DGulari, regarding your comment about Pouncer: I want to highlight that he has been of enormous help and put countless hours of his time into this. I never could have handled all the order book entries and escrow requests alone. While I'm sleeping he's working on the order book and escrows – and vice versa.
This is a dumb idea and will only encourage the creation of an alternate buyer/seller thread without fees.
Stop fragmenting the MSC community. Enough has been done already between the Coloured coins guy, the JR discussion and the change of forum.
Please reconsider.
It might spawn another thread, but I don't think this would be bad. Besides, this is an open thread, anyone can still post direct trade offers here.
I'm not happy about introducing fees, but it's a fact that the current state of the order book makes trading really hard for both buyers and sellers. There are lots of outdated and / or fake offers and many people are not honoring their orders. Fees could solve some of these problems. At least it would make people think twice before placing an order.
I think it's obvious that we need a new system but I don't wanna jump the gun on this. Escpecially the "prefunded" option needs some testing before we can go live with this.
Here's a rough outline of the changes I would suggest. Most importantly, there will be 2 different type of listings, standard and prefunded.
Standard orderTo prevent bogus orders there will be a flat fee for every placed standard order, 0.005 BTC or 0.01 BTC should be quite the right amount. This fee should hurt a little, but still be affordable. Changes to an existing order are free of charge.
I'm not yet sure about fees for escrowing standard orders, but there might be a 1% fee for this.
Prefunded orderThere will be no upfront fee for placing a prefunded order. Sellers send the respective amount of Mastercoins to the escrow address and buyers can purchase Mastercoins directly from me. Changes to an existing prefunded offer are free of charge.
After a completed sale, a 1% fee will be applied to both the MSC and the BTC amount. Should the seller want to cancel a prefunded order and request the Mastercoins back a 1% fee will be taken off the Mastercoin amount.
Note that holding Mastercoins in escrow is quite different from holding Bitcoins in escrow. Bitcoin is well established and by taking certain precautions I can minimize the risk of losing someone's Bitcoins. Mastercoin on the other hand is an evolving protocol and I've already seen a couple of transactions that were open to interpretation. I will of course do my best but I have to stress that I can't take on any responsibility for Mastercoins held in escrow for prefunded orders.
I'm open for your suggestions and comments and would like to give all of the above said some space for discussion before implementing the changes.
But we can start testing the prefunded offers concept right away. DGulari, if you would like to go ahead and create the first prefunded offer, here's your escrow address:
1LdgFp2gLvWfkPnyTYAtH7ENnzgBDdNwfd
Send your Mastercoins there and let me know about your price, I'll then add this to the order book and mark it as a prefunded order.