[ANNOUNCE] Elqnt -- Anonymous Peer-to-Peer Bitcoin Exchange

[elqntdotorg]

I'm excited to announce Elqnt! - An anonymous, P2P, Bitcoin Exchange -- https://secure.elqnt.org/

Keep an eye on this post, as we use this for the most up-to-date info, with subsequent posts being used to answer question/discuss, highlight certain info, and to house an archive of content.

== Overview ==

Elqnt is a decentralized + anonymous + peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange.

White Paper -- https://git.thebody.io/elqnt/whitepaper/blob/master/whitepaper.md

== Updates ==
12/8/13
We've recently taken a completely new tact with the technologies that have been developed thus far -- resulting in a massively different service, but with the result of providing a substantially more beneficial platform to all those involved.

We've written up a white paper to detail how the new incarnation of the exchange will function -- https://git.thebody.io/elqnt/whitepaper/blob/master/whitepaper.md

== Donate ==
We are intentially not actively seeking institutional investment due to the conflict of interest around user data collection.  We believe this data is yours and yours along; thus, we want to place ourselves in a position of only having 'useless' data such that even if compelled, we hold nothing of value re: identifiable user data.
Because of this, the project has thus far been funded primarily by the individuals involved, but we will need donations or revenue to continue meaningful development going forward.

Please donate if you like this idea and want to see it happen!

https://git.thebody.io/elqnt/whitepaper/raw/master/donate-qr.png
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== Contact Info ==

Twitter: @elqntdotorg
E-mail: stephen@elqnt.org

We would love thoughts, feedback, insight, and anything constructive to continually grow + improve the project!

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[rethaw]

Technically very interesting!

[Mike Hearn]

The site doesn't load for me.

[jimbobway]

How is this different from Napster?  They have a centralized server that connected peers to each other...I think.

[elqntdotorg]

The site doesn't load for me.

Well shoot...could be a couple things:

We've been doing some pretty heavy server modification over the past couple of days with our new in-house server, so you might have caught the site in one of those periods.  I try to keep our twitter -- @elqntdotorg -- updated regularly with a heads up to downtime.

Also, if you're using anything other than Chrome or Chromium, we've blocked the exchange due to compatibility.  WebRTC is implemented in the stable release of Chrome currently making it much easier to maintain on our end.  FF has it implemented in the nightly release, but some stuff is still not quite stable, so we're holding on support until things have stabilized.  Doubt support for anything else (besides maybe Opera) is coming anytime soon.  Most of this support hinges on which browser has implemented WebRTC and to what degree of effort we have to apply to make it work in our system w/ browser quirks.

Lastly, give it another shot.  Should be back up, if not, could be a bigger issue.

[elqntdotorg]

How is this different from Napster?  They have a centralized server that connected peers to each other...I think.

It's basically identical in regards to networking typography.

The way in which we're different is that our servers only do two things:

1) Maintain a list of active peers (ie - peers currently with browser windows open) by client generated ID ONLY.  
All of the rest of the data (price, rate, location, chat, etc.) is directly transmitted between peers and never touches our servers.  It's also all encrypted peer-to-peer to help against surveillance.  We also have checks in place to prevent ID spoofing.  

2) Serve the necessary static HTML + JS files.  We've built the exchange in Ember.js so structurally it's basically a self-contained browser based app that only communicates between the mapping server (soon to be in-house as well, today possibly...), peer server, and other peers -- all encrypted.

Lastly, we've open sourced both the peer server and Elqnt itself to give everyone a chance to dig into the code and audit it for security vulnerabilities and also contribute back.

[elqntdotorg]

Technically very interesting!

Thanks! 

Any thoughts on functionality improvements or feature requests?

[zeroblock]

Will you be building any mobile apps (Android, iOS)?

[elqntdotorg]

Will you be building any mobile apps (Android, iOS)?

Our core consideration with the entirety of this suite of services is on anonymity and sadly all of the major current mobile OSs are a bit dubious when it comes to anonymity + privacy (in large part due to impositions by the carriers, and following that chain up, by the respective governments that have jurisdiction over them).  

That being said, we're sticking with web based at this point.  We may do an Android app, but more likely would be a custom Android build which strips all 'phoning home', along with all user data collection and is purpose built for privacy surrounding communication, financial transactions, and user data.

We're also eyeing Ubuntu One, but it's still too early to make any conclusions.

[elqntdotorg]

= Version Changelog Archive =
*This is linked to in the first post*

v1.1 - minor release (7.27.13)

- Substantial Back-End Refactoring In Preparation for Major Functionality Inclusions
- Analytics Opt-Out
- Mobile UI Improvements (Will come into play more as mobile Chrome supports WebRTC)

v1 (7.19.13) --
- As a buyer, find local sellers of Bitcoin
- As a seller, list either an exchange area or a specific location for which you would like to sell Bitcoins within
- early currency I18n (still needs work)
- All data + communication is conducted directly p2p utilizing WebRTC -- the only data our server collects is peer Id's (volatile - i.e. once you leave we remove the ID from memory)
- Mobile compatibility w/ Chrome (still mostly broken, but working to clean this up very soon)

[Mooshire]

Finally! A P2P exchange!

[Mike Hearn]

It loads now - guess it was just down temporarily and I got unlucky.

I think this is a really interesting approach and your UI is great, so congratulations there. You might want to avoid using the custom E symbol outside of the logo though. Seeing it show up in the currency list is a bit jarring.

