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

[Patel]

For everyone who is actively testing the command line, I ask a favor.

Could you come up with the most common sequences of commands you find useful. If we had a list of (??) most useful sequences, we can make them push button easy in the GUI.

James

Here are some useful commands

cd C:\counterpartyd_build
C:\Python32\python.exe run.py server


C:\Python32\python.exe run.py send --from=[1xx] --quantity=[xx] --asset=[XCP] --to=[1xx]

C:\Python32\python.exe run.py order --from=[1xx] --get-quantity=[xx] --get-asset=[XCP] --give-quantity=[xx] --give-asset=BTC --expiration=[10] --fee_required=[.001]


C:\Python32\python.exe run.py btcpay --order-match-id=[enter tx hashes of both orders, combined]

C:\Python32\python.exe run.py cancel --offer-hash=[enter tx hash here]

Yikes!
Please explain why they are useful. To me (end user hat on) it looks like very scary technobabble.

Pretty self explanatory.

Server is to start the counterpartyd server

Send is to send any assets, just fill in the fields appropriately depending on what asset you want to send.

Order is to make an order on the exchange, depending on what you want. Expiration is number of blocks. Fee is idk but I set it to 0.001

Btcpay is for when your order matches up and its time to send BTC payment if your buying XCP. In the field, enter both the hashes of the orders being matched up.

Cancel is to cancel your order.

Everything in brackets is user defined.

[jl777]

For everyone who is actively testing the command line, I ask a favor.

Could you come up with the most common sequences of commands you find useful. If we had a list of (??) most useful sequences, we can make them push button easy in the GUI.

James

Here are some useful commands

cd C:\counterpartyd_build
C:\Python32\python.exe run.py server


C:\Python32\python.exe run.py send --from=1xx --quantity=xx --asset=XCP --to=1xx

C:\Python32\python.exe run.py order --from=1xx --get-quantity=xx --get-asset=XCP --give-quantity=xx --give-asset=BTC --expiration=10 --fee_required=.001


C:\Python32\python.exe run.py btcpay --order-match-id=[enter tx hashes of both orders, combined]

C:\Python32\python.exe run.py cancel --offer-hash=[enter tx hash here]

Yikes!
Please explain why they are useful. To me (end user hat on) it looks like very scary technobabble.

Pretty self explanatory.

Server is to start the counterpartyd server

Send is to send any assets, just fill in the fields appropriately depending on what asset you want to send.

Order is to make an order on the exchange, depending on what you want. Expiration is number of blocks. Fee is idk but I set it to 0.001

Btcpay is for when your order matches up and its time to send BTC payment if your buying XCP. In the field, enter both the hashes of the orders being matched up.

Cancel is to cancel your order.

sorry to be asking such basic questions. I have my end user hat on now

Wouldnt it be more convenient if there was a way to create an script (or whatever) that polled (was notified) when a matching transaction happened and then automatically did the btcpay?

Is there a reason (other than there is separate command) that you would want to do the btcpay manually? I am assuming the transactions wont be matched unless the required XCP is in escrow. Another way of asking this is when, if ever, will there be a matching transaction when you wouldn't want to do the corresponding btcpay?

James

[jl777]

I finally found some info about mastercoin:
http://wiki.mastercoin.org/index.php/Category:Features

It seems that they have data feeds, betting, dividends and escrow. Of course it is all just in specification form, and not sure what the current mastercoin software has.

Does anybody have any experience with the actual mastercoin software?

From a marketing point, it seems that almost feature for feature the only difference between XCP and mastercoin is that XCP has it working and almost debugged, while mastercoin is still trying to get a release out.

If the technical overlap between XCP and mastercoin is the ~90% that it looks like to me, can somebody help with explaining the technical advantage of XCP over mastercoin?

James

Theres going to be a deluge of high quality software releases coming from the mastercoin front in the next 6 weeks or so.

Any idea how it will compare to XCP? I am looking for a clear technical advantage XCP will have over mastercoin. Something they won't be able to duplicate for a long time

James

BUMP @PhantomPhreak ?

I don't want to start a flame war, but this is a legitimate question.

