Topic: How to integrate a global exchange into the blockchain itself (Read 957 times)

I have seen some discussion on making Blockchains compatible with one another (there is a technical words for this,  I can't remember)... So why not build a separate Blockchain for your project and find a way to link it up with other Blockchains instead of filling up Bitcoin Blockchain. This could even mean more cryptos on decentralized exchange than Centralized ones

Thanks for seconding the Atomic cross chain transactions, it looks pretty promising.  Also that marketplace for NXT looks interesting, if it in fact is doing what it seems to be doing.

The thing about my idea is it doesn't require anything or any coding.  People could just start doing it right now.  I kind of gave a method of how people could do it.  The only thing that would require coding is leveraging it.  The wallet is where the leverage would come from.  The wallet would be like an html editor, like when we are posting here; instead of adding in html tags we can click gui buttons to bold and italicize our text.  The wallet would do that sort of thing for your blockchain ecommerce posts.

I wish I could just code it up and try it.  But I am an engineer, scientist, and inventor, unfortunately not a programmer.  i have tried to learn programming quite a bit but I have the same problem with it as I do with foreign languages, they just don't stick.  So I need help in that regard.

The best implementation would be on a small altcoin for now where it can be tested and proven and used for free basically.  But the thing that motivates me for this idea is China and other countries that crack down on crypto.  The motivation for a dev of an alt coin could be a unique feature that generates buzz around his coin.

All these fancy features and promises of side chains and atomic swaps etc. adds complexity and looking through the lens of the mainstream, it won't add any mainstream appeal.  But a craigslist/ebay built into the wallet, now that would be something that adds mainstream appeal.  And the ability to link your paypal account to your wallet, mine with your wallet and the coins get converted into dollars and into your paypal account automatically, that would have mainstream appeal.

Or why not use the Burst platform for what he's trying to do? Once the Dymaxion upgrade is released, you might see that its easier to build on Burst than on Nxt. I dont want to put down another project, but I Burst might be more stable than NXT after all the PoCC's work.

Atomic Cross Chain Trading is the road forward.

Yes, that's a good goal, I share it. You have to accept however that the concept you present here is not new. You could also look at NXT's "Marketplace" which also allows to sell physical or digital goods via messages on the blockchain - without escrow or other "complicated" techniques. It's for now the most similar concept to your idea I found.

Nobody can stop you from coding your ideas and offering the software to the general public. The problem is - would anybody use it? I think you know what I mean: transaction fees are a big hurdle for such a service. Counterparty suffered much because of that.

Maybe you find a way to use a sidechain (Rootstock/RSK?) or even the Lightning Network? Then I see more chances for your project to succeed.

I am well studied on the IOU concept, and have an even better idea than any currently out there (the hint is my name), but that is the realm of digital assets, but what I am trying to do here is make cryptocurrencies themselves not just a unit of account but a decentralized ecommerce platform.  If bitcoin users are too burnt out by their blockchain bieng bogged down then a more nimble blockchain will reap the rewards of turning their coin into the worlds first decentralized uncensorable ecommerce platform and bitcoin will fall from grace.

@ir.hn: You should take a look at the following concept: Atomic Cross Chain Trading. (That is basically what @Jet Cash wrote).

The concept has already proven to work (it is used in some small altcoins, mainly Burst and Qora), and there are now also tools for Bitcoin and similar coins. It can be seen as the "holy grail" in decentralized exchanges. And it's almost trustless (the only way to game it is via an expensive attack). So it's much better than a simple "Localbitcoins clone on the blockchain without escrow".

There are also other altcoin groups that are trying similar concepts, like Komodo and Blocknet. And even the Lightning Network allows similar trades.

Your concept, if I understand it the right way, is very similar to concepts that have been implemented in a variety of altcoins like BitShares (OpenLedger) or NXT (NXT exchange), only that in these cases there are "IOU's" used that are interchanged for the real coins, not "promises" to pay (an IOU is, however, almost like a "promise"). If you want to see such a system in practice, go to http://mynxt.info for NXT, or look how Ripple does it (Ripple includes also a web of trust).

Please stop with this garbage. BTC is already under heavy load as it is. Having said that, we dont need something like Counterparty built and then start spamming the BTC blockchain. If you want to use an exchange that utilizes the blockchain, make use of XCP.

