[ANN][XCP] Counterparty - Pioneering Peer-to-Peer Finance - Official Thread

[kdrop22]

The Counterparty Team is looking to pay someone to do marketing

We have been contacted by several members of the community who are interested in helping out with Counterparty's marketing. It seems to us incongruous with Counterparty's 'project principles' to choose somebody without first telling the entire community that we are looking to pay someone to do PR for Counterparty. For now, we will be paying our marketer month-to-month (in XCP and BTC). We will start considering people now, and will stop considering them within three days (i.e. by to February 9); we will make our decision within seven days (i.e. by February 13), but reserve the right to decide
any time before then.

Here is a summary of what you should provide:

• Your CV: What is your experience in marketing (especially in finance), both in- and outside of the crypto community? Have you done marketing work for any other cryptocurrencies? If so, describe in detail what you helped them achieve, and provide a reference who can confirm your
  listed contributions.
• Your connections: Whom do you know in- and outside of the crypto community who would be valuable in Counterparty's marketing efforts? Please provide enough evidence of your relationship with him or her, so that we can determine whether this relationship may be profitable.
• Your angle: If you had the position of marketing lead for Counterparty, what aspect(s) of Counterparty would you emphasize?
• Your plan: Please provide a very thorough marketing plan for the 30 days after you are hired, including a list of 'milestones' and a 'timeline'. Your timeline should split up the 30 day period into four or five pieces, so that your timeline will essentially consist of an approximately week-by-week plans. We of course understand that there are things which are out of your control, and that consequently your cannot guarantee the precision of your marketing plan up to one week; nevertheless, we would like plans to err on the side of being overly-rigorous.

Applicants are expected to have a strong grasp of Counterparty's functionality, and will be asked to demonstrate it, as we believe marketing a protocol you are not familiar with is untenable.

Please PM me, cityglut, if you are interested in applying for the position, and I will provide you with an email address to which you may send your application.

That's great. May I ask which what funds will you pay him?

The Marketing personnel should be primarily paid in XCP. This will ensure that their goals are aligned with the XCP stakeholder base.

[Anotheranonlol]

Bounty Announcement: The Counteparty Team will be putting out a bounty for a centralized exchange supporting XCP and BTC, or adding XCP and BTC support to an existing centralized exchange.

Submissions due by Febuary 25, 0:00 UTC.

Donation address: 1HSuVrARi1JvnRVjFJHuNMjcspByw3494H

Description: The Counterparty Team is now hosting a bounty for the creation of a centralized exchange, supporting XCP and BTC, or adding XCP and BTC support to an existing centralized exchange. The bounty funds will be distributed based on a consensus of PhantomPhreak, xnova, and myself. The Counterparty Team will start the bounty funds with a donation of 4.5 BTC and 1500 XCP to the donation address. The bounty will be paid no later than February 28, 0:00 UTC, although we reserve the right to decide before then.

If you have further questions, PM me, cityglut.

what's to stop existing exchange add support quickly and claim a bounty?

[trilli0n]

Price manipulation (troll orders)

Currently it's possible to manipulate the price of any asset easily by entering orders with zero fees.

So suppose the order book has a buy order of A@100 with a required fee of 0.0001. I want to manipulate the last price of A, so I enter a buy order of A@999 with a required fee of zero. Then I sell a tiny amount of A without providing a fee. The order of A@100 will not match because of insufficient fee, but the order of A@999 will match. Now I have artificially created a last price of A@999.

Solution (?):
Same fee for everyone, so you can not cherry-pick your own orders and manipulate the last price by misusing the fee. I think a standard fee is very sensible, why haggle about the fee that is miniscule compared to the value of most orders? It's pointless. Just set a fixed fee for everyone.

Settlement issue

Perhaps I'm seeing it the wrong way, but if an order matches, it's not settled yet. If I'm selling an asset, and I get a match, it's like having a put option which expires when the order expires. If the market moves against me, I can choose not to btcpay my order and it will expire without settling. If the market moves in my advantage, I btcpay and lock in a profit. This seems very problematic to me.

