Hi visual,
thanks for your questions and let me try to answer them:
so ATOMIC is advertising the prices of coins across all exchanges within a block chain?
maybe this - atomic is advertising the transactions between coins across all exchanges within a blockchain? i'm not sure i understand
why someone would want to participate in this? what is the incentive?
visualized it would look like this
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi58.tinypic.com%2Ff3yvk.png&t=665&c=E-n3EBQhy3iU8Q)
I think the best way to describe Atomic would be a decentralized exchange based on the bitcoin technology.
Basically it is a decentralized exchange run by everyone who wants to participate (as a miner) in the Atomic network.
Imagine bittrex or cryptsy without the need of a website - pure and straight cross-blockchain trading of coins/assets, that is Atomic.
You can see mining in the Atomic network as a process of exchanging coins/assets between different ledgers.
mining is not traditional mining (PoW), but more like a PoS system? the more tokens you have, the more likely you are to earn rewards for that block?
more so PoS. much like when you open a wallet (like BTCD) and receive XX amount of BTCD relative to the size of your stake. Not sure what the incentive is to collect tokens though? to collect more tokens? which are profitable how?
The mining process is based on two new protocols:
1. Proof of Exchange
2. Proof of Gateway
Proof of Exchange is the protocol that trades coins between different ledgers - it makes use of bitcoin transaction scripts and the coinbase header.
Proof of Gateway is to make Atomic as efficient as possible - it is an algorithm to rank and reward the miner(s) of the Atomic network based on how reliable, fast etc they are.
For example holding Atoms for more then 30 days will be rewarded with a slight ranking boost (least important).
Atoms will be needed to use the Atomic network aka cross-blockchain trading of coins/assets.
what is the difference between Atomic Asset and "Atom" (token)
atomic asset holders will receive dividends for transactions (in BTC?) while atom holders will receive atoms as a forging reward
There are two kinds of fee's:
1. Transaction fee's on the Atomic ledger payed with Atoms
2. Non-Atom fee's payed in the respected currency/asset which the user wants to trade.
I.e. User A wants to trade BTC -> BTCD. User A will have to pay x Atoms (1) + x Bitcoins (2) to a special adress.
The Atom fee's will be payed to the miners, the non-Atom fee's will be payed to the Atomic asset holders.
oh, so in order for a transaction to be put onto the atomic block chain, users will have to pay Atoms (tokens). then miners will be able to mine these tokens in a system similar to PoS. all they have to do is have a full node
why would someone want to pay tokens for their transaction to go onto the Atomic chain?
because they would be able to exchange one currency/asset directly into a different one without the
need of centralized
points of failure exchanges
![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
right now what i understand is that the process will be fully decentralized and trustless - this is a total new level which we didn't saw yet.
if you didnt read the documentation yet, it already has alot of information and will be updated along with the working process:
www.atomicdac.orgI hope i could help you and make some points a bit clearer, if not just ask
![Wink](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/wink.gif)