I guess but then that complicates things including the new chains need thier own tokens or are forks of bitcoin or something like that.  It doesn't seem very clean.  But who knows that may be the future.

The reason I want it to all be in the same blockchian is you only need one node, the bitcoin node (or whatever coin adopts this).  As long as bitcoin is around and not broken then the exchange works.  It's destinies are intertwined and wherever the bitcoin ledger is the exchange is too.

Having a extra "side chains" and various types of transactions will definitely be great to integrate a global exchange to the blockchain.

If you can confirm that a transaction is present on another blockchain through the Bitcoin signature, then the transaction can be release for spending, and the job is done without the intervention of any other site or party.

I agree. It is good, it is just that you can still do this just as well without using the blockchain, so there is no need for that. There are other ways that still have all of these benefits and have no such downsides.

Great feedback thanks.  I like the idea of having a side chain and many transactions verified in the bitcoin blockchain at once.

The point here is threefold.

1.  An exchange that is inherent in bitcoin or whatever coin.  Uncensorable.  Not on the internet (where the US owns and can shut down any .com, .org, etc) Wallets can use this as the defacto exchange where there are no fees or anything and if this is the defacto exchange then automatic conversions can be done by peoples wallets depending how they set things.  Like I said, mine litecoin see your paypal balance increase.  Things like that.

2.  A system of verification.  Basically you would look at amount of transactions, transaction volume, feedback, etc of a seller/buyer.  Just like localbitcoins or ebay

3.  Age of the block explorer.  Using this sort of system would turn block explorers into the new google.

Downsides:

Does take up some blockchain space.  But most good things do (ask monero).  But what you have to realize is that this idea has a shot of making the blockchain scalable in terms of bieng a self contained ecommerce.  Just imagine having a store where there are no bank fees and no merchant accounts needed and no forms from your merchant claiming taxes and yada yada.  Pure blockchain commerce.

Then it is just like web of trust, which again, has no need to be implemented in the blockchain. It is too expensive and has no added value.


Bisq is a serious project so developing it in a decentralized way requires DAO and certain roles. All those roles tho are mostly outside of the app, there is no one that has access to all trades or something like that. The app is decentralized it is just that Bisq has a forum,website,developers and many more that it also wants to decentralize, so they take on the roles in the DAO. The cryptocurrency BSQ is optional and it is there just like a app coin that is there to fund the DAO, other then that, you can ignore it's existence. It also doesn't even exist on mobile, just PC and it's distribution is the same as Bitcoin Core for example. You can compile form source, download from Github, download from website, etc.

It is a cool idea that you have, I just think that you are not there yet. There is really no reason to put this on blockchain. Sure it would be cool, but expensive and unnecessary.

Why do you need to do this? Bitcoin is a storage and transport mechanism. The market has created a wide variety of services that use this mechanism, snd trying to integrate these into the transport flow will decrease competion, security and functionality.

The idea is noble but has two fatal flaws:

1) Bytes in a block are simply too valuable for this use.
2) Prices fluctuate way too fast to be traded over the blockchain (one block per 10 minutes)

Remedy: Build a side-chain for ***:BTC and BTC:*** trades with bid and ask for each. Actual trades require actual payment in non-Bitcoin systems, so it's not enough to be Bitcoin-compatible. You can create an unforgeable record of trades (or even trade-offers) by using OP_RETURN to "commit" a hash of the side-chain state into the main blockchain. This allows you to compress huge amounts of individual bid-ask offers (thousands, millions) into a single hash value. This resolves both problems above. You still have to solve the problem of how to coordinate payments, specifically, how to ensure that payments are atomic. For cryptos that have atomic swaps, this is easy. For other kinds of exchange, however, you're still going to need old-fashioned securitization methods to comply with KYC rules and to prevent fraud (payment info, copy of DL, DOB, SSN, etc. etc.)

it seems that after the thing.
most DEX services have temporary deposit system to prevent fraud before the thing.
cryptocurrency service must not be based on inherent goodness but inherent evil.

A block explorer would show you the addresses blocks mined, time existing, transaction list and #FB feedback for his transactions.  Also people can compile a 'trusted' list of addresses they have done buisness with.  Plenty of ways.

how to prevent fraud?
bisq has witnesses to confirm p2p trading.