Solution (?):
When someone matches your order, it should go through. Isn't it somehow possible to avoid btcpay? Isn't it possible to structure a transaction on the btc network that is such that if for instance address 1abcde fills my order, that my btc in escrow are sent to 1abcde, automatically settling the transaction without having to do a btcpay? I know, you don't know the address of the one that matches your order in advance, but there has to be a way around that.

Apologies if this has already been addressed!

[PhantomPhreak]

Bounty Announcement: The Counteparty Team will be putting out a bounty for a centralized exchange supporting XCP and BTC, or adding XCP and BTC support to an existing centralized exchange.

Submissions due by Febuary 25, 0:00 UTC.

Donation address: 1HSuVrARi1JvnRVjFJHuNMjcspByw3494H

Description: The Counterparty Team is now hosting a bounty for the creation of a centralized exchange, supporting XCP and BTC, or adding XCP and BTC support to an existing centralized exchange. The bounty funds will be distributed based on a consensus of PhantomPhreak, xnova, and myself. The Counterparty Team will start the bounty funds with a donation of 4.5 BTC and 1500 XCP to the donation address. The bounty will be paid no later than February 28, 0:00 UTC, although we reserve the right to decide before then.

If you have further questions, PM me, cityglut.

what's to stop existing exchange add support quickly and claim a bounty?

The bounties recipients will be decided and paid only on the 25th.

[jimhsu]

It looks like some people are still paying to invalid order-match-ids

http://blockscan.com/btcpay.aspx#

Devs, would it be possible to push out that version requirement patch any time soon? Don't want to see more BTC go to waste.

If it produces some sort of cryptic error message, all the better because it'll make people hit the forums to find out what's going on.

[jimhsu]

counterparty.co has been updated with all of the bounties:

https://counterparty.co/wiki/bounties/

[trilli0n]

Wait, WHAT??!

Are my btc gone??


c:\counterpartyd_build>counterpartyd btcpay --order-match-id 4cf58e136cc46c8fca50ca9a095559e1fe607f8693737973018c3046e30d08b2ca0c75e8478c7ff ac0ca7ddf9a390bfb88b
1bf1356db28d5465d7f5a36cfddeb


http://blockscan.com/btcpay.aspx#

Tx    Block    Source    TimeStamp    Order MatchID    Remark
3321   284510   1EEwWVYaSF2QUsv3nMz8h5uGifHiuza485   2014-02-06 20:10:21   4cf58e136cc46c8fca50ca9a095559...   Invalid: no such order match ID

[jimhsu]

Wait, WHAT??!

Are my btc gone??


c:\counterpartyd_build>counterpartyd btcpay --order-match-id 4cf58e136cc46c8fca50ca9a095559e1fe607f8693737973018c3046e30d08b2ca0c75e8478c7ff ac0ca7ddf9a390bfb88b
1bf1356db28d5465d7f5a36cfddeb


http://blockscan.com/btcpay.aspx#

Tx    Block    Source    TimeStamp    Order MatchID    Remark
3321   284510   1EEwWVYaSF2QUsv3nMz8h5uGifHiuza485   2014-02-06 20:10:21   4cf58e136cc46c8fca50ca9a095559...   Invalid: no such order match ID

*sigh* Please read the over a dozen posts I've made in this thread, as well as on the forums, warning people about this issue. Please update your version of counterparty to the latest.

PhantomPhreak will, of course, reimburse you for the BTC loss that you've accrued.

Devs: If the version requirement thing will take a while, can you please edit the first post in LARGE RED LETTERS LIKE THIS warning people about the issue? Also, put up stickies in the forums. Also blockscan, if that helps.

[jimhsu]

I'm putting an official sticky in the forums.

https://forums.counterparty.co/index.php/topic,63.0.html

[trilli0n]

Wait, WHAT??!

Are my btc gone??


c:\counterpartyd_build>counterpartyd btcpay --order-match-id 4cf58e136cc46c8fca50ca9a095559e1fe607f8693737973018c3046e30d08b2ca0c75e8478c7ff ac0ca7ddf9a390bfb88b
1bf1356db28d5465d7f5a36cfddeb


http://blockscan.com/btcpay.aspx#

Tx    Block    Source    TimeStamp    Order MatchID    Remark
3321   284510   1EEwWVYaSF2QUsv3nMz8h5uGifHiuza485   2014-02-06 20:10:21   4cf58e136cc46c8fca50ca9a095559...   Invalid: no such order match ID

*sigh* Please read the over a dozen posts I've made in this thread, as well as on the forums, warning people about this issue. Please update your version of counterparty to the latest.

