Yes. It will be triggered once we have the exchanges on board. So first we release/test demo exchange(so we have an example they will understand), wait for exchanges to implement, fork.

Is there any decent step by step instructions on how I would set up a service node? What was the documentation saying about how there is only 20 in the queue or something? If I set one up I can host a couple blockchains I suppose. Is there any hardware requirements or anything?

So do I need to do anything to get the 100x coins? Or just do nothing and eventually my balance will be 100x? Also, is it worth it to run a service node currently? I couldn't find any statistics on them. Is it only the top 20 service nodes that get paid? What if there is more than 20 service nodes?

Well there is a Slack and Telegram. I'm usually on Slack. You can visit our site at bitbay.market and request an invite there or here.

Yes exactly POW prevents DDOS but the problem is it needs to be easy enough for consumer grade computers and hard enough for strong computers.
So it doesn't really stop an attack it just makes it a bit more cumbersome.

One solution I've had for years (although you can argue it does sacrifice a little bit of anonymity) is to require a user to tie up funds for X time.
This solution is simple and because you can charge X coins per kilobyte. Since the funds are only tied up for a few blocks it's a good way to say
"sending a message will cost you a couple dollars but you get it back in a few minutes". You are right in thinking a whale can attack this as they
don't lose money, they just tie it up. But perhaps you can keep increasing cost or lock time for related addresses. They can get around that too
by having a lot of addresses. I would say for now there is no perfect solution but it's a solution that allows for Bitmessage to be faster because POW
can take up to 10 minutes on slow computers sometimes.

The only issue with it is it creates a mild barrier to entry (user would need funds or have to fall back on POW) so I haven't really bothered to code it. Also other nodes in Bitmessage won't acknowledge the messages and for user security I prefer to be part of the larger network with more nodes.

I guess as long as POW serves as a deterrent (most people won't attack a network unless there is profit involved) then it's good to protect Bitmessage for now until we see someone even attempt it. And besides, Halo has backup messaging options so a prepared user won't be too affected.

I still also really like using Bitmessage to make accounts anonymous by having someone else broadcast (getting rid of the IP address issue altogether). It's still unclear if having control of a lot of nodes can help someone guess who is sending a message.

Ahh that interview. That's nice to hear you read it, that was a fun one. What I mean by self-regulating is fully decentralized. Basically the code I wrote was meant to be P2P and not modular. So to convert all of the code to JS even with a tool wouldn't work for web. Basically the Bitmessage network, the business logic and other things would prevent that from working. Bitmessage isn't very phone friendly. The team of coders has so far done a partial refactor of Halo code, they converted my Python peg logic to c++ and launched testnet, they started to code a demo of the markets with double deposit escrow. We do work on a tight budget with the bear market and all though so it's unclear if we will get the web/phone market where I envisioned it by spring or summer.

The model they set up is server based and that can not be used as a working product, only a demo. The downloadable software is already fully functional. The method I want and proposed for web is like this:

Markets go direct to IP routed from main site, peers form a master/slave group
Peers run "servers" voluntarily like docker nodes and receive signed/encrypted data from front end
Thus, the server cannot delete info before it's header expiry (no data is permanent but much is persistent)
If server breaks rules(deleting singed/encrypted data or making it illegible), the other peers replace by consensus with electing new master in list
Thus ALL web logic is client side. Clients may even check txid values on sites like chainz and our own nodes to ensure it's all correct

The current model is not that, it's just where all data goes to servers that don't process any client stuff but do centralize the market data.

The BitBay/Halo software is fully decentralized from the contracts, double deposit, bitmessage, no servers, etc. So the goal is to get the web markets to do
that. Peers must host data, that's the only proper way to shift liability away from third parties and secure users.

I don't think they use chrome extensions, just standard crypto JS libraries.

The system I want to build for WebHalo will be compatible with Desktop app because nodes will read Bitmessage for main markets and post on web (relay)
and then to communicate back both Halo and Web will know they must deal with the Web logic. Bitmessage then would only be for posting to desktop only.

Bitmessage has shown itself to be very secure. Although I've not audited all the code, the main concepts are solid. Peers encrypt and only decrypt what they
hold a key for. Channels are shared keys. Messages bounce from group to group hiding sender. Even if a sender could be correlated assuming a person
had many, many nodes it's still hard to say they are involved in enough groups to know that node is the original sender.

More importantly, encrypted messages which are channels gives plausible deniability that you can just say you aren't able to read the traffic even if you
forward it. It's very strong. Unlike TOR when it accesses unencrypted pages which means entry and exit nodes are more volatile, Bitmessage is encrypted end to end meaning no clearnet traffic is found by ISP. It's not perfect, but I think it's the best we have out there. Plus there is NO SERVERS! This is so superior to hosting an onion site in my opinion which in theory might eventually be uncovered by an ISP.

