Idea: Centralized Market on top of DEx

To anyone interested in creating a centralized marketplace for Counterparty.


I suggest you make an exchange quite similar to Bter and Poloniex. However, your exchange will automatically add a market for every Counterparty asset, and ideally also every bet. Your registered users can sell whichever assets they have deposited to your exchange, e.g. if they deposit 20,000 LTBCOIN they can place sales orders for these or if they have 10 XCP they can buy any asset for these.


The order books will show all orders in the DEx, and of course also all orders placed within your exchange. When a limit order on your exchange is matched by a new order on the DEx, your server will automatically place the matching order on the DEx.


The DEx works exactly as before. A user of the DEx does not even need to know of your centralized market. The DEx user will every now and then be happily surprised that even his limit orders match very quickly.


Users of the centralized exchange will benefit from placing, cancelling, and changing orders instantly and with no fees. The risk for these users is that the exchange gets hacked or the owner runs away with their funds - as with any other Bitcoin exchange.


Those who don't bother registering or are not comfortable with the risk will still use the safe DEx within Counterwallet.

The idea is centralized exchanges should source additional liquidity for securities trading from Counterparty's DEx. This will increase liquidity on the DEx and on the centralized exchange while also increasing diversity of securities offerings on the centralized exchange.

As an aside, 796.com has the best UI by far out of any Bitcoin exchange. They offer the highest liquidity and leverage, and importantly offer securities trading, as well as shorting securities. If you're going to copy a UI, copy them. Another approach would be if you have the means and the team to implement this liquidity API, the CEO of 796 responds to emails. Was at Inside Bitcoins HK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_FO3O5CWG8, beginning at minute 4:53

This is an industrial strength idea. I like it.

[quote author=JPJA link=topic=661.msg3511#msg3511 date=1411461991]
To anyone interested in creating a centralized marketplace for Counterparty.


I suggest you make an exchange quite similar to Bter and Poloniex. However, your exchange will automatically add a market for every Counterparty asset, and ideally also every bet. Your registered users can sell whichever assets they have deposited to your exchange, e.g. if they deposit 20,000 LTBCOIN they can place sales orders for these or if they have 10 XCP they can buy any asset for these.


The order books will show all orders in the DEx, and of course also all orders placed within your exchange. When a limit order on your exchange is matched by a new order on the DEx, your server will automatically place the matching order on the DEx.


The DEx works exactly as before. A user of the DEx does not even need to know of your centralized market. The DEx user will every now and then be happily surprised that even his limit orders match very quickly.


Users of the centralized exchange will benefit from placing, cancelling, and changing orders instantly and with no fees. The risk for these users is that the exchange gets hacked or the owner runs away with their funds - as with any other Bitcoin exchange.


Those who don't bother registering or are not comfortable with the risk will still use the safe DEx within Counterwallet.
[/quote]


MasterXchange does something like that already as far as I can tell:
https://masterxchange.com/market.php?currency=xcpfldc
(I haven't tried to create a token market there so I don't know if any deposit is required or whether it's only a proxy to the DEx).


A while ago on CP chit-chat I suggested that exchanges could fill orders on DEx when conditions are matched.
There's a potential problem, though, because BtcPay isn't 100% reliable (e.g. someone can refuse to pay a matched order), it is possible to game the system and also cause the exchange a lot (if you create a lot of fake orders and refuse to pay) of cost in bitcoin transaction fees, so it wouldn't be so simple.
But when improvements to the DEx are made, that scenario of integrating or proxying the DEx will become more attractive.



Some fiat currencies should also be supported. That’d be best!

OP, I literally have had the exact same idea you described. This needs to happen at some point

The security on something like this would be critical.

2-3 days ago I got another idea: create a trading cooperative (or simply a market place). 


a) People publish their signed bitcoin addresses and their identity (if they want (can be real or pseudo-anonymous), or a proof of burn from that address, for example that they donated to Counterparty)
b) Then they can have some trust in each other which helps with BTC Pay screwups on the DEx and can trade BTC and CP assets at almost no cost.

Since each trade on average exchange costs 0.2%, it may be possible to create a nice little marketplace for medium-to-large orders and lso (the next step) escrow non-CP assets and issue new CP assets backed with “real” non-CP assets to trade those as well. Including fiat-representing tokens should they want so.

The MasterXchange approach is fine, but there’s too little activity there. They need more liquidity. Another little issue which doesn’t bother me much, but since I’m talking about them already - it seems slower than Polo and BTer.

@something Isn’t the problem that bad actors can also participate in the DEx or are you just saying by process of elimination that bad actors would see less of their orders get filled since the addresses wouldn’t be part of the club of good repute?

@weex, yes.


The main problem with DEx - as far as I could tell - is that there is no easy way to tell bad BTC Sellers from good BTC Sellers (those who actually want to sell). A bad seller would quote BTC for sale and not pay up after his order got matched. That’s why they were (and still are) put under the pressure to deliver by pre-committing a 1% of their order to transaction fee, so in case they bail and don’t BTC Pay, they lose quite a lot.
For all Counterparty-based assets - because they are taken into escrow by the protocol - once you make an offer it can get matched quickly (no need to wait for 20 blocks and so on) and it’s a done deal - so for those no trust is required.
(I’m sure you know this but I’m just writing this down for others who may be interested).

So by establishing a pool of committed traders who can recognize each other’s trading address, a BTC buyer (XCP, SJCX, etc.) seller can be (fairly) sure that his bid for a known counterparty’s ask (who’s selling BTC) his asset won’t remain stuck in protocol escrow for 20 blocks and transaction fee.won’t be wasted. If that counterparty fails to complete a trade, his address quickly becomes “black-listed” among other pool members. 

By attaching some price (investing BTC or XCP in reputation attached to an address), it becomes less likely that the owner would want to see it get bad reputation and thereby lose his investment.