There are lots of medium-sized technical advantages of the Counterparty protocol, but the most important advantage, IMHO, is just that it is much simpler and more straightforward. For one, this means that there will never be any question of what constitutes a valid Counterparty transaction, whereas Mastercoin is still working on this problem, many months in. Then there's the issue of parsing of transactions, and the order in which they're considered, which they have hardly even touched on yet, and which constitute a much greater technical challenge. (Their early efforts implementing a distributed exchange, for instance, are very much overcomplex, too.) They will never be able to duplicate this, for backwards-compatibility, with anything less than a full shutdown of the network and a transfer of balances to a new protocol.

Could you explain why anybody would care about the order transactions are parsed. I can guess, but I don't want to guess on the key tech that will be used to differentiate XCP from mastercoin

/flamewar commence

Doesn't MasterCoin mandate a fee that gets sent to 1Exodus for each transaction on top of the BTC miner fee?

That design decision fits perfectly with MasterCoin's philosophy of centralization and rent-seeking...which makes me uneasy about it. I'm sure many others feel the same way.

IIRC the first 10 pages in the original MSC thread were about how much money everyone needed to give JRWillet so he could convince his wife to let him have 2 hours a week to work on the project. Several other times he implied that he was the "owner" of 1Exodus. Others had to remind him the coins in 1Exodus belonged to the MasterCoin community.

The strongest point that XCP has over MSC is that nobody received any BTC during the creation of XCP. The only people who become millionaires from XCP will get there with XCP, not donated bitcoins.

In terms of technical advantages we will have to wait for MSC code to actually be completed.

Thanks. This is useful info. I dont want to combine the tech comparison story with the community comparison. As a group we burned almost $2 million USD. We are all either crazy or really smart

Certainly for the crypto community, we don't even have to say anything about XCP community being better than MSC. Everybody will figure that out on their own. I also (edit) dont think the greed angle is something we should use, it can easily be twisted into us not having any funds to pay for dev.

What we do have is LOWER fees!
What trader wants to pay any more fees that he has to? All other things being equal, if one solution is one satoshi less expensive than the other, the cheaper solution wins.

Do you have any specifics on the actual fees that are charged? Also, what are the specific fees XCP charges. I have seen some fees for bets, etc. but still not up to speed so not sure of what the minimum fees are

James

[PhantomPhreak]

I finally found some info about mastercoin:
http://wiki.mastercoin.org/index.php/Category:Features

It seems that they have data feeds, betting, dividends and escrow. Of course it is all just in specification form, and not sure what the current mastercoin software has.

Does anybody have any experience with the actual mastercoin software?

From a marketing point, it seems that almost feature for feature the only difference between XCP and mastercoin is that XCP has it working and almost debugged, while mastercoin is still trying to get a release out.

If the technical overlap between XCP and mastercoin is the ~90% that it looks like to me, can somebody help with explaining the technical advantage of XCP over mastercoin?

James

Theres going to be a deluge of high quality software releases coming from the mastercoin front in the next 6 weeks or so.

Any idea how it will compare to XCP? I am looking for a clear technical advantage XCP will have over mastercoin. Something they won't be able to duplicate for a long time

James

BUMP @PhantomPhreak ?

I don't want to start a flame war, but this is a legitimate question.

There are lots of medium-sized technical advantages of the Counterparty protocol, but the most important advantage, IMHO, is just that it is much simpler and more straightforward. For one, this means that there will never be any question of what constitutes a valid Counterparty transaction, whereas Mastercoin is still working on this problem, many months in. Then there's the issue of parsing of transactions, and the order in which they're considered, which they have hardly even touched on yet, and which constitute a much greater technical challenge. (Their early efforts implementing a distributed exchange, for instance, are very much overcomplex, too.) They will never be able to duplicate this, for backwards-compatibility, with anything less than a full shutdown of the network and a transfer of balances to a new protocol.

Could you explain why anybody would care about the order transactions are parsed. I can guess, but I don't want to guess on the key tech that will be used to differentiate XCP from mastercoin

/flamewar commence

Doesn't MasterCoin mandate a fee that gets sent to 1Exodus for each transaction on top of the BTC miner fee?