PhantomPhreak will, of course, reimburse you for the BTC loss that you've accrued.

Devs: If the version requirement thing will take a while, can you please edit the first post in LARGE RED LETTERS LIKE THIS warning people about the issue? Also, put up stickies in the forums. Also blockscan, if that helps.

That's very kind for PhantomPhreak to reimburse me.

@PhantomPhreak:
Please send 0.0800667 BTC XCP to 1EEwWVYaSF2QUsv3nMz8h5uGifHiuza485

Tx    Block   BlockTime    Source    Destination    BTCAmount    Fee
3321   284510   2014-02-06 20:10:21   1EEwWVYaSF2QUsv3nMz8h5uGifHiuza485     BtcPay
Paid to 1PBmybpJ9DXFCMqGdcMHd7FdbVYLajH5nU   0.08006667   0.0001

Many thanks in advance!

@jimhsu: I update my version daily, I was not expecting conditions that could lead me to sending btc into a black hole. Sorry for not reading through the past 100 messages on the board each time before touching counterpartyd..... wow!

[jimhsu]

Wait, WHAT??!

Are my btc gone??


c:\counterpartyd_build>counterpartyd btcpay --order-match-id 4cf58e136cc46c8fca50ca9a095559e1fe607f8693737973018c3046e30d08b2ca0c75e8478c7ff ac0ca7ddf9a390bfb88b
1bf1356db28d5465d7f5a36cfddeb


http://blockscan.com/btcpay.aspx#

Tx    Block    Source    TimeStamp    Order MatchID    Remark
3321   284510   1EEwWVYaSF2QUsv3nMz8h5uGifHiuza485   2014-02-06 20:10:21   4cf58e136cc46c8fca50ca9a095559...   Invalid: no such order match ID

*sigh* Please read the over a dozen posts I've made in this thread, as well as on the forums, warning people about this issue. Please update your version of counterparty to the latest.

PhantomPhreak will, of course, reimburse you for the BTC loss that you've accrued.

Devs: If the version requirement thing will take a while, can you please edit the first post in LARGE RED LETTERS LIKE THIS warning people about the issue? Also, put up stickies in the forums. Also blockscan, if that helps.

That's very kind for PhantomPhreak to reimburse me.

@PhantomPhreak:
Please send 0.0800667 BTC to 1337SBVs6V5Ty8xA2GiRroRDFCWMDTpXv2

Tx    Block   BlockTime    Source    Destination    BTCAmount    Fee
3321   284510   2014-02-06 20:10:21   1EEwWVYaSF2QUsv3nMz8h5uGifHiuza485     BtcPay
Paid to 1PBmybpJ9DXFCMqGdcMHd7FdbVYLajH5nU   0.08006667   0.0001

Many thanks in advance!

@jimhsu: I update my version daily, I was not expecting conditions that could lead me to sending btc into a black hole. Sorry for not reading through the past 100 messages on the board each time before touching counterpartyd..... wow!

Yes, this is a very rare, irreversible bug in the order matching (normally bugs like this are reversible, but not BTCpay, so why I got on top of this so quickly). That's why I wanted the devs to get out version requirement code and make announcements about this so urgently.

Also, I think reimbursements are handled according to the value of XCP for that order.

[trilli0n]

this is a very rare, irreversible bug in the order matching (normally bugs like this are reversible, but not BTCpay

Can you perhaps explain what exactly the issue is? Or is it buried somewhere a couple of pages back in the forum?

[jimhsu]

this is a very rare, irreversible bug in the order matching (normally bugs like this are reversible, but not BTCpay

Can you perhaps explain what exactly the issue is? Or is it buried somewhere a couple of pages back in the forum?

Sure:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395761.msg4957701#msg4957701

Basically, the rounding code for master and develop was different, so BTCpays for one did not match the other, and went to the wrong accounts (still Counterparty accounts though). As I understand, such a thing will probably almost never happen in the future again, because BTCpay (the only protocol-level irreversible part of Counterparty, besides proof-of-burn) and the rounding issues have been addressed permanently. Note I said almost never.

