Aricie: Announcing a new trading bots platform

[Aricie]

Hi,

I'm back to support the platform, and I could restart the MtGox Bot after a couple of user bots with wrong passwords were disabled again.
I'll be working on dealing with wrong credentials detection, adding support for socks proxies and supporting DotNetNuke 6.0 in the next few days.

In the mean time, you can download the DotNetNuke module from the site and run it in your own instance (DNN 4.8.1+/5.X currently supported).
Just make sure to install the shared module first (also available from the website), as it contains required assemblies.

Cheers,

Jesse

[zapeta]

Has the bot been disabled on the MtGox side again?  I've just entered my information, enabled the bot and saved it but I don't see any action on the MtGox side.  Once I save the enabled bot, do I have to do anything else to get it to trade?

[Aricie]

Hi,

I just restarted the platform, which may have been idle for a while (that happened quite a few times, independently of the IP ban issue).
Try re-enabling your bot and let me know if you see orders coming.

In the mean time, I'm nearly finished with releasing a new version. I'll keep you informed here.

Cheers

[zapeta]

Hi,

I just restarted the platform, which may have been idle for a while (that happened quite a few times, independently of the IP ban issue).
Try re-enabling your bot and let me know if you see orders coming.

In the mean time, I'm nearly finished with releasing a new version. I'll keep you informed here.

Cheers

It looks like everything is working now...I see orders in MtGox.  I'm looking forward to the new version!  

Thanks!

[Chucksta]

This looks very promising. I'll try it out just as soon as new registrations are allowed

[Useer]

Is it possible do download the DNN Module anywhere while the registration is closed?
Would realy like to try this out.

Useer

[Manko]

Is it possible do download the DNN Module anywhere while the registration is closed?
Would realy like to try this out.

Useer

+1

[dsky]

Registration is open again...

[Chucksta]

Registration is open again...

WOOT !!!

[dsky]

When will the platform be back again?

[Aricie]

Hi,

The platform should be running now.
Sorry for being quiet those days, but my Internet reach is very limited ATM.
Also, the platform was upgraded last week but it still needs a few tweaks, so I did not want to be too voicy before I can finalize that recent work.

That should be next week, and I'll make a proper statement here.

Finally, for all those who registered recently, I'm sorry the recent default strategy parameters don't seem to be so successfull. A fix in the algorithm is already planned, and I'll investigate properly. In the mean time, I suggest you increase the "min order margin" parameter to stop "burning" so much in those numerous orders, which results in transaction fees eating potential gains.


Cheers

[Aricie]

Hi all,

I have just finished to update the bot platform, trading algorithm and hosting web site, time for a global announcement.

https://dnnbitcoin.aricie.com/Portals/0/images/DnnBitcoinTradingBand.png  First about the updates

• The farm now runs smoothly. About 40 user bots are currently scheduled to trade every 5 minutes.
  
  
• The MtGox IP ban problem was fixed with automatically disabling invalid credentials. The bot disables the credentials upon saving and sends an email to the user requiring a password update
  
  
• The previous mentioned bug was found and fixed, trading now performs as expected
  
  
• The algorithm was also updated with improvements and new features, such that the resulting bots now trade smoothly with a self adjusting trading band.
  
  
• The site was updated with a new skin and there is now an illustrated page, which details how the trading works and the various parameters
  
  
• It is still hosted on a quite unreliable server though, with occasional crashes. Hopefully our new web farm will be available soon.
  
  
• A Codeplex project was created and now hosts source code and related downloads

https://dnnbitcoin.aricie.com/Portals/0/images/pkp.png  Our product: Portal Keeper

As I previously stated, my main objective is to evangelize and keep developing our bot platform, so here is a little more about it:


The bot farm is part of a DotNetNuke module, which mainly consists of an IDE in the form of property editors mapped to large xml configuration files, and a rule engine run by an application firewall and the scheduled farm.

Our property editor still has UI issues to fix, yet it is a powerful tool, which allows fine grained configuration.
As an illustration, on the MtGox bot dedicated page, the bot definition editor maps to an entity: Here is what an XML export of that bot looks like. By comparison, the set of editable user parameters on the same page maps to the bot variables, i.e l15-l215 of the bot's export.