I read about bisq.  It is complicated.  It requires traders, contributors and stakeholders, and defines several categories of high-trust bonded contributor roles such as maintainer, operator, and administrator.  Also it is an application and depending on which platform you use (especially mobile) it can be censored by app stores potentially.  Also it has it's own token, so you have an entire other cryptocurrency involved.

The main benefits of the op_return idea is that everyone that uses bitcoin can just use a block explorer in a "google" fashion to access the built in exchange.  Not only would it be a p2p decentralized un-censorable, crowdsourced (no dev's) and private no personal info required exchange, but it would be the revolution that would make bitcoin and the blockchain mainstream.  Everyone would understand and be able to use it without the need for any other software and bitcoin will be much more widely used.  Also it opens the possibility for automating exchanging of coins and fiat since wallets can rely on the op_return exchange as it will never be deprecated and isn't dependent on any dev's.

It is centralized in the sense that everyone can agree that this is bitcoin's main decentralized p2p exchange.  It doesn't rely on any dev's or websites that can be shut down or anything.  It allows wallets to encode functionality to auto-trade mined coins if the user wants.

The reputation system I am proposing is a #FB (feedback) message that only is valid if the wallet signing the feedback message was the one involved in the bitcoin transaction.  So it is unhackable.

This just seems like a way to give advertise that you are selling or buying bitcoin using a blockchain with a reputation system without even checking if trades even happened before reputation was given. In other words, reputation system could be abused.
Also it would be cheaper to just implement a P2P network for this, as none of it requires a blockchain. Blokchain is good for timestamps, to insure what went first, so double spends can't happen. It doesn't really bring anything here.

So it is an interesting idea, but wrong use of it. To be reasonable you need something that requires ordering to be done. Blockchain is good at ordering things in a decentralized way.

Here is the full article since some don't trust external links.  I want to know what you think!

 The Age of the Block Explorer: Simplest method of how to save Bitcoin

In my last post I discovered a problem in the bitcoin network.  Bitcoin has been hacked and is no longer decentralized.  This was done by China shutting down exchanges.  Whether you believe this development means that China now has control over the price of bitcoin or not, it shows undisputedly that the currency has lost its fungibility in china meaning people can no longer use it freely.  This is a fatal flaw and now trading crypto's is under threat everywhere by governments simply cracking down on exchanges.

My last post proposed the "trust factor" and "reversing transactions" to solve this issue.  While i think that method could work, I don't think it is practical to implement.  I have a new idea that would require not changing bitcoin at all,simply  utilizing  built in technology in order to bring the "exchanges" inside the blockchain itself, and thus make it impossible to hack.

Welcome OP RETURN!

OP return is a function in the bitcoin blockchain that had been added years ago but has thus been under-utilized.  What this does is allow for messages to be added to the blockchain and to transactions.  I have formulated an example language (very simple) that would allow for OP return to hold the key for making the blockchain into a self contained e-commerce platform thus negating the need for exchanges.

If you want to learn more about OP_Return here is a link:

https://bitzuma.com/posts/op-return-and-the-future-of-bitcoin/

Now back to the topic.

All messages are signed by your private key so you know which wallet sent the message.

Enter the age of the block explorer.  Block explorers will become to the blockchain what search engines are to the internet.  Originally the internet was based just on links (and it still is) but now search engines have become the go-to way for the average person to use the internet, not just going from link to link.  Now bots do that for us.  The block explorer will become the same for the blockchain.  In the future the way people interact and use the blockchain itself will be through block explorers.  We know google has a monopoly on search, which is dangerous, and a blockchain explorer would also have the risk of being a monopoly.  So this idea isn't foolproof, but this will be a quite robust system.

I don't want to sound like a block explorer is a new thing.  It isn't.  Block explorers are widespread now.  But currently they serve only niche uses.  What I am saying is that in the future most people will think of block explorers as the blockchain, as people currently think of search engines as the internet.  It will be a huge paradigm shift as blockchain goes mainstream.

The block explorer should show the value of the bitcoin address in question and how many blocks the address mined and how many days the address has existed.  This should give the person a feel for how trustworthy the address is that they are considering sending money to.  Also the explorer will show the bitcoin addresses feedback (#FB) for their transactions (which is explained below).

The following example language is used to tell block explorers information.  Think of this like the HTML of the blockchain.