This event is sort of like Counterparty's version of Bitcoin's infamous blockchain fork. (though since we don't have mining, the analogy is tenuous). [Devs correct me on this]. Fortunately it happened early on, as opposed to when it happened for bitcoin.

[led_lcd]

In my mind, I like to compare XCP and MSC as Linux and M$ (with the broken IE), and http://blog.mastercoin.org/2014/02/06/we-are-hiring-developers-developers-developers/ has just confirmed half of it

How about these to further differentiate XCP and MSC:

• All funds from the exodus address are accessible by the MSC team. This is evidenced by the team being able to refund coins received after the IPO period
• Even after receiving all of the funds, the team still gets further dev coins which amounts to 10% inflation
  Mastercoin revokes one of the core tenets of Bitcoin - you can reverse transactions (by specifying that your 'savings' account is compromised).
• When buying virtual assets your funds are held in escrow until feedback is sent.  The time out for leaving feedback is 60 days. If negative feedback is received, funds are destroyed.

[trilli0n]

Ok I sent PhantomPhreak a PM. I hope he'll reimburse me like he promised.

Did I someone kinda rob me of my BTC? Because they did arrive, correct? Has someone been exploiting this bug?

So my 0.4 bitcoin went to 1GbkV2QgQ2jqHk8yjgcdwEMfLC1Y6oGSMF? Hey 1GbkV2QgQ2jqHk8yjgcdwEMfLC1Y6oGSMF, how about giving me my XCP?

Would be the right thing to do if it were an honest mistake.

[BldSwtTrs]

The Counterparty Team is looking to pay someone to do marketing

We have been contacted by several members of the community who are interested in helping out with Counterparty's marketing. It seems to us incongruous with Counterparty's 'project principles' to choose somebody without first telling the entire community that we are looking to pay someone to do PR for Counterparty. For now, we will be paying our marketer month-to-month (in XCP and BTC). We will start considering people now, and will stop considering them within three days (i.e. by to February 9); we will make our decision within seven days (i.e. by February 13), but reserve the right to decide
any time before then.

Here is a summary of what you should provide:

• Your CV: What is your experience in marketing (especially in finance), both in- and outside of the crypto community? Have you done marketing work for any other cryptocurrencies? If so, describe in detail what you helped them achieve, and provide a reference who can confirm your
  listed contributions.
• Your connections: Whom do you know in- and outside of the crypto community who would be valuable in Counterparty's marketing efforts? Please provide enough evidence of your relationship with him or her, so that we can determine whether this relationship may be profitable.
• Your angle: If you had the position of marketing lead for Counterparty, what aspect(s) of Counterparty would you emphasize?
• Your plan: Please provide a very thorough marketing plan for the 30 days after you are hired, including a list of 'milestones' and a 'timeline'. Your timeline should split up the 30 day period into four or five pieces, so that your timeline will essentially consist of an approximately week-by-week plans. We of course understand that there are things which are out of your control, and that consequently your cannot guarantee the precision of your marketing plan up to one week; nevertheless, we would like plans to err on the side of being overly-rigorous.

Applicants are expected to have a strong grasp of Counterparty's functionality, and will be asked to demonstrate it, as we believe marketing a protocol you are not familiar with is untenable.

Please PM me, cityglut, if you are interested in applying for the position, and I will provide you with an email address to which you may send your application.

That's great. May I ask which what funds will you pay him?

We thought a lot about whether marketing could be done via bounties, but we concluded that this would quickly become unmanageable, as a real marketing push would require an absurd number of bounties. Since the marketer will essentially be salaried, community contributions are harder to incorporate into our funding plan, as they are impossible to determine beforehand. The Counterparty team, then, will be paying whomever we select regardless, but if community members are interested in donating, they can send BTC and XCP to this address: 1CWq53K95AZVkCPGGW7eEwivBvNzGVGH94

Since all the previous donations go to the bounty related to the GUI client, does that mean that you plan to pay him out of our own pocket (minus the new donations)?

