Topic: ChromaWallet (colored coins): issue and trade private currencies/stocks/bonds/.. - page 2. (Read 97094 times)

Yes, it have failed to attract a strong team of open source developers. I kinda understand why: people prefer to work on ambitious, beautiful projects (e.g. Ethereum), or on ones which are easy to monetize (alt-coins, startups).

A good example is Vitalik Buterin: he started with colored coins, wrote some code and started the spec, but then switched to Ethereum.

I think there was only one person besides me who had a resolve to make "fully usable" colored coins software, and was able to allocate enough time... But that person died(?) about a year ago...

And I'm fairly good at building prototypes and developing concept, but I'm very reluctant to make final decisions and I hate taking responsibility. So this is unfortunate: I just couldn't finish it without a team.

So the only option to keep the project alive was to commercialize it. ChromaWallet is now being developed by a startup company called ChromaWay, see here: http://chromaway.com

It is still open source, but priorities are different.

So, about progress: we have been working on web/mobile wallet implemented in JS. It was started in July, now we have a complete wallet core and are integrating UI, I expect that it will be available in a week or two.

You can find source code here: https://github.com/chromaway

As for the desktop wallet, beta version was released in June. It has few warts, which could have been fixed by now, but finishing it wasn't my priority.


I'm no longer interested in 'shares'. I've been following Bitcoin capital markets since 2012, and I came to a conclusion that they aren't good. The problem isn't in a lack of a decentralized marketplace, but in the very nature of the companies listed on these markets. There is a lot of scams, and there is also a lot of people doing it in a half-assed way, which is a recipe for a failure. There are almost no companies which are honest and profitable.

There are also legal problems: selling shares without registering a public company is illegal in USA and many other countries.

So I'm not interested in helping this shady market, especially if there is a chance that regulators will go after those who help to facilitate transactions.

On the other hand, I cannot prevent people from issuing shares and bonds.

BTW, while we are at it, I believe there is a better way to do crowdfunding with Bitcoin. Well, there are several ways to do it, the most intriguing is a combination of assurance contracts (like in Lighthouse: https://github.com/vinumeris/lighthouse/blob/master/README.md) with colored-coin like stuff. But it is more technically complex, so we will do it after we do normal colored coins.


It depends on what qualifies as a fully usable software...

Why would it be horrible? That's precisely what the 'permanent, public ledger' of the blockchain entails.

How is the progress? Project seems to develop terribly slow, wich is sad since issuing and P2P exchange of shares is IMHO one of most important and promising features of blockchain technology.

Any ETA on fully usable software?

that would be horrible.

Ripple and other similar project are doing no one any favours by muddying the waters and ignoring the distinction between a representation of value and the value itself.

There is a need to incorporate it into btcd, but Monetas is going to handle that.

The point is that Open-Transactions is already an excellent system for managing vouchers and the metadata associated with them, and just needs some kind of objective server-independent representation of them for maximum functionality.

What's going to happen is that OT servers will run btcd nodes in the back end (theoretically they could also run bitcoind, but who'd want to?) and OT clients will handle all the front end functionality.

Colored coin is like a voucher. Obviously, it doesn't transfer any physical item. When you receive a voucher, you can either send it to somebody else or try to redeem it.

Colored coins are not magic, it's just a way to do vouchers on top of Bitcoin blockchain.

There is absolutely no need to incorporate it into Bitcoin Core.

FYI first two implementations were actually in C++ (the first one was a proof-of-concept which modified Bitcoin Core (bitcoind), the second one was Armory-based).

It would take just a couple of days to add a color kernel to Bitcoin Core, but what's the point? How are you going to use it?

how about c++? that would draw some attention.

How mean and ignorant.

Great anology. This will ultimately put Wall Street on the ropes. Once trust levels are established, colored coins will be more dangeoures to traditional finance than bitcoin is to fiat. Wall Street makes billions of dollars in investment banking aka taking companies public. Not for long. I see dollar signs

Issue #1, there is no concise, precise and complete description of how color coins work.

Issue #2, there is no description at all how exchanging of one colored coins for another in the bid/ask model works.
As a consequence one has to assume that at best the implementation is riddled with inconsistencies, omissions, dysfunctionalities and generally not trustworthy, as it cannot be compared to any defined working principle.

Issue #3, Due to lack of usable documentation and due to "newness" of this software, independent verification by known trusted bitcoin developers has not been done yet.
Until issues 1, 2 and 3 are resolved satisfactory, anybody should stay very, very far away from this.

Coloring coins is just leveraging the insanely awesome security of the blockchain for other uses. Colored Coins are just bitcoins, thats it. If you want to uncolor a coin and spend it as a regular coin again you can. Sure, designating some bitcoins as colored coins decreases the overall supply, but so does losing them by losing your private keys. Also, if colored coins become popular as I believe they will, it is going to drive the demand for bitcoins even higher, the supply lower, and I think you all know what that means.tothemoon

If a small nugget of bitcoin is like an ounce of gold,

Then this would be like taking the gold, hammering it flat, and writing "House Title" on it.

You could "melt" all these little satoshis back to bitcoins, probably.

Colored coins are considered altcoins or non-coins by the moderators and most bitcoiners. Posts are moved to off - topic or altcoins.

How does this destroy the fungibility of bitcoins? You can still spend it like any other (but you would be making a mistake). It's just like your traditional stock certificate happens to be written on the back of a dollar bill. That bill doesn't lose any value. Remember, Bitcoin is not foremost a currency - it is a record keeping protocol that happens to also be useful as a currency.

Weren't Colored Coins seen as a bad thing to the community, making some coins useless or bad or something like that ? Why the hell would we use this if that's the case ?

There's no such thing as a colored coin, or a Ripple whatever, that represents 1 oz of gold. The only way to transmit gold is to pick it up and carry it to where you want it to go.

A colored coin, or any other kind of financial instrument in any form, represents somebody's promise to give you 1 oz of gold.

Promises are can be transmitted, not the gold itself.

Most of the "Bitcoin 2.0" projects completely misunderstand - or are actively obfuscating - these facts.

So how does a Colored coin representing 1oz of gold actually transmit gold? Wouldn't this require the trust of 3 parties as with ripple?

I saw the code on the git, maybe the first step would be to re-write in c++. then figure a way to graft it.