Topic: Creating metacoin for a decentralized exchange? - page 4. (Read 3210 times)

Then why should we care?

Nowhere - as they are just IOUs (no different to Ripple really).

They have been trying to "con" people with the idea that an IOU is just a good as the real thing from day one.

Where are these funds actually (physically if applicable) stored?

It doesn't trade *actual* fiat, gold or silver just IOUs - or am I incorrect?

(does it even actually trade real BTC - I think not)

BitShares is a decentralied exchange.  The only difference between it and what you describe is it doesn't trade altcoins (yet), just BTC, fiat, gold and silver.

You could take the most traded altcoin (say doge) and make a reference design (proof of concept). If this works out well in the end, other altcoin developers will be eager to add support for their stuff.

The Atomic Cross-Chain Transfer concept which has been implemented using Automated Transactions (AT) and is described in detail here: http://ciyam.org/at/at_atomic.html could end up providing the "lynch pin" for trading across different blockchains (and CIYAM is developing a Token package that could act as the decentralised "market" for this approach).

By using ACCT at least all trades would be "safe" (in terms of the trade being honoured according to the terms of the ACCT algorithm).

I do agree with @Cryddit that most alts are just pump and dump scams (but I doubt they would go to the effort of implementing AT so it might be a refuge from that at least in the short term).

I may yet do it.  I did re-base it to Bitcoin 0.10.0 this week, following the latest Bitcoin release for all kinds of improvements in block chain handling.  I haven't implemented my side of the transfer-between-chains thing for anybody to be compatible with, and of course they'd need to add the code to their altcoins (and have a hard fork each for a couple of new transaction types) before it would work.

Mostly I've been not pursuing it because I don't want to explain to two or three hundred scammers why I'm not going to be making an effort to be compatible with their scamcoins.  Seriously, the altcoin world is filthy these days.  I would go so far as to say MOST alts actually have no interest in application as currency; their model of issuance (with most of the coins out in the first year, or coin production cut by more than half in the first year) makes no economic sense for that.  Nor does the ludicrous notion that it is reasonable for a significant fraction of the entire money supply to be reserved for one or a few people.  And one is left with the unfortunate implication that most of them have no reason to exist except as scams. 

And, do I really want to facilitate trading between scams?  Considered as an economic force, in the short term easy trustless trading would facilitate some scams and make others more difficult.  The question is, in the long run would it favor the less scammy operators?  With trustless trading, would market pressure mean the pump-n-dumps end with less money effectively stolen?  And hopefully faster, or with more accountability, or both? 

Why not release the source code then? Someone could pick up where you left and go on. Also, altcoin exchange devs do have to deal with the issue of working with numerous blockchains somehow.

I actually have coded an unlaunched alt with multivalent amounts - so I could easily launch a blockchain tomorrow that can keep track of thousands of different kinds of coins, and keep them all separate, and allow trading between them on the chain. 

But moving them back and forth to their native blockchains is something that the devs on those blockchains would have to provide a way to do.

With the recent fall of so many cryptocurrency exchanges I was thinking about feasibility of making trades safe.

So I came up with the following idea. We create some metacoin with the single purpose of making its blockchain a decentralised exchange for trading other major coins. How this would work in practice. Say, you want to sell a few bitcoins and get some doges. You send your bitcoins to a randomly generated address whose private key is distributed across (encrypted in) this metacoin blockchain. The private key could only be made available to whoever sells you dogecoins at the price which will be set in the transaction you sign on this meta blockchain. For the buyer of your bitcoins the process should be pretty much the same.

Is it possible to make such a "coin", which client would serve as a trading platform?