That design decision fits perfectly with MasterCoin's philosophy of centralization and rent-seeking...which makes me uneasy about it. I'm sure many others feel the same way.

IIRC the first 10 pages in the original MSC thread were about how much money everyone needed to give JRWillet so he could convince his wife to let him have 2 hours a week to work on the project. Several other times he implied that he was the "owner" of 1Exodus. Others had to remind him the coins in 1Exodus belonged to the MasterCoin community.

The strongest point that XCP has over MSC is that nobody received any BTC during the creation of XCP. The only people who become millionaires from XCP will get there with XCP, not donated bitcoins.

In terms of technical advantages we will have to wait for MSC code to actually be completed.

If the transactions are not parsed in a very well-defined order, then address balances quickly become totally unreliable.

Oh right, I forgot about that.. Yes, every Mastercoin transaction sends about six US cents to JR, who holds the private key to the Exodus address, completely unnecessarily.

[jl777]

For everyone who is actively testing the command line, I ask a favor.

Could you come up with the most common sequences of commands you find useful. If we had a list of (??) most useful sequences, we can make them push button easy in the GUI.

James

Here are some useful commands

cd C:\counterpartyd_build
C:\Python32\python.exe run.py server


C:\Python32\python.exe run.py send --from=1xx --quantity=xx --asset=XCP --to=1xx

C:\Python32\python.exe run.py order --from=1xx --get-quantity=xx --get-asset=XCP --give-quantity=xx --give-asset=BTC --expiration=10 --fee_required=.001


C:\Python32\python.exe run.py btcpay --order-match-id=[enter tx hashes of both orders, combined]

C:\Python32\python.exe run.py cancel --offer-hash=[enter tx hash here]

Yikes!
Please explain why they are useful. To me (end user hat on) it looks like very scary technobabble.

Pretty self explanatory.

Server is to start the counterpartyd server

Send is to send any assets, just fill in the fields appropriately depending on what asset you want to send.

Order is to make an order on the exchange, depending on what you want. Expiration is number of blocks. Fee is idk but I set it to 0.001

Btcpay is for when your order matches up and its time to send BTC payment if your buying XCP. In the field, enter both the hashes of the orders being matched up.

Cancel is to cancel your order.

sorry to be asking such basic questions. I have my end user hat on now

Wouldnt it be more convenient if there was a way to create an script (or whatever) that polled (was notified) when a matching transaction happened and then automatically did the btcpay?

Is there a reason (other than there is separate command) that you would want to do the btcpay manually? I am assuming the transactions wont be matched unless the required XCP is in escrow. Another way of asking this is when, if ever, will there be a matching transaction when you wouldn't want to do the corresponding btcpay?

James

Having a separate btcpay command basically gives the buyer of XCP an option on the price of XCP until expiration of the order-match.

Here's a simple scenario where the buyer wouldn't want to do the corresponding btcpay.

1) Buyer buys 100 XCP for 1 BTC. Order is matched with expiration of 10 blocks.
2) A new seller submits an order to sell 200 XCP for 1 BTC in the next block.

Buyer now has the option of hitting the new order and letting his first order expire.

Why couldn't all this be put into a script and have it done totally automatically? It sure sounds super useful to get the best price possible not just at the moment of the first matching trade that is found, but during the entire time window. Does the de facto seller of the option get any compensation for having had a matching order that was rejected?

Does the seller have the option of not matching up against buyers whose time window is too big. I don't even know if the time window starts from order submission or order match or if there are two different time windows.

I am pretty sure this relates to the minfee/maxfee, but need to keep hearing it to make sure I understand it.

[halfcab123]

I don't think we should rely on benefits that can be easily changes. JR can remove that fee if he wants with a split second commit.

[halfcab123]

@BiggestFish can you hit me up on IRC ?

[PhantomPhreak]

I don't think we should rely on benefits that can be easily changes. JR can remove that fee if he wants with a split second commit.

No, he can't. That's my point.

[jl777]

If the transactions are not parsed in a very well-defined order, then address balances quickly become totally unreliable.

Oh right, I forgot about that.. Yes, every Mastercoin transaction sends about six US cents to JR, who holds the private key to the Exodus address, completely unnecessarily.

