.e. once you leave we remove the ID from memory)
- Mobile compatibility w/ Chrome (still mostly broken, but working to clean this up very soon)
Will you be building any mobile apps (Android, iOS)?
Our core consideration with the entirety of this suite of services is on anonymity and sadly all of the major current mobile OSs are a bit dubious when it comes to anonymity + privacy (in large part due to impositions by the carriers, and following that chain up, by the respective governments that have jurisdiction over them).
That being said, we're sticking with web based at this point. We may do an Android app, but more likely would be a custom Android build which strips all 'phoning home', along with all user data collection and is purpose built for privacy surrounding communication, financial transactions, and user data.
We're also eyeing Ubuntu One, but it's still too early to make any conclusions.
Jump to: