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

[cityglut]

Guys, these members are new at Bitcointalk.
Please make sure you won't donate / spend anything before they actually showed something.

It "COULD" be a scam.

The only 'scam' that there could would be in the code somewhere, and the project is open-source, you can check out the code at https://github.com/PhantomPhreak/counterpartyd/.

The code should speak for itself, and if anyone thinks it is worthwhile, we would really appreciate donations, as we are currently funding Counterparty out of our own pockets.

[PhantomPhreak]

For an example successful burn on mainnet, see transaction 685623401c3f5e9d2eaaf0657a50454e56a270ee7630d409e98d3bc257560098. (Of course it looks a little funny on blockchain.info.)

0.0005 BTC were burned and 0.74959091 XCP were earned, at a price of 1499.18182 XCP/BTC. The transaction is correctly parsed by counterpartyd.

[johnngbluntzky]

when you say user-created assets, does that mean we will be to trade -any- coin that others are willing to buy? so we don't have to wait for cryptsy coinedup etc.. to post new coins up, we can do it ourselves here?

[PhantomPhreak]

when you say user-created assets, does that mean we will be to trade -any- coin that others are willing to buy? so we don't have to wait for cryptsy coinedup etc.. to post new coins up, we can do it ourselves here?

You can't trade, say, Peercoin on Counterparty; but you can create currencies *in* Counterparty, and then trade those on Counterparty as you like. You can also use Counterparty to create IOUs for existing things-of-value (like peercoins or US dollars), and trade those, etc., on Counterparty in a completely peer-to-peer fashion.

[johnngbluntzky]

when you say user-created assets, does that mean we will be to trade -any- coin that others are willing to buy? so we don't have to wait for cryptsy coinedup etc.. to post new coins up, we can do it ourselves here?

You can't trade, say, Peercoin on Counterparty; but you can create currencies *in* Counterparty, and then trade those on Counterparty as you like. You can also use Counterparty to create IOUs for existing things-of-value (like peercoins or US dollars), and trade those, etc., on Counterparty in a completely peer-to-peer fashion.

seems very innovative, thanks for bringing something new and interesting to the table.

[Kyune]

For an example successful burn on mainnet, see transaction 685623401c3f5e9d2eaaf0657a50454e56a270ee7630d409e98d3bc257560098. (Of course it looks a little funny on blockchain.info.)

0.0005 BTC were burned and 0.74959091 XCP were earned, at a price of 1499.18182 XCP/BTC. The transaction is correctly parsed by counterpartyd.

How could one "back up", or move, such earned XCP to a different machine (that is also running counterparty, of course)?  Would be it be sufficient just to copy the bitcoin wallet.dat for the bitcoin address that burned the BTC, or would some data file specific to counterparty also need to be copied over?

   

[killerstorm]

I was unable to find code which handles blockchain reorganizations.

Also, it looks like you parse the whole blockchain at start... or am I missing something?

[PhantomPhreak]

For an example successful burn on mainnet, see transaction 685623401c3f5e9d2eaaf0657a50454e56a270ee7630d409e98d3bc257560098. (Of course it looks a little funny on blockchain.info.)

0.0005 BTC were burned and 0.74959091 XCP were earned, at a price of 1499.18182 XCP/BTC. The transaction is correctly parsed by counterpartyd.

How could one "back up", or move, such earned XCP to a different machine (that is also running counterparty, of course)?  Would be it be sufficient just to copy the bitcoin wallet.dat for the bitcoin address that burned the BTC, or would some data file specific to counterparty also need to be copied over?

Sure. The XCP are tied to the Bitcoin address, so if you have that address's private key on the new computer, you're good.

[btc4ever]

Can you provide an example of how one currency would be traded for another via the distributed exchange mechanism?

Is it like entering a limit order that matches against other orders?  Or more like a 2 party + escrow system, possibly via multisig?

I'm a command-line guy, so I'd be curious to see examples of actual commands used. 

And how can I cancel the order?

[PhantomPhreak]

I was unable to find code which handles blockchain reorganizations.