Whoa! I thought it was just some minor performance thing. It sounds like "address balances quickly become totally unreliable" is a pretty serious problem!

So to summarize, XCP escrow is 100% reliable and we can also count on the account balances to be 100% reliable. The 6 cents per transaction is the icing on the cake. Mastercoin is basically asking people to pay 6 cents more per transaction, but there are some risks that the transaction might get messed up and even if it doesn't the account balance might not be reliable.

Ok, I now have idea for silver bullet that will gut mastercoin, without any direct attack on them.

How hard will it be to come up with a set of hard to deal with transactions that XCP can deal with totally reliably that mastercoin would just choke on? I don't have the expertise to even begin designing such a stress test, but as soon as it becomes clear that XCP can survive a bruteforce test, people will demand that mastercoin also does. What serious investor wouldnt?

Volunteers please!

I still dont know if mastercoin network is actually running with real money yet

James

[PhantomPhreak]

If the transactions are not parsed in a very well-defined order, then address balances quickly become totally unreliable.

Oh right, I forgot about that.. Yes, every Mastercoin transaction sends about six US cents to JR, who holds the private key to the Exodus address, completely unnecessarily.

Whoa! I thought it was just some minor performance thing. It sounds like "address balances quickly become totally unreliable" is a pretty serious problem!

So to summarize, XCP escrow is 100% reliable and we can also count on the account balances to be 100% reliable. The 6 cents per transaction is the icing on the cake. Mastercoin is basically asking people to pay 6 cents more per transaction, but there are some risks that the transaction might get messed up and even if it doesn't the account balance might not be reliable.

Ok, I now have idea for silver bullet that will gut mastercoin, without any direct attack on them.

How hard will it be to come up with a set of hard to deal with transactions that XCP can deal with totally reliably that mastercoin would just choke on? I don't have the expertise to even begin designing such a stress test, but as soon as it becomes clear that XCP can survive a bruteforce test, people will demand that mastercoin also does. What serious investor wouldnt?

Volunteers please!

I still dont know if mastercoin network is actually running with real money yet

James

Let's be clear: Counterparty is not yet anywhere near 100% reliable. The basic protocol, however, is, yes, unambiguous, if for no other reason than that it has a reference implementation.

[ddink7]

Tx    Source    Buy    Sell    Price    Expiration    Remarks
3148   1NP89QwRSZsyyzHbZ56DdULwjdDiuG6ZZk   8.5 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00849845482641065 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3147   1FYRPCTwwdk7TbujfxpJYBPBxoDtAVgpxm   8.3 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00829849118343628 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3146   1BLZKAsooFKSgfViZy5Nd4SkF9fkFtJ9gB   8.4 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00839847300492346 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3145   1KBNEiTW6frJeQyEtqSwoz8XbbS5zXBF5m   8.2 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.0081985093619491 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3144   1GMFpxe4LBH566j5aQnbGSQ2xr6ox6C6TC   7.8 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00779858207600036 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3143   1FKRJhRsS9ZEvYiyhPwKQqDA6U4w1AkDzf   7.7 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00769860025451318 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3142   1HE7cVDjBiL2waUiPRm6puCskjSJT51Dsf   8.1 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00809852754046191 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3141   1G63zk53YuwsYdu6x149iE7sLDndmgQLCG   7.6 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00759861843302599 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3140   1NEwLeKqXbDpcMRzqDKoXkmm9r7HgzmoWc   8 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00799854571897473 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3139   16H3V83hNeA1HoTBqqnyYHR9vpmZ6a5Yxh   7.9 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00789856389748754 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3137   1KDiHRwFsAEVEmmqQP7jR9GaBp8Wu7uLoa   7.5 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00749863661153881 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain

What is the purpose of this, other than to try and crash the value 24 hours after burn closes? A rational actor would put transactions up a few BTC at a time.

[jl777]

Let's be clear: Counterparty is not yet anywhere near 100% reliable. The basic protocol, however, is, yes, unambiguous, if for no other reason than that it has a reference implementation.