[cityglut]

The Counterparty Team is looking to pay someone to do marketing

We have been contacted by several members of the community who are interested in helping out with Counterparty's marketing. It seems to us incongruous with Counterparty's 'project principles' to choose somebody without first telling the entire community that we are looking to pay someone to do PR for Counterparty. For now, we will be paying our marketer month-to-month (in XCP and BTC). We will start considering people now, and will stop considering them within three days (i.e. by to February 9); we will make our decision within seven days (i.e. by February 13), but reserve the right to decide
any time before then.

Here is a summary of what you should provide:

• Your CV: What is your experience in marketing (especially in finance), both in- and outside of the crypto community? Have you done marketing work for any other cryptocurrencies? If so, describe in detail what you helped them achieve, and provide a reference who can confirm your
  listed contributions.
• Your connections: Whom do you know in- and outside of the crypto community who would be valuable in Counterparty's marketing efforts? Please provide enough evidence of your relationship with him or her, so that we can determine whether this relationship may be profitable.
• Your angle: If you had the position of marketing lead for Counterparty, what aspect(s) of Counterparty would you emphasize?
• Your plan: Please provide a very thorough marketing plan for the 30 days after you are hired, including a list of 'milestones' and a 'timeline'. Your timeline should split up the 30 day period into four or five pieces, so that your timeline will essentially consist of an approximately week-by-week plans. We of course understand that there are things which are out of your control, and that consequently your cannot guarantee the precision of your marketing plan up to one week; nevertheless, we would like plans to err on the side of being overly-rigorous.

Applicants are expected to have a strong grasp of Counterparty's functionality, and will be asked to demonstrate it, as we believe marketing a protocol you are not familiar with is untenable.

Please PM me, cityglut, if you are interested in applying for the position, and I will provide you with an email address to which you may send your application.

That's great. May I ask which what funds will you pay him?

We thought a lot about whether marketing could be done via bounties, but we concluded that this would quickly become unmanageable, as a real marketing push would require an absurd number of bounties. Since the marketer will essentially be salaried, community contributions are harder to incorporate into our funding plan, as they are impossible to determine beforehand. The Counterparty team, then, will be paying whomever we select regardless, but if community members are interested in donating, they can send BTC and XCP to this address: 1CWq53K95AZVkCPGGW7eEwivBvNzGVGH94

Since all the previous donations go to the bounty related to the GUI client, does that mean that you plan to pay him out of our own pocket (minus the new donations)?

Yes.

[PhantomPhreak]

Price manipulation (troll orders)

Currently it's possible to manipulate the price of any asset easily by entering orders with zero fees.

So suppose the order book has a buy order of A@100 with a required fee of 0.0001. I want to manipulate the last price of A, so I enter a buy order of A@999 with a required fee of zero. Then I sell a tiny amount of A without providing a fee. The order of A@100 will not match because of insufficient fee, but the order of A@999 will match. Now I have artificially created a last price of A@999.

Solution (?):
Same fee for everyone, so you can not cherry-pick your own orders and manipulate the last price by misusing the fee. I think a standard fee is very sensible, why haggle about the fee that is miniscule compared to the value of most orders? It's pointless. Just set a fixed fee for everyone.

Settlement issue

Perhaps I'm seeing it the wrong way, but if an order matches, it's not settled yet. If I'm selling an asset, and I get a match, it's like having a put option which expires when the order expires. If the market moves against me, I can choose not to btcpay my order and it will expire without settling. If the market moves in my advantage, I btcpay and lock in a profit. This seems very problematic to me.

Solution (?):
When someone matches your order, it should go through. Isn't it somehow possible to avoid btcpay? Isn't it possible to structure a transaction on the btc network that is such that if for instance address 1abcde fills my order, that my btc in escrow are sent to 1abcde, automatically settling the transaction without having to do a btcpay? I know, you don't know the address of the one that matches your order in advance, but there has to be a way around that.

Apologies if this has already been addressed!

Manipulation by small amounts is not an issue. Also, it's generally a good idea to take volume into account when determining price.

It's not possible to avoid btcpay, and the spread with asset pairs including BTC will indeed be wider than with others.