Use hashtags to tell block explorers what type of info you are providing.  All of them are optional but some more than others.  What you will do is start your OP return message with the following and block explorers will know that the message should be filed under that sort of information.  Basically think of it like you are setting up your e-commerce site on the blockchain using the following commands to create your profile.

#FT: your "for trade" list.  BTC2USD 10000  (I will sell bitcoins for $10,000 usd each) USD2BTC 8000:100000 (I will buy up to $100,000 worth of bitcoins at $8,000 each.)  YTN2BTC 5000:20000 (I will sell up to 20,000 yenten for bitcoin at a rate of 5,000 yenten per Bitcoin).

#AD: Your wallet addresses.  for example YTN:hekcuFekGI75Hnekzha BTC:wiUenxYGk8619GskzuH etc.

#WW: Your website for people to visit for more information about your warez. This is especially good if you have lots of physical things for sale and you don't just trade currency.  Block explorers should be able to pull info from your website too especially if you are using  hashtags to denote information.

#CI: your contact info.  Optional [if the buyer specifies a payment address and pays 1 bitcoin to seller and attaches a note to the transaction (TX) that says BTC2YTN then seller will send the amount of yenten he offered for 1 btc to buyer without any communication needed.]  But if you want something that can't be traded digitally then you should provide contact info.  Anonymous email addresses through TOR is a great way to do it.

#PO: what pay-out methods you offer. (Paypal, credit card, check, cash in the mail, amazon/itunes/steam gift cards, etc.)

#FB(TXID): Feedback for transactions.  Make sure you reference the transaction id (TXID).  The block explorer will know if your address was actually involved in the transaction.

If you sign a message with a hashtag you used previously, the block explorer will know to disregard your old #FT list for example and only consider your newest one as valid.  There is a 40 letter limit to OP return messages so techniques may need to be used like breaking posts up into several pieces or using abbreviations or whatnot.  I leave that up to you to figure out the technicalities for making this work in practice.

So basically using a block explorer people can search the blockchain in a way just like how localbitcoins.com works today.  We will have a fully decentralized exchange that is un-corruptible built into the blockchain itself.  I am aware that this will add size to the blockchain but Monero adds size to their blockchain to anonymize transactions, the least we can do is sacrifice some size in order to keep bitcoin and other crypto's fully decentralized and outside the influence of state powers.

PS: Wallets could help with this funcionality by providing a gui to help people compose thier profile.  Also wallets could connect with block explorers to function as peoples effective bitcoin trading search engine.

BONUS:  Something I just realized is this idea could be used to "automatically" convert the crypto that a person is mining into another crypto or even cash.  In the wallet the person mining could be mining yenten and have it automatically converted into bitcoin for them and sent to their bitcoin address for them.  The wallet would contain code to do this.  This could make mining much more mainstream if someone could mine Monero and see their paypal balance automatically grow.

Also if you recieve a bitcoin transaction you can have your wallet automatically convert it into monero and back again to bitcoin to "clean" the history from your bitcoin.

I'll check it out thanks.  The cliff notes are using blockchain messages using the OP_Return functionality bitcoin already has and a "blockchain html" language that allows block explorers to act as a "google" for the blockchain.  You could have a for trade list, a feedback functionality for transactions ect.

I don't like clicking links from random people on the Internet, so I am just going to say that you might be interested in a project like Bisq (former Bitsquare). They use multisigs and security deposits to make decentralized exchange (fiat<->crypto trades as well).

Could say fair

I wrote a whitepaper on how to crowd-source the integration of an exchange into bitcoin itself.  This is the key I believe into making blockchain mainstream; it needs to be a self contained e-commerce platform.  Everything needed for an e-commerce platform can be encoded into the blockchain using OP_RETURN.  This is especially relevant since China banned all exchanges which should be a wakeup call to how fragile the currency is and dependent on the exchanges.  This idea would not only help bitcoin become mainstream but also secure it from governmental censorship.  One other cool thing is using this method is that your wallet could automatically exchange altcoins you mine for bitcoin...even for fiat.  Just imagine how many people will want to mine when they can boot up a program and watch thier paypal balance grow!

Free to read, no ads either:
http://www.naturehackerproducts.com/2017/12/the-age-of-block-explorer-simplest.html

Please let me know what you think good or bad.