However, it will get there much sooner than mastercoin. The stress test program can be helpful in finding all the bugs.
Any estimate on when counterparty is ready for massive stress testing? I think this will be a critical piece to get in place and then publicize (as soon as XCP passes)

When it comes to money, reliability is really the most important thing. Cost savings is probably in second. By passing stress test, intrinsically from not having fees and with automatic scripts that optimize trade outcomes, we can prove that XCP is not only the most reliable platform, but it makes you the most profit.

James

[jimhsu]

Let's be clear: Counterparty is not yet anywhere near 100% reliable. The basic protocol, however, is, yes, unambiguous, if for no other reason than that it has a reference implementation.

However, it will get there much sooner than mastercoin. The stress test program can be helpful in finding all the bugs.
Any estimate on when counterparty is ready for massive stress testing? I think this will be a critical piece to get in place and then publicize (as soon as XCP passes)

When it comes to money, reliability is really the most important thing. Cost savings is probably in second. By passing stress test, intrinsically from not having fees and with automatic scripts that optimize trade outcomes, we can prove that XCP is not only the most reliable platform, but it makes you the most profit.

James

The thing is that XCP has already been pretty seriously stress tested (in fact, I alone probably broke the network 3-4 times already), and even in alpha state, does work (without anyone's XCP going into a black hole so far). This is undoubtedly due to the massive amount of feedback in this thread.

And about the whale; If I burned 50 grand, I'd at least want something back to recoup my costs (which looks to be what's happening here) no matter how I feel about the project. And 7-8 times over the burn price isn't exactly crashing. In reality, I probably burned less BTC than most people in this thread (simply because I don't have much to begin with). A lot of my cold storage went into this project.

[qwertyasdfgh]

Tx    Source    Buy    Sell    Price    Expiration    Remarks
3148   1NP89QwRSZsyyzHbZ56DdULwjdDiuG6ZZk   8.5 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00849845482641065 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3147   1FYRPCTwwdk7TbujfxpJYBPBxoDtAVgpxm   8.3 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00829849118343628 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3146   1BLZKAsooFKSgfViZy5Nd4SkF9fkFtJ9gB   8.4 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00839847300492346 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3145   1KBNEiTW6frJeQyEtqSwoz8XbbS5zXBF5m   8.2 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.0081985093619491 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3144   1GMFpxe4LBH566j5aQnbGSQ2xr6ox6C6TC   7.8 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00779858207600036 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3143   1FKRJhRsS9ZEvYiyhPwKQqDA6U4w1AkDzf   7.7 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00769860025451318 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3142   1HE7cVDjBiL2waUiPRm6puCskjSJT51Dsf   8.1 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00809852754046191 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3141   1G63zk53YuwsYdu6x149iE7sLDndmgQLCG   7.6 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00759861843302599 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3140   1NEwLeKqXbDpcMRzqDKoXkmm9r7HgzmoWc   8 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00799854571897473 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3139   16H3V83hNeA1HoTBqqnyYHR9vpmZ6a5Yxh   7.9 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00789856389748754 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain
3137   1KDiHRwFsAEVEmmqQP7jR9GaBp8Wu7uLoa   7.5 BTC   1000.18181818 XCP   0.00749863661153881 BTC/XCP   1000   1000.18181818 XCP remain

What is the purpose of this, other than to try and crash the value 24 hours after burn closes? A rational actor would put transactions up a few BTC at a time.

That's the whale who burned 60 BTC right at the end of the burn period. Guess he's not sticking around  

The weird thing is I looked up the address on blockscan and it says those addresses have 0 XCP, but it says 1000 remaining on the text above.

[jimhsu]

Contract Settled: NotEqual won the pot of 2.0 XCP; 0.0 XCP credited to the feed
address (c1cfe0315493ac2c...3fbd9e4e76bff67d)

Woot, first real XCP bet completed. (This could go into the press release, also).
Broncos lost, but oh well. Congrats Seahawks.

[jl777]

Let's be clear: Counterparty is not yet anywhere near 100% reliable. The basic protocol, however, is, yes, unambiguous, if for no other reason than that it has a reference implementation.

