Jamaer,
How exactly would that 3rd option work?
It sounds like an IPO or a secondary offering for existing shareholders. So are you talking about creating an additional instrument called IXCP or diluting IXC with IXCP?
Can you add some more color on how exactly that would work?
Thanks!
EDIT: If that third option involves the use of a METAcoin, a token or a middle man then it's DOA.
Colored Coins does away with all that. It's simple and there won't be any liquidity issues either down the road. I really hope Counter Party is the best choice of the two.
Well, in your terminology it would be more like a 1-1 stock split execpt that the new half is given in a new instrument called IXCP
which can not be used in place of IXP. So no more IXCs would be created or IXC diluted. IXC and IXCP would be tradeable (within IXC blockchain!), so markets would decide their relative value. If markets decide IXCP (Counterparty) is worthless, it is the same as if CounterParty was never implemented. So this can only increase the value of IXC.
In technical terms, only thing that is done is replacement of initialization ("burning") in the original CounterParty protocol by this creation/split/IPO initialization in IXC blockchain. This means for instance that any code developed for the original Counterparty protocol is directly adapted to our implementation simply by changing this initialization code (which will be the same forever).
From practical point of view, this simple means that you or whoever is now "in charge" of this coin, announces e.g. here, the date (i.e. the blocknumber) when the CounterParty will be taken into use in IXC (and which will also the date of the "split"). Only thing that needs to be done by that is the new initialization code (I don't see any, at least theoretical problems with that). The rest of code/tools etc can be taken directly from the original CounterParty.
ColoredCoins and CounterParty try to achieve similar things, but the approaches are slightly different. IMO everything essentially boils down to this "escrow thing" I'm pointing to Friction. In ColoredCoins the "solution" is that there is no escrow, which means that certain things won't work: full decentralized markets, bets, etc (see e.g.
here). As implied earlier, CounterParty "solved" the escrow problem by creating a new currency/instrument (XCP).
But it is important to understand that both of these are non-existent from the IXC network (read: miners) point of view. Only thing the network sees is some ordinary IXC transaction (with some extra info embedded). There is no reason why we could not have BOTH OF THEM! In fact, I believe that would be preferable. Let the market decide which one is the better technology. From the IXC (miners) point of view, the more embedded protocols => more trafic => more miners fees.