Lack of servers is the end goal to serving censorship resistant, peer to peer data. I feel Bitmessage is headed in the right direction despite the bulky POW which
can be replaced anyways with other methods such as proof you time locked funds.

We have a lot of help boxes in the code, there is some sparse documentation which is somewhat old it would be nice for someone with the technical expertise
to document all the software and code but I'm pretty much focused on looking forward for now.

I take it you are a coder or something?

BitHalo has no server. Neither does Bitbay. The software is decentralized P2P run on top of Bitmessage. The contracts are double deposit escrow so nothing is
hosted and it's not possible to defraud the counter-party. The code is Python 2.7 and I didn't upgrade to Python 3 but that would be possible to do. It wasn't
necessary. It does work on Linux and Mac. There is something with Linux that seems to be an update or something that doesn't work with Pyelliptic so maybe that package should be updated with the newer version of Bitmessage.

There was no regulation that effected Basis in my opinion. It seemed like an excuse or an exit strategy. They got paid to have an idea and I'm guessing the refund wasn't worth it to investors.

Yeah as mentioned above, the system created in Bitbay is purely automated. Unlike other proposals, the freezing of coins is involuntary and therefore doesn't require incentives to maintain that would inflate the system or unfairly dilute or enrich users. Because the supply is dynamic, it can be experimented with. Users can choose to back the coin or not, to choose a fixed price or a moving peg price. Also because of all of this it's not volatile to regulation or loss of banking relationships because it's purely based on programming and not actions from anyone in the outside world.

Thanks Doc for the posts! Yeah we have exciting times ahead. We are so far ahead in terms of completed software it's incredible. With the peg exchange demo coming people will finally be able to see what's coming after the successful tests of the peg.

We have cash for coins and it's peer to peer. It's the responsibility of the users to do KYC similar to localbitcoins deals. Especially since there is no escrow. So it's about as anonymous as one chooses to make it or the rules of where they live. It's already seen that Bitmessage has at least the strength of TOR if not greater.

You say you want functionality comparable to amazon which uses giant multi-million dollar servers on top of a decentralized system but you don't want to download the blockchain. You are a typical consumer, nothing anyone does is good enough for you.

If you don't download the blockchain then who will protect the network?! The only thing we can do to speed that up is let users connect to servers while download it so at least they don't lose any time connecting to markets. However for the markets there is also the concept of nodes relaying orders while waiting to download from Bitmessage as well. This system is built with users security in mind. It doesn't cut corners like Steemit or other DPOS pseudo-centralized systems.

Try to appreciate the fact that this was the worlds first decentralized market and the ONLY software in which you can have 2 party escrow other than BitHalo. Try to fathom WHAT has been built here. You should be happy this exists at all. Like Doc said, what have you built? This software is like 50k lines all of which I have coded for the past 4 years. And the team is making a web based market to commercialize decentralization. This doesn't even touch on the peg. What more can a crypto advocate want?!

And why do you keep asking the community to give you the green-light on breaking the rules. Have you lost your mind? This is a protocol, it's not responsible for your actions... you are responsible for the risks you take.

The problem with guys like you is you want someone else to take the bullet for you. Whatever freedoms you don't have are because you have simply consented to lose them.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Also the builds are uploading version 1.36 we will update the version number to trigger automatic update tomorrow or the next day so people can download
and test it. The Linux build is fixed and tested. Any support requests can be posted on our forums. This build has the exchange tracker so now we will start to build the demo exchange trading pairs and then probably run a testnet so people can have fun trading it while we get exchanges to adopt it.

Not necessarily, you need to remember we are launching a decentralized peg. This should be an advantage when it comes to alternatives to banking.

This is mentioned on our section about decentralized markets. The orders are definitely not traceable but your accounts are as anonymous as Bitcoin.
 
We could actually make anonymous transactions much easier using Bitmessage to relay transactions too and this was a concept I had. However that still won't hide the amount. If someone wants truly anonymous TX they should go to ZCash. However, ZCash could be compromised in their "setup ceremony" where devs can create infinite coins if the private keys weren't destroyed.

The website is in some languages however the software is in almost 100 languages as it live translates from Yandex.

For anonymous TX in Bitbay for now just use proxy. And we will consider in the future Bitmessage relay.

Actually for our peg, it's probably too complex to hide amounts like Zcash as zero knowledge proofs for peg require us to carefully calculate amounts. So I'm not sure if it's possible (it might be). Would have to look at their code. For now we are focused on the launch of the peg and any future anonymous TX would be based on Bitmessage relay service which would be somewhat trivial to add and I believe has the strength of Tor or better.

