Keep up the good work guys. I know its hard working on projects like this when they are quickly overshadowed by far simpler innovations (with lower security guarantees.) Especially when no one seems to appreciate what you're doing or "get" it. But I guess keep grinding and making the UX as simple to use as possible and it will definitely pay off.
I'm sure you guys already know this: but there's currently a lot of room for getting different crypto-financial systems all talking together with secure protocols. A bridge between different projects that can't be hacked is still needed and the complexity of such a system seems to have turned almost everyone else away. In the future, new cryptographic techniques may also make it possible to do decentralized, proof of bank transfer which could be tied directly into atomic smart contract protocols for trading money. I am almost certain this would be possible to do now but probably not by those outside of higher mathematics and cryptography.
Anyway, I thought I'd post some encouragement since I've been in your shoes before.
Hi,
thanks for your feedback!
I just read about your Coinbend project. A pity that it did not caught more traction!
In fact a very good idea to use micro payment channels for cryto exchange as alternative to the normal atomic cross chain exchange idea. I was once close to give up Bitsquare and work instead on an atomic cross chain exchange for cyrptos, but I found it too problematic from dev effort to support a wide range of currencies (specially non Bitcoin based ones, which are usually the more interesing ones).
What I read in your posts I share a lot of your thoughts regarding P2P exchanges and I am also concerned about the problem how to bootstrap it and how to get network effects.
I just think you under-estimated one motivation for users to use P2P exchanges: Privacy.
That is what Bitsquare will mainly be focussed on. But that is of course more relevant for the Fiat side and not that relevant for pure crypto exchanges as they are mostly not regulated (yet).
The security argument I agree is not a sufficient motivation for most users.
I did not had time yet to read your articles on
http://roberts.pm but sounds very interesting from what I skimmed over. Sounds you have a lot of experience with crypto and interesting ideas.
Regarding further ideas in Bitsquare:
There is a lot in the pipeline... But I try to stick with the current priorities so did not spent too much time to dive deeper into those ideas. But just to give an overview whats planned:
- DAO (Bitsquare issues shares to contributors and those recieve fee payment of traders) - that might be implemented in about 3 months
- JoinCoin: Maybe integrate JoinMarket if possible (have not looked into it how)
- P2P micro credit market
- Integrated fiat accounts (OKPay, PerfectMoney) to allow automated trades
- Sponsor PageSigner development (
https://tlsnotary.org/) to get 100% reliability (does not work with all webpages atm)
- Communication tools for the DAO involving voting and reputation based governance tools
- P2P network as library / standalone project for other projects
- Atomic cross chain exchange for crypt currencies
- Marketplace (if there is a need for another after OpenBazaar)
I am not sure what you are currently working on, but if you have time and interest I would appreciate to talk to you.
I was most time the only dev (so I know very good the feelings you expressed with the frustration working on such projects alone and getting little support), now I have a second half-time dev for the P2P network stuff, but the project would require 3-4 fulltime devs to do all what should be done. As well as people for helping on the promotion side.
As Bitsquare is intentionally not VC funded there is no money for hiring people. But the DAO model should be an incentive and a new reward and distributed ownership model.
I will post soon a blog post with more details about the DAO.
PM me if you are interested to talk more...
