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

[PhantomPhreak]

Counterparty

Description

Counterparty is an innovative peer-to-peer financial platform. Unlike Wall Street and other centralized financial institutions, Counterparty provides open, secure financial tools and markets that do not require a trusted third party or middleman to use. The first of its kind, Counterparty aims to democratize finance in the same way the Internet itself democratized creation and sharing of information.

The platform is built on top of Bitcoin, and extends the functionality of the Bitcoin network in new and unprecedented ways. With Counterparty, anyone with an Internet connection gains access to financial instruments that were previously cost prohibitive or not available at all.

The primary goal of Counterparty is to enable entrepreneurs, developers, artists and more to build a new, productive economy: doing things that have never been done before, made possible by the amazing technology behind Bitcoin. We want to unlock the potential of “Bitcoin 2.0″ for thousands of people, who will then create profitable businesses, as well use the technology to further the social good.

Counterparty’s native currency, XCP, is un-mined and slightly deflationary, with 2.6 million XCP created by burning bitcoins in January 2014. Read more about how this burn process lead to an unpresidented fair launch.


Features

• User-Friendly: With Counterwallet you can start using the Counterparty platform immediately.
• Open: As a community-driven, open-source project, we’re building a grassroots movement to free up the world’s markets from centralized control. With Counterparty, you can take part in a global financial marketplace, where bonds and commodities are traded with no exchange fees, risk is hedged without paying a broker, and crowdfunding is done without kickbacks to third-parties.
• Safe: Counterparty has a built-in escrow service that holds your funds until your transactions are complete, entirely eliminating the need for a trusted third-party. There is no bank account that can be seized and no company server that can be hacked. Counterparty keeps an indisputable record of ownership embedded in the Bitcoin blockchain, which is stored safely on thousands of computers all over the world.
• Secure: The Counterparty source code is publicly available and has been audited by several top-tier security experts. The development team operates a generous bug bounty program to incentivise others to review and help harden the code.

Functionality

• Send: XCP or user-created assets
• User-Created Assets: Issue user‐defined currencies/assets and pay dividends on them.
• Distributed Exchange: Trade XCP, BTC or any asset with any other.
• Feeds: Broadcast information, which may be used as the subject of a bet.
• Betting, Financial Derivatives: Make bets, or construct contracts for difference, on the numerical value of a feed.
• A Full, Turing-Complete Smart Contracts Platform:With all of the features of Ethereum's, and entirely compatible.

Wallets

• Counterwallet --- web wallet
• counterparty-cli --- CLI

Exchanges

• Counterwallet
• Bittrex
• Bter (XCP/BTC)
• Bter (XCP/CNY)
• Bter (XCP/USD)
• Shapeshift
• Poloniex

Block Explorers

• Blockscan
• CounterpartyChain
• CoinDaddy

Resources

• Homepage
• Documentation
• Forums
• API documentation
• Subreddit
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Whitepaper
• Chinese Language Thread

Bounties and Donations (BTC or XCP)

• General Donations:
  Donation address: 19U6MmLLumsqxXSBMB5FgYXbezgXYC6Gpe
• Bug Bounty Program:
  Donation address: 14Tf35AovvRVURzd623q5i9kry2EW8WzyL

-----------------------------------

Primary Developers: Adam Krellenstein (PhantomPhreak), Robby Dermody (xnova), Ouziel Slama (JahPowerBit)

[1713514694]

1713514694

[1713514694]

1713514694

[1713514694]

1713514694

[1713514694]

1713514694

[1713514694]

1713514694

[PhantomPhreak]

To invest in XCP and Counterparty, switch Bitcoind/Bitcoin-Qt and counterpartyd over to mainnet simultaneously. Use the command-line switch -testnet=0 with Bitcoind or remove any 'testnet=1' from the Bitcoind configuration file temporarily; then do the same for counterpartyd by both not using the --testnet flag and (again, temporarily) removing 'testnet=1' from counterpartd.conf.

Make sure that Bitcoind and the counterparty server are running, and then run ./counterparty --rpc-password=PASSWORD burn --from=ADDRESS --quantity=QUANTITY, where 'PASSWORD' is the password used to access Bitcoind's RPC interface, 'ADDRESS' is an address in your Bitcoind wallet with sufficient bitcoins, and 'QUANTITY' is the quantity of BTC that you would like to burn.

No more than 1 BTC may ever be burned by any address, and the number of XCP received per BTC is between 1000 and 1500, with more XCP being rewarded the earlier in the burn period the burn takes place. The burn period is 5000 blocks, starting today, and the reward bonus decreases linearly with block index.

To see how many BTC you have burned, and how many XCP you have earned, run ./counterparty --rpc-password=PASSWORD address ADDRESS.

Of course, you can burn Test BTC on testnet to have XCP to play with there.

To get a rough idea of how many BTC have been burned so far, see https://blockchain.info/address/1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr. Note that this page may show some false positives. You cannot just send bitcoins to that address with any client and expect to have them be properly burned. For more instructions on how to burn, e.g. with a Blockchain.info wallet, see Read The Docs.

The burn period is over. Try out the distributed exchange!

[becherovka]

Great to see this innovation launched today.

[xibeijan]

How is the BTC burned?  Does that mean I lose the BTC forever?  How is this accomplished, technically?

[PhantomPhreak]

How is the BTC burned?  Does that mean I lose the BTC forever?  How is this accomplished, technically?