Right now I'm testing the exchange peg code and making some sample API calls so anoxy can start to build a demo market we can trade on with testnet version of our fork. Then it's game on with the peg! We have waited 4 years for this.  

So what I mean is, you will see pretty soon when I fix Linux which will release with this next build. Unless you want to run Wine. And also there is many users here who will more than happy to test contracts with you just for fun.

There are not usually "shops" unless they are private markets. Users usually just post to main markets with the user friendly templates. We have Cash for coins buy/sell which is like peer to peer local bitcoins with double deposit and price tracking with stop losses and control over minimum and maximum order sizes with almost any funding method you can come up with that's irreversible.

Then there is the buy/sell template which has auctions/reverse auctions (where sellers bid for buyers) and just general sales with shipping options and a fedex shipping scraper/calculator for estimating big packages. Again all peer to peer no servers.

Then there is the employment templates which you can hire or find jobs. These work with automated payments based on the submission of "reports" or milestones so you can't get paid without it. Then they auto-renew extending the time and notarizing it on the chain.

Then there is barter which lets you set "wish lists" and "supply lists" and you can keep those orders open almost indefinitely so it's like an online garage sale where people can just barter anything like crops, metals, goods, services, etc. What makes that template so sexy is it will calculate all of this for you. So it knows how many pounds of oranges you need for how many pounds of grapes and how many hours of math lessons you need based on what users self appraise their services and even lets you offer things not in someones wish list. I always imagined it for farmers or swap meets.

Lastly there is custom contracts where you just say whatever you want and Python contracts where you can program your own using the Python language and there are no limits but users must self audit code so they better know what they are doing if they want to accept one that isn't in the "approved list" of contracts. These are cool because people can do games, perhaps options, perhaps specific templates for their companies, whatever they really feel like making

What we are lacking is users. We definitely need more orders posted. I figure maybe someone will want to resell items eventually from other markets to build up the supply. We aren't focused on that yet because the peg now takes priority.

By the way you can see training videos, screenshots and other things at our site at bitbay.market

That's not how Bitmessage works though, it's not a blockchain. There are ways to scale it because a lot of the data is expendable. I do know how it behaves which is why I chose to use it and I was one of the ones to encourage them to continue development on it when it was almost abandon-ware. Third party image providers are a decent solution for now, fpaste in anonymous and you can also consider using markdown for images and just link them. Just realize that this is the better way because to scale the system those images can't be hosted. If they are then something like IPFS is interesting.

OB is really not my cup of tea to be honest. I would never use third party escrow and I'm very surprised that people do this when almost half of all Bitcoins have been stolen due to exchange or escrow loss. Especially because of the extra cost and anonymity of Bitcoin. Also it sort of used to bother me that we have had the first decentralized markets a year before them and yet the news doesn't really care to talk about it. Perhaps they fear it because of 2 party escrow?! Not totally sure why but then again I stopped caring and kept working.

We have tried to convince OB to use 2 party escrow even since before their inception when they first started. However they are set in their ways. Our markets indeed are unregulated because they are owner-less and nobody pays commission and they are peer to peer. I'm just the janitor mopping the floors and tweaking the code per se. I'm very happy that we are so far ahead when it comes to 2 of 2 escrow so when people realize how badly they need it they will have a plethora of information to mine from us here.

Haha true. Sorry about that. I get a bit fired up talking about double deposit escrow.

Yes the system is efficient. You download all of the orders which are in the network for 48 hours. Remember it's Bitmessage so nobody really knows the contents of a channel order except the ones who are able to decrypt it. So when you search you are searching the listings on your computer.

When it gets to be fairly large I assume people will start their own channels and post there which will take pressure off the main channel. However it's worth pointing out that those channels are anonymous if you don't have the name of the channel. However perhaps eventually those can be shared to a basic search engine or something to be properly indexed.

As for Bitmessage scaling on it's own I'm not sure what it's limit for traffic is but that is a pretty good question. I had hypothesized that the network can be split up because the data is usually trivial. However I admit that requires further research.

Well the whole concept of OpenBazaar is really not a good one in my opinion. Simply because they use 3rd party escrow. This is a horrible problem because it gives them liabilities, cost overruns, absolutely no competitive edge over Amazon or other services and most importantly it's easy to anonymously steal escrows because in a 2 of 3 system all you need to do is get lucky enough to get assigned to your own deals secretly and then just spend from all your escrow accounts.

2 of 2 escrow such as in BitHalo and BitBay not only stops theft but it disincentivizes deception. So one thing I think you might be overlooking is that we aren't just limited in scope to sales of goods.

