Mercury - Fully trustless cryptocurrency exchange - Looking for testers!

[DenisZabar]

Please tell me that Hg is not downloading all bitcoin core blockchain?

[FuzzyBear]

very interesting project watching and hopefully will help out with some testing

Fuzzybear

[GingerAle]

I'd like to keep an eye on this!

[mappum]

Please tell me that Hg is not downloading all bitcoin core blockchain?

Don't worry, Mercury runs lite clients for each coin and only ~3 MB of storage is required.

[mistercoin]

I'll give it a shot. By the looks of the images, it looks beautiful.

[GingerAle]

I am glad that someone finally took the time to implement this. This topic should receive much more attention, because its the first really decentralized exchange ever.

just goes to show how many peeps are actually into decentralization vs. get rich quick

[EcuaMobi]

I am glad that someone finally took the time to implement this. This topic should receive much more attention, because its the first really decentralized exchange ever.

Absolutely! I'll test this and report back.

Has the source code been audited yet? Who has built it on their own?

[mappum]

Absolutely! I'll test this and report back.

Has the source code been audited yet? Who has built it on their own?

It hasn't been audited yet, but I'm in the process of getting that done professionally.

[b!z]

Very interesting. Watching.

[Bitcoin Explorer]

I'll check it out later today. This is amazing. You should get a simple website done to professionalise it. I can do it for free since you've done a great job.

[bassguitarman]

I'll check it out later today. This is amazing. You should get a simple website done to professionalise it. I can do it for free since you've done a great job.

http://mercuryex.com

[EcuaMobi]

I'll check it out later today. This is amazing. You should get a simple website done to professionalise it. I can do it for free since you've done a great job.

http://mercuryex.com

It looks great! Did you just make that now?

[albert11]

is this just an exchange between crypto or can i buy crypto with fiat?

is it safe to store altcoins in mercury as a desktop wallet?

[redsn0w]

is this just an exchange between crypto or can i buy crypto with fiat?

is it safe to store altcoins in mercury as a desktop wallet?

Yes for the moment you "can exchange" btc for doge , ltc and btcTestnet ; no at the moment it is not safe to store your coins on it because it is an alpha version :

[kaykurokawa]

Hi, interesting project.

As Dzimbeck mentioned, I think transaction malleability is a serious problem.. one actor (perhaps a grumpy exchange pissed off that you are taking market shares) could cause some serious damage to any atomic cross chain transfer occurring on the blockchain with minimal costs. The new Bitcoin core makes it a bit difficult, but for someone motivated enough it is of no issue once they figure out what IPs the miners are listening on or they establish a working relationship with a miner. IMO, any project that relies on future tx contracts are a no go at this point and I think most of the core developers would tell you the same thing.  

It also seems that order placement and matching happens on a centralized matching engine. It is somewhat misleading to label this project as a "decentralized exchange" when one of the primary component of an exchange is the order book and matching engine, although I do understand the need from a marketing viewpoint  I think users should be aware that DDOS to the server means no trading, and another worrying issues is that someone can easily pollute the order book with orders they don't intend to fill because obviously transactions don't happen until orders are matched (if there is no disincentive for a party to pull out from the trade, they will do so with impunity which means your order book is completely unreliable)

[bassguitarman]

Hi, interesting project.

As Dzimbeck mentioned, I think transaction malleability is a serious problem.. one actor (perhaps a grumpy exchange pissed off that you are taking market shares) could cause some serious damage to any atomic cross chain transfer occurring on the blockchain with minimal costs. The new Bitcoin core makes it a bit difficult, but for someone motivated enough it is of no issue once they figure out what IPs the miners are listening on or they establish a working relationship with a miner. IMO, any project that relies on future tx contracts are a no go at this point and I think most of the core developers would tell you the same thing.  

It also seems that order placement and matching happens on a centralized matching engine. It is somewhat misleading to label this project as a "decentralized exchange" when one of the primary component of an exchange is the order book and matching engine, although I do understand the need from a marketing viewpoint  I think users should be aware that DDOS to the server means no trading, and another worrying issues is that someone can easily pollute the order book with orders they don't intend to fill because obviously transactions don't happen until orders are matched (if there is no disincentive for a party to pull out from the trade, they will do so with impunity which means your order book is completely unreliable)

You don't need the order book to exchange

[fishb0ne]

I would love to test this. Can you include support for PPC?

[mappum]

Yes for the moment you "can exchange" btc for doge , ltc and btcTestnet ; no at the moment it is not safe to store your coins on it because it is an alpha version

Actually storing coins in Mercury is already pretty safe, it's the trading part that isn't perfect yet. (However, the keys are not yet encrypted).

[mappum]

Hi, interesting project.

As Dzimbeck mentioned, I think transaction malleability is a serious problem.. one actor (perhaps a grumpy exchange pissed off that you are taking market shares) could cause some serious damage to any atomic cross chain transfer occurring on the blockchain with minimal costs. The new Bitcoin core makes it a bit difficult, but for someone motivated enough it is of no issue once they figure out what IPs the miners are listening on or they establish a working relationship with a miner. IMO, any project that relies on future tx contracts are a no go at this point and I think most of the core developers would tell you the same thing.  

It also seems that order placement and matching happens on a centralized matching engine. It is somewhat misleading to label this project as a "decentralized exchange" when one of the primary component of an exchange is the order book and matching engine, although I do understand the need from a marketing viewpoint  I think users should be aware that DDOS to the server means no trading, and another worrying issues is that someone can easily pollute the order book with orders they don't intend to fill because obviously transactions don't happen until orders are matched (if there is no disincentive for a party to pull out from the trade, they will do so with impunity which means your order book is completely unreliable)

The transaction malleability vulnerability is an issue, but the cost of pulling off the attack is high enough that this early version of Mercury is OK as a proof-of-concept. The attack wouldn't be profitable unless people were making some really high-volume trades. And when OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY gets adopted, the vulnerability will be completely fixed.

As for the centralized order matching, this part of the protocol does not require any trust, so it is still considered trustless. If the server gets DDoSed, traders can use other orderbook servers, or even find counterparties themselves through e.g. IRC and forums.

You are incorrect about there being no disincentive against backing out of a trade, this can be fixed with licensing. This is not implemented yet, but it would work to require traders to pay a one-time fee or security deposit when they begin using Mercury, and if they back out of trades (maybe if they get 3 strikes), their license will be revoked and they will lose their funds. If the fee is sufficiently large for the volume of trades they will be making, it will be unprofitable to cancel trades.

[EcuaMobi]

Is it possible to open 2 or more instances of Mercury on the same computer?

I'd like to test trading with myself.

If it's not possible I know I can use a virtual machine or another computer but I want to confirm first.