If you download and install Portal Keeper on your own DNN instance, you'll have edit access to all of those parameter and will be able to customize your bot in many ways.


For instance, you could add intermediate steps to your trading algorithm, where you parse various web content for additional indicators/entities. As a matter of fact, I've added a new disabled rule in the MtGox bot, which illustrates that kind of scenario. The bot requests http://hidemyass.com/proxy-list/, parses the list of open proxies through XPath queries, and feeds a proxy pool to be used at will on subsequent requests. Of course it wouldn't be a good idea to trade directly over open proxies, but I foresee many other uses for that kind of feature.


Now if you have .Net skills, you should see from browsing the trading material source code that there is virtually no prerequisites to integrating your own class library right into custom bots and the corresponding online editors sections, while staying focused on your own value added features, e.g your custom trading code.  Also, it should be pretty straight forward to add a step to retain a fee out of the user bot profits, using the existing sendbtc apis. If you feel like applying that principle to host an improved commercial version of dnnbitcoin, please do so.


My last reasons for you to try the bot farm on premises rather than relying on our hosted version: additional safety and lower schedule period. I did my best to secure the accounts (user data is compressed and encrypted between each run), but if you’ve got a lot of btcs to trade, please don’t put them into our hands. Setting your own schedule to a higher frequency will also definitely make a difference, though you have to take into account that the exchange sites themselves prove quite unreliable on large ticker moves when most bots activity is concentrated (slow requests, timeouts, unprocessed queues).  

https://dnnbitcoin.aricie.com/Portals/0/images/question-marks.jpg What's next?

In the next weeks, I will:

• Compile a proper documentation for the bot platform. As a reference, here's the current resx file for most existing labels and inline helps. Again, the trading material represent a fraction of it, so there's a lot of writing ahead.
  
  
• Keep fixing bugs and making sure the platform is ready for publication.
   
• Commercialize the final version of PKP for general use within the DNN community.
  
  
• Develop a front-end of Rest-full web services within the firewall engine, fully customizable for custom actions and objects as any other engine rule.
  
  

That means I won't have much time to concentrate on the btc part of the project, and as I believe most technical hurdles for building those trading bots are behind now, I'm looking for contributors here:

• I'm quite happy with the way the bots now generally behave technically, but I'm pretty sure there is plenty room for improvements in reviewing the available parameters and formulas from an financial perspective.
• If you're a .Net developer, the trading source code is simple yet concise with a working mapping from the JSon API objects and an extensible strategy model. Also, the Xml bots themselves could be easily improved with additional features e.g notification emails.

https://dnnbitcoin.aricie.com/Portals/0/images/podium-icon.png Bounties

I understand everyone here has got to meet ends as we do, so I'm setting up 2 bounties, which I will detail in distinct threads.

• Trading competition. The goal is to come out with the best set of parameters for the current market making bots. Competitors will register their username and bot parameters. By November 1st their balance will be monitored from our website logs, and their parameters frozen for a month. By December 1st their balance will be checked again: the account with the proportionally best profit will be rewarded 50 btcs, and the corresponding parameters will likely become the default configuration.
  
  
• Codeplex bounty. Those willing to contribute will be granted commit access to the Codeplex project. By the end of November, each contributor will be asked to evaluate others contributions to the overall improvements. 50 btcs will be shared between contributors accordingly to the evaluation.
  
  

http://bitcoin.org/img/logo_small.png Public address

Last but not least, we now have a public address and we are accepting donations. I will look into integrating btc payments directly into our DNN store, but the legal situation in France is a bit fuzzy right now, so that won’t be before it gets clarified.
In the mean time, I did earn a couple of btcs on a personal account running our bot (lost a couple of $ though). 10 btcs went to the #operationbitcoin bounty, and  130btcs to our public address. 100 btcs are the reserved prize for the bounties. As an extra incentive and to prove that the 100btcs are not there to stay, where should I send the extra 30 btcs?

Regards,

Jesse
CTO Aricie

[zapeta]

Thank you for all your improvements.  Can you check to see if the platform is down?  Everything was working perfectly but now I have no orders in MtGox.

[Aricie]

Thank you for all your improvements.  Can you check to see if the platform is down?  Everything was working perfectly but now I have no orders in MtGox.

