Let's move beyond centralized exchanges

Centralized exchanges and gateways are a huge liability to the Nu network.

After all these recent hits: BTER, Excoin, CCEDK, I think it would be fair to say Nu should focus on decentralized exchanges where possible (NXT MGW, Mercury, Coinffeine, etc)

Looking forward to Mercury moving into Beta and becoming a viable alternative to centralized exchanges. Check this out:

Also of note:

http://multigateway.org/ (withdraws take about ~2-3 days currently, nu not yet supported)
http://www.coinffeine.com/ (not yet active)

4 Likes

I hope to have some good news to present soon on this issue, possibly as soon as a few days from now. You’re absolutely right.

2 Likes

Mercury doesn’t solve the problem of fiat trades.

i don’t see how fiat tradings can be decentrilized!
coinffeine will use payment processors! (fail)
i don’t like payment processors or fiat
what i like is to pay and be payed with cryptos, that’s all

3 Likes

welcome to the club, me too :smile:

It is impossible to match trades on a blockchain, such that a central exchange will not be vastly more efficient. Each block can produce only one efficient price. Exchanges match in realtime. Exchange matches between N people in a fair order, while blockchains generally allow the transfer between 2 people (1:1 or multisig).

There are many reasons why decentral exchanges in the current model of just using blocks for matching trades can’t work. Nxt MGW makes a bit more sense, because it does not have blocks. Also there is no AML/KYC - which means there can’t be any fiat trades. Ripple is somewhat of a competitor to Nu and has a completely different topology, but aims at being an exchange of sorts. It’s not clear what decentral exchanges could even look like. One needs a lot of knowledge of exchanges, and can’t just take a blockchain and tags things on to it. Blockchains are designed for a completely different purpose. While Nxt allows to issue assets and match trades in a decentral way, it also shows the limitations.

2 Likes

@seki, who said we have to involve fiat in the system at all - that’s where coinbase, circle, localbitcoins, etc come in…

For everyone in this thread that hasn’t downloaded Mercury exchange yet, please do. It’s amazing.

1 Like

That sounds promising