[BldSwtTrs]

The Counterparty Team is looking to pay someone to do marketing

We have been contacted by several members of the community who are interested in helping out with Counterparty's marketing. It seems to us incongruous with Counterparty's 'project principles' to choose somebody without first telling the entire community that we are looking to pay someone to do PR for Counterparty. For now, we will be paying our marketer month-to-month (in XCP and BTC). We will start considering people now, and will stop considering them within three days (i.e. by to February 9); we will make our decision within seven days (i.e. by February 13), but reserve the right to decide
any time before then.

Here is a summary of what you should provide:

• Your CV: What is your experience in marketing (especially in finance), both in- and outside of the crypto community? Have you done marketing work for any other cryptocurrencies? If so, describe in detail what you helped them achieve, and provide a reference who can confirm your
  listed contributions.
• Your connections: Whom do you know in- and outside of the crypto community who would be valuable in Counterparty's marketing efforts? Please provide enough evidence of your relationship with him or her, so that we can determine whether this relationship may be profitable.
• Your angle: If you had the position of marketing lead for Counterparty, what aspect(s) of Counterparty would you emphasize?
• Your plan: Please provide a very thorough marketing plan for the 30 days after you are hired, including a list of 'milestones' and a 'timeline'. Your timeline should split up the 30 day period into four or five pieces, so that your timeline will essentially consist of an approximately week-by-week plans. We of course understand that there are things which are out of your control, and that consequently your cannot guarantee the precision of your marketing plan up to one week; nevertheless, we would like plans to err on the side of being overly-rigorous.

Applicants are expected to have a strong grasp of Counterparty's functionality, and will be asked to demonstrate it, as we believe marketing a protocol you are not familiar with is untenable.

Please PM me, cityglut, if you are interested in applying for the position, and I will provide you with an email address to which you may send your application.

That's great. May I ask which what funds will you pay him?

We thought a lot about whether marketing could be done via bounties, but we concluded that this would quickly become unmanageable, as a real marketing push would require an absurd number of bounties. Since the marketer will essentially be salaried, community contributions are harder to incorporate into our funding plan, as they are impossible to determine beforehand. The Counterparty team, then, will be paying whomever we select regardless, but if community members are interested in donating, they can send BTC and XCP to this address: 1CWq53K95AZVkCPGGW7eEwivBvNzGVGH94

Since all the previous donations go to the bounty related to the GUI client, does that mean that you plan to pay him out of our own pocket (minus the new donations)?

Yes.

Wow, this is awesome. Other projects seem tasteless compare to that attitude.
 
You guy rocks.

[trilli0n]

this is a very rare, irreversible bug in the order matching (normally bugs like this are reversible, but not BTCpay

Can you perhaps explain what exactly the issue is? Or is it buried somewhere a couple of pages back in the forum?

Sure:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395761.msg4957701#msg4957701

Basically, the rounding code for master and develop was different, so BTCpays for one did not match the other, and went to the wrong accounts (still Counterparty accounts though). As I understand, such a thing will probably almost never happen in the future again, because BTCpay (the only protocol-level irreversible part of Counterparty, besides proof-of-burn) and the rounding issues have been addressed permanently. Note I said almost never.

This event is sort of like Counterparty's version of Bitcoin's infamous blockchain fork. (though since we don't have mining, the analogy is tenuous). [Devs correct me on this]. Fortunately it happened early on, as opposed to when it happened for bitcoin.

I don't get it. When I ran "counterpartyd market" I saw that I had a match for my order along with an order match id. So I did a "counterpartyd btcpay --order-match-id <the id>". A bit later, I did a "counterpartyd wallet" and saw the XCP nicely reported. Except for the little, quite disturbing fact that they were not actually in my wallet at all.

So "counterpartyd wallet" has been lying about the amount of XCP in my wallet. How could that happen? Even for alpha software, that's a bit unsettling.

And also, a comment to this being a "rounding error". The hashes are just large integer numbers. Rounding does not apply at all, at least not the rounding of the floating-point variety. If the devs say it's a rounding issue, do they really understand the issue at all? I'd really like to know more about this issue, if only to know if it might still be there. Right now I am not confident it's resolved, to be honest.

EDIT: not implying the devs don't know what they're doing. What they did was brilliant - just commenting on this one issue.