Yep, the server was messing again. Should be working now.
A migration to our new web farm is planned for next week.
Hopefully the site will get faster and more stable, such that I can increase the schedule frequency again.
Cheers

[Ente]

Hi Jesse,

I just found your platform today.
I am a lot interested in it, thank you for making it public and free to use!

Now I am a bit confused about the bot parameters themselves..
In no way I am an experienced trader. But I would think there are several different trading strategies, which base on totally different triggers.
Looking around in my account, I find a lot of parameters, which are spread over many (sub-) pages and which impose one trading strategy on me. Granted, I dont understand that strategy in full detail yet.

I would love the option to start from scratch. Like two empty textboxes, one for "buy" and one for "sell". I would have to script everything by myself, like "add 0.65% on top of it" and the like. With that I could do silly things like "buy every day at noon, sell at 3pm" as well as more complex things.
I would not even be sure if such an option would be "basic" or "advanced" ;-)

Is there a referencelist? What exactly do the keywords mean, how are they calculated, which do exist? Like "LimitOrderValueRate", "CurrentOrders.HighestAsk.Value" etc?

I just had a quick look around, but for now I am a bit shorttaken by the dozens of subwindows, options, keywords and the like.


Thank you for that project, I am astonished its not the biggest topic since the reappearing of Satoshi!

Ente

[Aricie]

Hi Ente,

thanks for your interest.

First, I'm planning an update of the platform soon, to support the new Mt.Gox API, and fixing a few things in the engine and in the strategy.
Now about the parameters available in the code expressions, they're all simple properties from .Net types, which you can browse together with the trading source code.
As for providing something simpler, I'll see what I can do when the next upgrade is done.

Cheers,

Jesse

[Ente]

Thank you for your reply, Jesse!

Sounds like serious changes and steps forward, am curious how it will turn out!
Thank you for the pointer about the expressions, will wrap my head around them.

A general question: It seems like the bots can only analyze "now", and not use data from the future past? Something like "average price of the last 6 hours"?

Thank you again,

Ente

[evolve]

Got this email from mt gox:

 You are currently making use of a system which will be deprecated on Thu 01 Mar 2012 12:00:00 AM GMT:

Access of the MtGox API while being authenticated with a login and a password


So does this mean the bot wont work anymore after march?

[Pteppic]

Hi,

I've been using your bot for a couple of months and I have a question. Is it possible to change the code so that the gap between bids and asks is always at least 2 * (profit_margin + trading_fee).

For example, at the moment you might have a highest bid of 6.399 and the last price is 6.40. At this point, (if I understand correctly) the bot will generate asks down to 6.40 + profit_margin + trading_fee.

If we assume the trading fees are 0.5% and the profit margin is also 0.5%, the lowest ask could be at 6.464.

This means that the gap between bids and asks is too small. If the bot then executes a buy at 6.399 it could sell at 6.464 which after fees is 0.015% profit instead of the 0.5% specified. If your profit margin is set to less than the trading fees, you would be trading at a loss.

To get the profit margin that you have set in the parameters, the bot could use something like

MAX(last_price, highest_bid * 1 + (2 * profit_margin + 2 * trading_fee)) for asks and

MIN(last_price, lowest_ask * 1 - (2 * profit_margin + 2 * trading_fee)) for bids

As it is I have had to set the trading fees and profit margin much higher to compensate.

[Aricie]

Got this email from mt gox:

 You are currently making use of a system which will be deprecated on Thu 01 Mar 2012 12:00:00 AM GMT:

Access of the MtGox API while being authenticated with a login and a password


So does this mean the bot wont work anymore after march?

Hi evolve,

The legacy API is indeed scheduled to be deprecated on the  01st March, which means the current bot will be stopped by that date.
In the mean time, I have a new version of the platform nearly ready for updates, which takes an API key and secret as generated from your MtGox account for additional parameters and accordingly supports the new API.
The update is a bit tricky since a lot of things have changed in the underlying bot engine, and as all your parameters are stored compressed and encrypted I must make sure I won't loose anything. I might have to reset user strategies though, because of a few fixes in the trading algorithm. 
I'll send a bulk email to let all users know about the update when it's ready, and then you should have plenty of time to generate API keys from your account, stop your legacy bot and register a new bot with the additional parameters.

Regards,

Jesse