It's true that sales of goods on this platform come with no liabilities or fees and greatly reduce shipping scams (making them almost profitless)... however we can help so many industries with this. Here are some examples:

Using 2 of 2 escrow you can do a real estate deal without notary. In fact, BitBay was used for one of the first crypto related real estate purchases in US history and definitely the first without the need of escrow. This has a major benefit in other countries that don't use escrow. For example in Mexico I bought land and the entire deal went through the notary. It was a bit funny to me considering there was no guarantee to the recipient that my check would clear or anything. So imagine how much they would benefit from this. There is so many deals for example that run through what is called "Ejido" which is community owned and are pretty much scams most of the time unless the paperwork is air tight. The double deposit system would help a person transition the property away from the ejido if they wanted title.

The problem with weak title is epidemic all over the world. This is a huge deal that we can help solve even if people don't realize it.

Also what about shipping? I had a friend who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical equipment and spent years trying to recover the loss in court. This just wasted his time and money and stress too. With 2 party escrow the need for an insurance provider can be totally bypassed!! With guys who do huge 6 or 7 figure deals in volume they would save tremendous money on either having a smaller insurance policy or none at all.

Also there is Telcom industry. They have issue with selecting banks and routing calls all over the world and choosing escrows for wires and all kinds of things.

There is probably hundreds of industries that suffer from having to agree on ways to safely route wire transfers. And of course Bitcoin being one of them. Consider that using 2 of 2 escrow not only can someone else guarantee the deal for someone else, but they could do wires with almost zero risk of fraud bridging the gap between crypto and fiat or really any industry that is heavily reliant on wires.

Then there is outsourcing. It's absolutely a pain in the ass to have employees that don't do what they promise, come late to work, exaggerate their credentials, etc. This software again by forcing a bond from the employee will cause them to get penalized. Of course this a major benefit to the construction industry, to outsourcing, to extremely important jobs that must get completed, etc.

We could spend hours talking about how many industries need 2 party double deposit escrow but they just don't know it yet. People are so used to getting stolen from that they enthusiastically line up at crypto exchanges despite constantly getting taken for billions and billions of dollars with no end in sight.

If this market was mature enough to see it, we wouldn't even have to market to anyone and devs would flock to help us for free and investors would come in droves. But unfortunately people are too busy making Dogecoin or Truckcoin or Ferengicoin or Flappybirdcoin or whatever other bullshit traders are wasting their time buying. Lets not forget the fancy ICOs where guys dress up in really sharp looking suits and promise that the blockchain will mow peoples lawn, walk their dog and teach their kids algebra or whatever other nonsense they need to make up in order to get free Bitcoins.

With our software it's not limited to sales like Open Bazaar. In fact we are more like Craigslist than OB. Since people can use the templates to Barter and form a farm co-op or trade anything, do services, sell goods, auctions, reverse auctions, write their own templates etc. This is why we can't pidgeon hole into the deep web or some niche crypto market because there is so many industries that could use what we have developed.

The BitBay coin is just a catalyst for the ideas that we have preached for years. It started on BitHalo and then a strange twist of fate put me in this project. Now with the peg we also have a very unique addition to the blockchain and as long as the volume is there and exchanges are friendly to us, will help get rid of the volatility that has distracted the entire market.

Of course I'm open to criticism that's how the software got to this point. I was the only coder for 4 years and only recently have we expanded our team. So now we have a guy doing a refactor and converting the peg logic to c++ and also guys doing the web version of the Halo markets.

There is no other software that has such a long list of working features and that is what has kept this community together for so long. We are trying to popularize the idea of double deposit 2 party escrow and decentralized markets and the peg.

When people critique the software we don't always implement those changes due to time restraints but now that I'm finally finished it might be easier to maintain things than it was to invent the entire platform from scratch. There does need to be a point where innovation stops and marketing and partnerships and adoption begin. I feel like we have to bridge that divide sooner than later considering how competitive things are getting.

Anyways, the Linux build I'm updating with the new and final release of the software which will have the peg exchange logic. This will be in the next update and right now I'm just testing things. So that will be within this month.

We have a lot of user friendly templates on our marketplace... cash for coins, barter, auctions/reverse auctions, goods, services, etc. It's pretty easy actually. When you get a chance to test it let us know.

You can post photos with the listings. For the platform to be decentralized it would be odd to have photo hosting. For now it just puts the image on fpaste and compresses it however the photo can be sent over bitmessage too. Of course a user can link more photos. I realize in 2018 people want tons of media but that is the trade off when making something completely decentralized I suppose more photos can go on fpaste or imgur in the future.

As for Linux it's on my list of things to do when I finish testing the exchange peg code.