University Research: Queries about building a trading platform

[Insanerman]

Greetings Everyone,

Someone recommended me to post a query with regards to my planned research of creating another cryptocurrency platform in the next few years of my stay in the academic university and my sole reason for creating this post is to have a prior knowledge about the environment of building a trading platform and to have an upperhand during my senior years. 

I have posted this planned research project in Beginner and Help board before and got a few response.

Greetings Everyone,

I can't think of another section where I can post this query so I decided to post it in here.

I am a 1st Year Computer Engineering Student in the University located in the Philippines and I am thinking of a research or a thesis project that is related to cryptocurrency since I am a into crypto and has an interest in finance as well. Someone told me that a research or a thesis project that relates to crypto is a unique and a good idea. As a student with a love for crypto and blockchain, I am aware that there are trading platforms out there that is big and has been known in the crypto industry for a long period of time, they became well known because they are offering services that gives their users an outstanding trading experiences. But can I ask if are there any other opportunities or improvements that needs to be implemented and designed on a trading platform? or are there any crypto research project that can help crypto enthusiast to better their crypto journey? Is this a good idea? If not, do you have any other opinions or recomendations?

I am pointing to exchanges like Binance, IQ Options, eToro, Coinspro (PH Based crypto trading platform), Coinbase etc.


I have read an article that creating a trading bot / computerized trading will be a good idea for aspiring Computer Engineers.
As Goldman Embraces Automation, Even the Masters of the Universe Are Threatened

I've got a few helpful response.

If i were to give recommendation, how about focusing security aspect of exchange or using trading bot?

What are the specific topic should I learn to proceed in the security aspect of exchange or a trading bot?

in one word: decentralization
specifically when it comes to altcoin trading platforms. for years we have seen exchanges either scam their users or get hacked and it is the users who are always the losers. having decentralized exchanges where the user remains in full control of his keys solves a lot of those issues but so far we don't have any as popular decentralized exchanges.

I know that in order to understand decentralization, I must have a basic understanding of cryptography and the blockchain itself. But are there any recommendation of topic that I will start with?

Trading bot logic is easy to understand. I'm pretty sure you can get the gist of it from reading one or two articles from the internet. Another topic that might be interesting is to know how 'good' or useful a trading bot is. It is discussed here and there but afaik there's no quantitative figure with lots of data about it.

I know there are lots of articles out there in the internet and there must be guidelines on how a trading bot works so I think reading a lot of them is a good start. However I would love to hear your opinions about this.

[jackg]

Don't make a bot on the exchange platform! Well you can but don't give it default values and call it an advanced part of the program both in the spec and the actual program.

Decentralisation is probably something to do with atomic swap smart contracts or timelocking with an extra signed certificate for them to get it (this will make sense when you start to research it).

You could look at how ethereum and waves work, waves has a decentralised trading platform afaik and might be open source.


For security you're going to want to look at how the cryptographic work. Most blockchains use elliptic curve cryptography (sec 1): there's a paper on it.

If it goes over your head you could try looking at RSA first as that's a bit easier to understand and more widely covered.

[Insanerman]

I guess I need to do a lot of homework since these topics you presented are unfamiliar to me  . Maybe educating myself about the technical side of cryptography is not a bad start.

Anyways thanks for the recommendation. I would love to hear form other members too!

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

First off you will want to look at the API documentation of the exchange your wanting to build for.  This would be a good starting point get all information you need to interact with the API.

Then it's selecting the language you want to use to create your trading system, lots of bots use python for CLI based bots but if you were looking to make something more professional then C# or C++ would be a good place to start.

It's by no means a easy task to create a trading bot we have a team currently developing a trading system for bitmex, binance and bybit.
You must also map out the features you want the bot to have like PNL tracking, Stop loss, Algorithmic trading, Manual Trading, Order creation & cancellation + a vast amount of other things to take into consideration.

You could also have a look at some of these projects and lib's that will be useful to the creation of a bot.


TALIB - Technical analysis and indicators

https://github.com/DavidFuchs42/TALibraryInCSharp

Alpaca SDK

https://github.com/alpacahq/alpaca-trade-api-csharp


Deedle - Exploratory data library for .NET (useful for creating backtest modules)

http://bluemountaincapital.github.io/Deedle/index.html


It is also advised if your planning on building one to use the bitmex testnet as this way you won't lose any funds while testing if your planning on creating a bot for this platform.


If you are looking for some more info the feel free to join us I sent you the join links to our community via PM as we are closed community at the moment.

[jackg]

I guess I need to do a lot of homework since these topics you presented are unfamiliar to me  .

Yeah it's a lot to take in when you start trying to do stuff. You can probably try building different parts modularly if you're looking at doing it now.

If not you could take anything that requires some pregramming or theory and start trying to implement it in a functional languages like haskell (for number stuff) or other programs for simulating networking in order to see how the stuff works individually.

Then it's selecting the language you want to use to create your trading system, lots of bots use python for CLI based bots but if you were looking to make something more professional then C# or C++ would be a good place to start.

It's by no means a easy task to create a trading bot we have a team currently developing a trading system for bitmex, binance and bybit.
You must also map out the features you want the bot to have like PNL tracking, Stop loss, Algorithmic trading, Manual Trading, Order creation & cancellation + a vast amount of other things to take into consideration.

Is that bot going to be publicly released at some point?

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

I guess I need to do a lot of homework since these topics you presented are unfamiliar to me  .

Yeah it's a lot to take in when you start trying to do stuff. You can probably try building different parts modularly if you're looking at doing it now.

If not you could take anything that requires some pregramming or theory and start trying to implement it in a functional languages like haskell (for number stuff) or other programs for simulating networking in order to see how the stuff works individually.

Then it's selecting the language you want to use to create your trading system, lots of bots use python for CLI based bots but if you were looking to make something more professional then C# or C++ would be a good place to start.

It's by no means a easy task to create a trading bot we have a team currently developing a trading system for bitmex, binance and bybit.
You must also map out the features you want the bot to have like PNL tracking, Stop loss, Algorithmic trading, Manual Trading, Order creation & cancellation + a vast amount of other things to take into consideration.

Is that bot going to be publicly released at some point?

We are planning on it, we also have a HFT engine we are working on for the crypto market which is rather interesting but again we have no date on release yet still testing and working on the code.

[Nkedvohi]

Don't make a bot on the exchange platform! Well you can but don't give it default values and call it an advanced part of the program both in the spec and the actual program.

Decentralisation is probably something to do with atomic swap smart contracts or timelocking with an extra signed certificate for them to get it (this will make sense when you start to research it).

You could look at how ethereum and waves work, waves has a decentralised trading platform afaik and might be open source.
 

I stumbled upon this message in time, so I was almost ready to make this mistake!!!

[jackg]

Yeah don't make a bot native to just one exchange site released by the same person, it'll likely cause a lot of problems unless you ensure arbitrage but then you'd have to store a lot of funds on other exchanges.

[HeRetiK]

in one word: decentralization
specifically when it comes to altcoin trading platforms. for years we have seen exchanges either scam their users or get hacked and it is the users who are always the losers. having decentralized exchanges where the user remains in full control of his keys solves a lot of those issues but so far we don't have any as popular decentralized exchanges.

I know that in order to understand decentralization, I must have a basic understanding of cryptography and the blockchain itself. But are there any recommendation of topic that I will start with?

Not directly related to decentralized exchanges, but if you're looking to expand your background knowledge of core concepts of cryptocurrencies and blockchains I'd recommend the following article as a starting point:

https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3136559