The BTC are given to Bitcoin miners in fees. BTC are sent to addresses for which there is no private key. That makes them impossible to get back.

[xibeijan]

What's the point of doing this?

[cityglut]

What's the point of doing this?

If you are asking why we are using proof-of-burn to initialize balances, it is because Counterparty is a layer on top of Bitcoin, and so XCP are not mined; proof-of-burn initializes balances in a fair, distributed and transparent way.

If you are asking why Counterparty was created, it is because a peer-to-peer financial market within the Bitcoin protocol is a great addition to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, and one that people have been waiting for for a while.

[becherovka]

What's the point of doing this?

If you are asking why we are using proof-of-burn to initialize balances, it is because Counterparty is a layer on top of Bitcoin, and so XCP are not mined; proof-of-burn initializes balances in a fair, distributed and transparent way.

What does it mean when we say Initialize Balances? It may not be clear from the initial introduction above and it does sound like a new concept.

[bootch]

How is the BTC burned?  Does that mean I lose the BTC forever?  How is this accomplished, technically?

The BTC are given to Bitcoin miners in fees. That makes them impossible to get back.

So, if XCP will become popular, any pool, ghash.io for example, easily can create infinite quantity of XCP with such "burning" of BTC.
Scheme is very simple:

Code:

1)create burning transaction
2)don't distribute it over the network
3)get back our btc as miners
4)get xcp as burners
5)???????
6)PROFIT

Am i right?

[PhantomPhreak]

What does it mean when we say Initialize Balances? It may not be clear from the initial introduction above and it does sound like a new concept.

It's not a new concept. See https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_burn. Certainly, it's similar to what Nxt and Mastercoin did (but better).

Right now no one owns any XCP, which we need a "fair, distributed and transparent" way of creating and distributing. Requiring people to publicly "destroy" BTC is a good way of doing that.

[falkspearl]

I think that the ability of getting XCP with proof-of-burn should be postponed to the time when there will be a stable client. It will help the distribution of the coin. If not there will be another distributed exchange with large-holders(who risked their money into a thing that didn't worked at the time) which will be very unhealthy for the counterparty system.

[tobobit]

Counterparty Announcement

The code being released here is alpha-quality and under heavy development. Expect to encounter major bugs, including loss of funds. (Please report them when you do!)

The Counterparty protocol has not yet been finalized! You may lose your money if it changes!

N.B. This thread is self-moderated not to avoid critical comments, but just to keep it free of absolute nonsense.

what do you mean you may lose your money if it changes?

[PhantomPhreak]

How is the BTC burned?  Does that mean I lose the BTC forever?  How is this accomplished, technically?

The BTC are given to Bitcoin miners in fees. That makes them impossible to get back.

So, if XCP will become popular, any pool, ghash.io for example, easily can create infinite quantity of XCP with such "burning" of BTC.
Scheme is very simple:

Code:

1)create burning transaction
2)don't distribute it over the network
3)get back our btc as miners
4)get xcp as burners
5)???????
6)PROFIT

Am i right?

Hmm. You might be, indeed. I didn't think of that.

We may need to switch to destroying coins by sending them to an unspendable address.

[becherovka]

Counterparty Announcement

The code being released here is alpha-quality and under heavy development. Expect to encounter major bugs, including loss of funds. (Please report them when you do!)

The Counterparty protocol has not yet been finalized! You may lose your money if it changes!

N.B. This thread is self-moderated not to avoid critical comments, but just to keep it free of absolute nonsense.

what do you mean you may lose your money if it changes?

This is alpha software launching today and you may use testnet for testing, but we've enabled mainnet functionality as well. We have to put a warning on there for the brave souls who wish to try out the current functionality while we are an alpha platform.

[cityglut]

I think that the ability of getting XCP with proof-of-burn should be postponed to the time when there will be a stable client. It will help the distribution of the coin. If not there will be another distributed exchange with large-holders(who risked their money into a thing that didn't worked at the time) which will be very unhealthy for the counterparty system.

The problem with postponing proof-of-burn is that, since Counterparty is open-source, it is highly probable that someone else will just take the code and start the proof-of-burn. There isn't a perfect solution, so we have chosen what we think is the best solution.

For those who are willing to take on the risk of using the unstable client, there is an early-entrance bonus (50% with a linear decrease over the course of roughly a month). Again, this is not to say there isn't risk, we are just trying to reward those who are willing to take on the risk.

[PhantomPhreak]

Counterparty Announcement

The code being released here is alpha-quality and under heavy development. Expect to encounter major bugs, including loss of funds. (Please report them when you do!)

The Counterparty protocol has not yet been finalized! You may lose your money if it changes!

N.B. This thread is self-moderated not to avoid critical comments, but just to keep it free of absolute nonsense.

what do you mean you may lose your money if it changes?

It's the same as any other cryptocurrency. If Bitcoin's protocol changed, you could lose your money, too. Of course, Counterparty is significantly less mature!

[traderman]

Can someone make a flowchart or a diagram of how this works?

[cityglut]

Can someone make a flowchart or a diagram of how this works?

Mastercoin has made a good diagram which, I believe, fits how XCP interacts with BTC and user-created assets well:

https://github.com/mastercoin-MSC/spec/blob/master/images/layers.png

[xibeijan]

How does XCP compare with MSC?

[becherovka]

How does XCP compare with MSC?

Two different projects with different approaches.