Also, it looks like you parse the whole blockchain at start... or am I missing something?

counterpartyd does not handle blockchain reorganizations yet. Thanks for bringing that up. Currently, it builds a persistent-across-sessions database of all Counterparty transactions, which are easily and simply identified, and then, on every start-up, counterparty actually does the parsing of those transactions, from the beginning (deleting and recreating those tables in the DB). This situation is temporary---it made development easier, because the parsing rules were always changing, and the identification of transactions never was. At the moment, the only way to handle a reorg. is to delete the database manually.

[PhantomPhreak]

Can you provide an example of how one currency would be traded for another via the distributed exchange mechanism?

Is it like entering a limit order that matches against other orders?  Or more like a 2 party + escrow system, possibly via multisig?

I'm a command-line guy, so I'd be curious to see examples of actual commands used.  

And how can I cancel the order?

No problem. It's a lot like a limit order.

Let's say that you want to sell 10 XCP for GOLD shares (particular IOUs for gold) at a price of at least 2 GOLD/XCP. You'd run this command:

./counterpartyd.py [--testnet] [--rpc-password=PASSWORD] order --from=ADDRESS --give-quantity=10 --give-asset=XCP --get-quantity=20 --get-asset=GOLD --expiration=WHATEVER

If there are any orders already on the books selling GOLD for XCP at a price above 2 GOLD/XCP, then your order will immediately be matched to the order at the best price (for you), but at *that* price (which would still meet your criteria). As soon as an order is matched, it is settled, and the GOLD is in your wallet. The 'give' funds in any open order are held in escrow by the network, as it were, as long as the order is open.

You cancel an order simply by [attempting to] accept it yourself. There's a chance that you won't get there in time, but that chance exists either way, that is if there were a 'cancel order' command, and it is the same in both cases. There isn't any cancelling of orders. It would be very easy to implement, though. EDIT: Cancelling orders and bets is now possible.

If you're buying or selling BTC, there's an extra step of finalizing a matched order, because Counterparty can't forcibly put your BTC in escrow. Every such order match for which you owe someone BTC is displayed on the 'market' screen (./counterparty market, along with its 'order match ID', which is the only argument to the 'btcpay' command. That command will figure out out many BTC you owe for the order in question and it will send it along its way automatically.

[btc4ever]

Geez, is there a python library someone has written somewhere that you guys don't import?   

[btc4ever]

Running setup.py on ubuntu, get this error:

Setting up sqlite3 (3.7.13-1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
sudo: pip3: command not found
2014-01-02 16:46:30,314|ERROR: Command failed: 'sudo pip3 install appdirs==1.2.0'

$ sudo pip-3.2 install appdirs==1.2.0
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): appdirs==1.2.0 in /usr/local/lib/python3.2/dist-packages
Cleaning up...

$ ./counterpartyd.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./counterpartyd.py", line 17, in <module>
    import dateutil.parser
ImportError: No module named dateutil.parser

$ sudo pip-3.2 install dateutil
Downloading/unpacking dateutil
  Real name of requirement dateutil is dateutil
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement dateutil
No distributions at all found for dateutil

so setup.py fails on pip3 appdirs, counterpartyd complains about missing dateutil, and I'm not sure how to install dateutil.

[PhantomPhreak]

Running setup.py on ubuntu, get this error:

Setting up sqlite3 (3.7.13-1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
sudo: pip3: command not found
2014-01-02 16:46:30,314|ERROR: Command failed: 'sudo pip3 install appdirs==1.2.0'

$ sudo pip-3.2 install appdirs==1.2.0
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): appdirs==1.2.0 in /usr/local/lib/python3.2/dist-packages
Cleaning up...

$ ./counterpartyd.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./counterpartyd.py", line 17, in <module>
    import dateutil.parser
ImportError: No module named dateutil.parser

$ sudo pip-3.2 install dateutil
Downloading/unpacking dateutil
  Real name of requirement dateutil is dateutil
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement dateutil
No distributions at all found for dateutil

so setup.py fails on pip3 appdirs, counterpartyd complains about missing dateutil, and I'm not sure how to install dateutil.

Hmm. I think that dateutil is called python-dateutil in pip.