Using WebRTC as a way to do P2P traffic in a browser is a really neat hack, even if it's basically using Chrome as an app platform for now. How does it work with NAT? Do we end up bouncing connections off reflector servers, or does it use UPnP?

That said, whilst I think there's great potential for WebRTC for p2p bitcoin browser apps, I'm not sure a localbitcoins competitor is the right place to start. The fact that my ad disappears if I close my browser window is rather questionable. Also, presumably if I leave it open all the time (e.g. at work) then at weekends I have no way to see messages that get sent to me, etc. This sort of thing really needs persistent storage and asynchronous messaging, like email.

Many other apps that are more real time in nature could benefit from your approach though.

[elqntdotorg]

Update in follow-up post.

It loads now - guess it was just down temporarily and I got unlucky.

Great!

I think this is a really interesting approach and your UI is great, so congratulations there. You might want to avoid using the custom E symbol outside of the logo though. Seeing it show up in the currency list is a bit jarring.

Makes sense, we'll work to clean things up re: typography.  Thanks for the feedback!  

Using WebRTC as a way to do P2P traffic in a browser is a really neat hack, even if it's basically using Chrome as an app platform for now. How does it work with NAT? Do we end up bouncing connections off reflector servers, or does it use UPnP?

NAT traversal shouldn't be a problem, barring a blocked port.  Basically what happens is there is what's called a STUN server that helps each individual peer know their public IP and port.  The ID that the user assigns itself (done automatically), becomes the route to communicate with that user.  All communication is done directly peer-to-peer via JSON calls.  We have our own schema for how those JSON calls are structured.

That said, whilst I think there's great potential for WebRTC for p2p bitcoin browser apps, I'm not sure a localbitcoins competitor is the right place to start. The fact that my ad disappears if I close my browser window is rather questionable. Also, presumably if I leave it open all the time (e.g. at work) then at weekends I have no way to see messages that get sent to me, etc. This sort of thing really needs persistent storage and asynchronous messaging, like email.

Many other apps that are more real time in nature could benefit from your approach though.

We're working on a method to handle persistence, but haven't yet implemented this.  We already have the functionality basically spec'd, but aren't yet sure with what release it makes the most sense for.  

[elqntdotorg]

Update in follow-up post.

It loads now - guess it was just down temporarily and I got unlucky.

Great!

I think this is a really interesting approach and your UI is great, so congratulations there. You might want to avoid using the custom E symbol outside of the logo though. Seeing it show up in the currency list is a bit jarring.

Makes sense, we'll work to clean things up re: typography.  Thanks for the feedback!  

Using WebRTC as a way to do P2P traffic in a browser is a really neat hack, even if it's basically using Chrome as an app platform for now. How does it work with NAT? Do we end up bouncing connections off reflector servers, or does it use UPnP?

NAT traversal shouldn't be a problem, barring a blocked port.  Basically what happens is there is what's called a STUN server that helps each individual peer know their public IP and port.  The ID that the user assigns itself (done automatically), becomes the route to communicate with that user.  All communication is done directly peer-to-peer via JSON calls.  We have our own schema for how those JSON calls are structured.

That said, whilst I think there's great potential for WebRTC for p2p bitcoin browser apps, I'm not sure a localbitcoins competitor is the right place to start. The fact that my ad disappears if I close my browser window is rather questionable. Also, presumably if I leave it open all the time (e.g. at work) then at weekends I have no way to see messages that get sent to me, etc. This sort of thing really needs persistent storage and asynchronous messaging, like email.

Many other apps that are more real time in nature could benefit from your approach though.

We're working on a method to handle persistence, but haven't yet implemented this.  We already have the functionality basically spec'd, but aren't yet sure with what release it makes the most sense for.  

Just ran through some tests this evening w/ Tor and everything still works great, albeit a little slow (to be expected when using Tor).  

Let me know if there are any issues on your end when traversing w/ Tor.  

[Judson]

The site doesn't load.

OSX 10.8.4
Chrome 28

[elqntdotorg]

The site doesn't load.

OSX 10.8.4
Chrome 28

Thanks for the heads up, and sorry about that -- caught us right at the wrong moment

We just had some downtime (~30 minutes) as we were migrating the main production server temporarily to backup storage as we installed new hardware for the mapping server.

We're configuring a new RAID setup this afternoon, so once that's ready, we'll probably have just a couple minutes of downtime as we switch back over to that.

We try to keep things up to date on our twitter so everyone can have a heads up as to to any potential downtime -- @elqntdotorg

[Judson]

Even if you announce downtime on twitter, still best to have a static page (S3 works well for this) to let everyone know you are doing maintenance. 

[elqntdotorg]

Even if you announce downtime on twitter, still best to have a static page (S3 works well for this) to let everyone know you are doing maintenance. 

Good point, we'll put that in the backlog for implementation ahead of the brief downtime tonight.

[elqntdotorg]

v1.1 deployed - minor release

Here is a summary of the items included in this release --
note: this ended up mostly being a minor release in preparation for the subsequent major release next week

- Substantial Back-End Refactoring In Preparation for Major Functionality Inclusions
- Analytics Opt-Out
- Mobile UI Improvements (Will come into play more as mobile Chrome supports WebRTC)

Would love feedback to help make this thing what everybody really wants and would use in an anonymous p2p exchange.  
Lists, written critique, or snapshots are all appreciated!  Anything you can provide in the way of feedback will help shape this platform and make it more awesome.

Best,
Stephen

[Mooshire]

Please, keep up the good work!