However, it will get there much sooner than mastercoin. The stress test program can be helpful in finding all the bugs.
Any estimate on when counterparty is ready for massive stress testing? I think this will be a critical piece to get in place and then publicize (as soon as XCP passes)

When it comes to money, reliability is really the most important thing. Cost savings is probably in second. By passing stress test, intrinsically from not having fees and with automatic scripts that optimize trade outcomes, we can prove that XCP is not only the most reliable platform, but it makes you the most profit.

James

The thing is that XCP has already been pretty seriously stress tested (in fact, I alone probably broke the network 3-4 times already), and even in alpha state, does work (without anyone's XCP going into a black hole so far). This is undoubtedly due to the massive amount of feedback in this thread.

And about the whale; If I burned 50 grand, I'd at least want something back to recoup my costs (which looks to be what's happening here) no matter how I feel about the project. And 7-8 times over the burn price isn't exactly crashing. In reality, I probably burned less BTC than most people in this thread (simply because I don't have much to begin with). A lot of my cold storage went into this project.

I think the XCP devs are being super cautious about any reliability claims, for obvious reasons. Also, I think you are severely underestimating the level of stress testing I am thinking of. it needs to be so intense that any competitive system would go back home crying to mommy.

Massive amounts of simultaneous transactions, everything, from multiple servers, overflowing blocks, the works.

If we want the rest of the world to use XCP for big money transactions, we must make it 100% reliable. Since the XCP protocol is simple and sane, it might take some time, but it is something that will be achievable. Blackbox testing, clearbox testing, graybox testing, flaw analysis, independent source code reviews, everything.

Raise the bar so high that any competitor would have to spend months and months and months going in circles trying to fix all their bugs. From what I have heard, it sounds like it is quite possible that mastercoin has too much complexity and when you combine too much complexity with large scale real world volumes and complexity, well, it breaks.

James

[jimhsu]

Let's be clear: Counterparty is not yet anywhere near 100% reliable. The basic protocol, however, is, yes, unambiguous, if for no other reason than that it has a reference implementation.

However, it will get there much sooner than mastercoin. The stress test program can be helpful in finding all the bugs.
Any estimate on when counterparty is ready for massive stress testing? I think this will be a critical piece to get in place and then publicize (as soon as XCP passes)

When it comes to money, reliability is really the most important thing. Cost savings is probably in second. By passing stress test, intrinsically from not having fees and with automatic scripts that optimize trade outcomes, we can prove that XCP is not only the most reliable platform, but it makes you the most profit.

James

The thing is that XCP has already been pretty seriously stress tested (in fact, I alone probably broke the network 3-4 times already), and even in alpha state, does work (without anyone's XCP going into a black hole so far). This is undoubtedly due to the massive amount of feedback in this thread.

And about the whale; If I burned 50 grand, I'd at least want something back to recoup my costs (which looks to be what's happening here) no matter how I feel about the project. And 7-8 times over the burn price isn't exactly crashing. In reality, I probably burned less BTC than most people in this thread (simply because I don't have much to begin with). A lot of my cold storage went into this project.

I think the XCP devs are being super cautious about any reliability claims, for obvious reasons. Also, I think you are severely underestimating the level of stress testing I am thinking of. it needs to be so intense that any competitive system would go back home crying to mommy.

Massive amounts of simultaneous transactions, everything, from multiple servers, overflowing blocks, the works.

If we want the rest of the world to use XCP for big money transactions, we must make it 100% reliable. Since the XCP protocol is simple and sane, it might take some time, but it is something that will be achievable. Blackbox testing, clearbox testing, graybox testing, flaw analysis, independent source code reviews, everything.

Raise the bar so high that any competitor would have to spend months and months and months going in circles trying to fix all their bugs. From what I have heard, it sounds like it is quite possible that mastercoin has too much complexity and when you combine too much complexity with large scale real world volumes and complexity, well, it breaks.

James

Well obviously more testing will be needed (and is being done every day). But I can't help but notice that even in alpha state, XCP has more complete, working features than many others coins months post-release (I'm not naming names). Decentralized, cheap (~a quarter in fees), attack-proof sports betting powered by the Bitcoin blockchain...