[Voodah]

So I'm better off burning right now than at any other point in time right?

[cityglut]

So I'm better off burning right now than at any other point in time right?

If you are confident in the project's success then you are better off burning ASAP. The reward for early investment is, however, not arbitrary: there is definite risk associated witha new project that has not been thoroughly bug tested, which may make some people forego investing until there is more consensus regarding the project's viability.

[Voodah]

So I'm better off burning right now than at any other point in time right?

If you are confident in the project's success then you are better off burning ASAP. The reward for early investment is, however, not arbitrary: there is definite risk associated witha new project that has not been thoroughly bug tested, which may make some people forego investing until there is more consensus regarding the project's viability.

What happens after the burn period?

How will XCP be minted then?

If the burn goes by without great success are you then left off with a very low liquidity currency?

EDIT: Let's face it, one of the main big contributing factors to the success of Mastercoin's similar process, was that JR put his 1k BTC in from the go. That gave people the confidence to change their btc.

[PhantomPhreak]

Running setup.py on ubuntu, get this error:

Setting up sqlite3 (3.7.13-1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
sudo: pip3: command not found
2014-01-02 16:46:30,314|ERROR: Command failed: 'sudo pip3 install appdirs==1.2.0'

$ sudo pip-3.2 install appdirs==1.2.0
Requirement already satisfied (use --upgrade to upgrade): appdirs==1.2.0 in /usr/local/lib/python3.2/dist-packages
Cleaning up...

$ ./counterpartyd.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./counterpartyd.py", line 17, in <module>
    import dateutil.parser
ImportError: No module named dateutil.parser

$ sudo pip-3.2 install dateutil
Downloading/unpacking dateutil
  Real name of requirement dateutil is dateutil
  Could not find any downloads that satisfy the requirement dateutil
No distributions at all found for dateutil

so setup.py fails on pip3 appdirs, counterpartyd complains about missing dateutil, and I'm not sure how to install dateutil.

What version of Ubuntu are you running?

[PhantomPhreak]

So I'm better off burning right now than at any other point in time right?

If you are confident in the project's success then you are better off burning ASAP. The reward for early investment is, however, not arbitrary: there is definite risk associated witha new project that has not been thoroughly bug tested, which may make some people forego investing until there is more consensus regarding the project's viability.

What happens after the burn period?

How will XCP be minted then?

If the burn goes by without great success are you then left off with a very low liquidity currency?

EDIT: Let's face it, one of the main big contributing factors to the success of Mastercoin's similar process, was that JR put his 1k BTC in from the go. That gave people the confidence to change their btc.

After the burn period no more XCP will be minted. If not enough are minted, then the liquidity won't be a problem, just the divisibility, and while one XCP is currently divisible to eight decimal places, that number can be extended very easily.

[cityglut]

So I'm better off burning right now than at any other point in time right?

If you are confident in the project's success then you are better off burning ASAP. The reward for early investment is, however, not arbitrary: there is definite risk associated witha new project that has not been thoroughly bug tested, which may make some people forego investing until there is more consensus regarding the project's viability.

What happens after the burn period?

How will XCP be minted then?

If the burn goes by without great success are you then left off with a very low liquidity currency?

EDIT: Let's face it, one of the main big contributing factors to the success of Mastercoin's similar process, was that JR put his 1k BTC in from the go. That gave people the confidence to change their btc.

After the burn period, no more XCP can be created.

Usually, a 'low liquidity currency' denotes a currency for which there is a low demand, but I think by 'low liquidity currency' you mean a currency that there isn't a lot of, right? I think it is important to make a distinction between the two. XCP are, like BTC, divisble to 8 decimal places, and so if Z XCP are created, there are actually Z * 10^8 usable units of XCP. This lessens concerns regarding low supply, even after the burn period is over.

As far as JR is concerned, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but I personally wouldn't feel assured in any way by someone sending 1000 BTC to an address for which he had the private key.

EDIT: From the beginning Mastercoin has been centralized and has relied on a trust system, and in Counterparty we are trying to limit centralization and maximize trustlessness in every way possible.