The ProblemEvery decent project needs to solve a problem; current exchanges are facing a variety of problems which I aim to solve.
Although exchanges such as Binance, Etherdelta, Radarrelay, etc have lead significant improvements upon traditional exchange platforms, there are still several problems that continue to plague exchanges.
Centralization
Trust
Ownership
Transaction Times
Multi-Chain Support
Though several new exchanges have implemented impressive systems to solve aspects of these problems, none are positioned to effectively address these problems altogether.
Most with multi-chain support are heavily centralized, and offer neither trust nor effective ownership systems.
On the other hand, decentralized and trustworthy exchanges fail to effectively offer multi-chain support, while also generally being plagued by lengthy, network determined transaction times.
The SolutionThe solution to these problems lies in an expansion upon the initial idea behind Etherdelta.
I propose an exchange built on the Ethereum network. Naturally, it will be enforced by a smart contract to effectively offer decentralization, minimal trust, and an enforcement of ownership.
This idea has been implemented multiple times, however these exchanges have consistently failed to offer both instant transactions and cross-chain support. A solution to these problems hasn't been implemented simply because it's traditionally difficult to do on a decentralized or smart contract enforced exchange.
The solution to these two problems lies in the utilization of two ideas: payment channels and cross-chain atomic swaps.
Though these are relatively new ideas, their capabilities have been proven, demonstrated, and even implemented.
Payment channels will effectively manage an instant ledger, enabled by multisig transactions. Cross-chain atomic swaps (or an off-chain implementation off cross-chain support) will similarly enable coins on other networks to be traded on the exchange.
Why ICO? - ICO InformationAs a developer, I generally cannot stand ICO's. They tend to be overfunded, lazy, and unnecessary implementations of blockchain tech.
The ICO would effectively enforce partial ownership of the exchange. Profit from fees would be distributed evenly to token holders via the exchange smart contract (with a weekly cooldown). This is the primary utility of the token; it is essentially enforced ownership and collection of profits. I would, however, plan to include a voting system for holders to modify fees/etc.
Given the ease of adding ERC20 tokens, they would be added liberally. Additional coins, however, require greater development and would be slowly voted on and implemented by the community.
That said, I will do this project regardless of whether I receive funding or not, it would simply mean I maintain greater ownership. I'd offer 30% of tokens via a crowdsale and maintain the other 70% myself. The crowdsale is exclusively to cover advertising costs, contract additional developers, and overall effectively prepare the exchange. Due to this, I would be setting a low cap relative to other exchange ICO's/such. I am not seeking massive funding, I am offering equal opportunities for ownership, and would like to build a community interested in the exchange itself. The sale would be hard capped at ~$3m and will begin once a prototype/proof of concept and whitepaper have been developed. I have been working the past few months on this project, so I expect these to come soon.
https://i.imgur.com/8ALxFKG.pngLaunchThe exchange would launch in two stages. The initial version would exclusively support token trading, and implement payment channels for instantaneous transactions.
Given cross-chain support is considerably harder, it will take a significant portion of development funds, and will be reserved for the second generation exchange.
A good portion of development funds will similarly be reserved to build an advanced and clean user interface, and to audit the smart contracts.
TechnicalsReserved
I will update this section with additional information to offer technical specifications of the payment channels and cross-chain support via atomic swaps. Given the specifications of atomic swaps, it will most likely require some off-chain development to add instantaneous swaps and multi-chain support.
Q&AReserved
I will update this with notable questions and answers from the thread.
I understand that this is a new account, so feel free to pm me if you are interested in my qualifications. I've been in the blockchain sphere for several years. For any questions on investing, the project, or myself, please post in this thread or shoot me a pm.
I'll be updating the thread regularly with images, info, and code.
To those of you interested in donating, you can send funds to the below addresses. Please pm me with proof so that I can credit and reward you upon launch.
ETH: 0xFE139263b07bB3AE02685F73e1605E04C83746a6
BTC: 1LA9XwLmQmdukRheRSc6zJZXdxyTY7WGE4