[jimhsu]

Contract Settled: NotEqual won the pot of 2.0 XCP; 0.0 XCP credited to the feed
address (c1cfe0315493ac2c...3fbd9e4e76bff67d)

Woot, first real XCP bet completed. (This could go into the press release, also).
Broncos lost, but oh well. Congrats Seahawks.

I feel proud to be part of this historic event. This could be XCP's "bitcoin pizza". Can't think of a more fitting first XCP transaction than a decentralized bet on the Super Bowl.

Obviously a friendly bet of course. I'd imagine for truly professional-style betting:

1. Trusted member of community / verified ID / DD
2. Announces betting by signing post with BTC/XCP address
3. Collects the bets (with fees)
4. Announces result of bet, signed again
5. Broadcast result of feed
6. (the best part) winnings are distributed automatically, and are completely trustless

The only "trust" in this system is the feed operator, no one else (no middlemen).

[kdrop22]

Contract Settled: NotEqual won the pot of 2.0 XCP; 0.0 XCP credited to the feed
address (c1cfe0315493ac2c...3fbd9e4e76bff67d)

Woot, first real XCP bet completed. (This could go into the press release, also).
Broncos lost, but oh well. Congrats Seahawks.

I feel proud to be part of this historic event. This could be XCP's "bitcoin pizza". Can't think of a more fitting first XCP transaction than a decentralized bet on the Super Bowl.

Obviously a friendly bet of course. I'd imagine for truly professional-style betting:

1. Trusted member of community / verified ID / DD
2. Announces betting by signing post with BTC/XCP address
3. Collects the bets (with fees)
4. Announces result of bet, signed again
5. Broadcast result of feed
6. (the best part) winnings are distributed automatically, and are completely trustless

The only "trust" in this system is the feed operator, no one else (no middlemen).

It would be great application, if we can make bets on the future price of Bitcoin.

For Example:
1. Price Feed for BTC
2. A betting system that can be used to sell future options/contract in BTC.
e.g., If BTC price is less than XXX, you win so much.

This way you can hedge your position in BTC. If BTC price goes up, you make money from your holdings. If it goes down you can offset some of it using the winning of the bet.

[jl777]

Contract Settled: NotEqual won the pot of 2.0 XCP; 0.0 XCP credited to the feed
address (c1cfe0315493ac2c...3fbd9e4e76bff67d)

Woot, first real XCP bet completed. (This could go into the press release, also).
Broncos lost, but oh well. Congrats Seahawks.

I feel proud to be part of this historic event. This could be XCP's "bitcoin pizza". Can't think of a more fitting first XCP transaction than a decentralized bet on the Super Bowl.

Obviously a friendly bet of course. I'd imagine for truly professional-style betting:

1. Trusted member of community / verified ID / DD
2. Announces betting by signing post with BTC/XCP address
3. Collects the bets (with fees)
4. Announces result of bet, signed again
5. Broadcast result of feed
6. (the best part) winnings are distributed automatically, and are completely trustless

The only "trust" in this system is the feed operator, no one else (no middlemen).

It would be great application, if we can make bets on the future price of Bitcoin.

For Example:
1. Price Feed for BTC
2. A betting system that can be used to sell future options/contract in BTC.
e.g., If BTC price is less than XXX, you win so much.

This way you can hedge your position in BTC. If BTC price goes up, you make money from your holdings. If it goes down you can offset some of it using the winning of the bet.

We would need liquidity providers willing to sell the options. People who want to create income from their BTC holdings could sell call options, but it seems only speculators would be willing to sell put options.

Maybe it is just a matter of creating such a market and the put sellers will appear?

Couldn't we create an open source bot who gets the orderbooks from all the usual places and creates a broadcast feed of some simple to calculate average price, eg. one hour moving average. That way, people can't rig the outcome by posting orders on one orderbook at the exact right time, but would have to do it on all orderbooks for an hour.

Any market manipulation that big would effectively be the marketprice, so don't make 100000 BTC bets on the price of BTC

Is there a way to guarantee that the quotebot will always run and not be modified? If we can solve the issue of needing to trust the feed and created community screened feeds that can be trusted, well, you can see the possibilities. Truly trustless decentralized trading for any data feed that we can make reliable.

James