Have you been burned by a centralized altcoin exchange? Or an exchange won't list your coin? Read on.
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tl;dr PeerTrade is software that facilitates cross blockchain cryptocurrency exchange directly between two parties with a known minimal risk.
Readme:
https://github.com/peertrade/peertrade/Download:
https://github.com/peertrade/peertrade/releaseswebsite:
http://peertrade.org----------------------------------------------------------------------
Author's NoteThis software is something of an experiment, and is released in an early text-mode prototype form, to determine if the altcoin community is interested in this novel manner of trading. If there does seem to be real interest, feedback and adoption then further advances in the software, documentation and associated website will be forthcoming. If not, it's been fun to work on.
Enjoy PeerTrade!
What is PeerTrade for?PeerTrade facilitates the exchange of cryptocurrencies directly between two parties without any third party involvement. This means: no centralized exchange and no escrow agent.
The problem we face when two parties wish to exchange digital coins of one cryptocurrency for another is that neither party wants to go first because the other party might simply run off with all the coins.
PeerTrade is software that aims to minimize and manage this risk, rather than solve the problem altogether.
PeerTrade does not do any fancy cryptography and does not utilize any form of escrow. It simply breaks an exchange up into many smaller exchanges so that the risk is much smaller if the other party does not come through.
This way large amounts can be traded back and forth, but only small amounts will be risked by either party.
A trade can be broken into any number of rounds, so the risked amount can be made very small indeed. The tradeoff is that the more rounds of exchange, the longer the trade will take.
PeerTrade is sort of like paying half up-front, half-on delivery to limit your risk. But PeerTrade breaks the payment into much smaller chunks, and automates the process for both parties.
So a trade of 100 ABCcoin for 10 XYZcoin can be split into 10 exchanges of 10 ABC and 1 XYZ. Or 100 exchanges of 1 ABC and 0.1 XYZ. Or 1000 exchanges of 0.1 ABC and 0.001 XYZ. You get the picture.
The number of rounds and the number of receive confirmations per round is determined by the first party to initiate a trade, and is visible to both parties before trade begins.
Still it must be emphasized that it is possible (and likely) to lose one round's worth of funds should you deal with an untrustworthy person. As such, PeerTrade users are encouraged to:
Trade only with individuals with established reputations.
Only enter into trades when you can absorb losing 1 round's worth of coins.
It should also be emphasized that the only communication that PeerTrade performs between the two trading parties is sending and receiving coins via the blockchains of the two crypocurrencies involved. All other communication is performed out-of-band by the two parties.
A PeerTrade exchange can be visualized like this:
http://peertrade.org/images/howitworks.pngFeatures Direct 2 party trades between cryptocoins. ( Escrow not required )
Breaks a trade up into many smaller automated trades with much lower risk.
PeerTrade tokens encode trade parameters for sending to other party.
Trade any coin for any other. Not limited to primary markets.
Trade new or unpopular coins that are not listed on any exchange.
No account signup needed.
Can resume incomplete trades.
Completed trades may be (optionally) published to peertrade.org
Coin list with default wallet parameters auto refreshed from peertrade.org
Works with any cryptocoin wallet that supports the basic bitcoin RPC methods.
Detects encrypted wallets and assists with unlocking for send.
How to TradeThe PeerTrade model is two party peer to peer only. So you need to (somehow) find someone that is willing to trade a given amount of coins at a given price. Eg, I will sell you 20 XYZ coins for 50 ABC coins.
When both parties come to agreement then either party can initiate a trade with PeerTrade. The software will generate a token that the first party gives to the second, and then the second party must give a matching token back to the first. These tokens contain payment amounts, coin addresses, number of rounds, etc. Once the tokens have been swapped and verified, trading can begin.
If the underlying PeerTrade exchange mechanism catches on, it is expected that over time the trading community will devise efficient platforms for announcing, matching and accepting trade offers. For now, just starting out, it can be as simple as starting a forum thread: "WTS 300 abcCoin for xyzCoin. Send offers".
Going forward, one can imagine exchange website(s) that accept limit orders and performs order matching, but do not execute any orders. Instead, when two orders are matched, the site notifies the two parties so that they can trade between themselves.
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Readme continues at:
https://github.com/peertrade/peertrade/website:
http://peertrade.org ( markets and info )