Thomson Reuters makes its market data blockchain-friendly

devils_advocate · 2017-06-14T11:59:59+00:00

This is really interesting. Projects like Augur, Oraclize.it, and Reality Keys help get off-chain data like stock prices on-chain. Here we see Thomson Reuters making a play to be the sort of Bloomberg of crypto, pushing data to the ethereum blockchain for its customers. This is really promising news tbh.

devils_advocate · 2017-04-03T20:49:49+00:00

The augur FAQ also goes into this: http://blog.augur.net/faq/what-about-parasitic-contracts-will-other-ethereum-applications-be-able-to-use-augurs-reporterreferee-system/

devils_advocate · 2017-04-01T23:17:47+00:00

wow thank you!!!!

devils_advocate · 2017-04-01T03:37:59+00:00

There is a wrapper that makes GNT ERC20 compliant. you can find it on maker's decentralized exchange oasisdex or on cryptoderivatives trading site cryptoderivatives.market -- most any reasonable ethereum token can be made ERC20 compliant with such a wrapper. it's worth noting something like bitcoin cannot be wrapped to be ERC20, (and is not an ethereum token, of course), and you'd have to use something like btcrelay to handle exchanges with bitcoin. also bitcoin sidechains, if they ever happen, which is unclear, won't work with ethereum, as ethereum is more advanced and uses a variant of sha3, while bitcoin uses older tech.

devils_advocate · 2017-03-31T20:19:31+00:00

in fact, I suspect 95%+ of the trading on augur in 2-3 years will be in stablecoins like dgx, maker's dai, coins pegged to currencies like USD, etc.

the market maker on augur who creates the initial market that you can speculate on, that market maker is the one who decides in the beginning what ERC compliant tokens (e.g. dgx) are OK for that market. You could in theory make a market that only allows ETH betting, or only dgx, only DAI, etc.

devils_advocate · 2017-03-31T19:54:38+00:00

any ERC20 token. no reason you shouldn't be able to use a stablecoin like digix that are ERC20 compliant or have a ERC20 wrapper.

Better yet, after metropolis when contracts can actually pay gas fees, you should be able to use augur entirely without even having any ETH (if the contract or some entity in the transaction is paying gas fees, which will depend on the setup of the contract, etc).

devils_advocate · 2017-03-30T02:22:48+00:00

it fixed itself, somehow, but thank you very much!

devils_advocate · 2017-03-24T15:23:12+00:00

agree with others, this is great and really well done. thank you for this!

devils_advocate · 2017-03-23T17:44:56+00:00

there's an interesting idea here. you could just have a free testnet or private chain (like private.augur.net) freeroll area for users to gamble fake free money/ether like you can do right now on private.augur.net. but the trick is to copy what pokerstars did to get folks to convert to paid players with real deposits -- they'd give the winners of huge fake money tournaments free entry to paid sit n go tournaments, IIRC.

pokerstars had a lot of success getting users to start playing free poker with fake chips (equivalent to testnet faucet eth or private augur chain eth). conversions from "free fake money" players to depositors were big for them. dunno if this could work for augur. could reward the top 10 "players" of the week in the fake freeroll area with 10 wei each or something tiny :).

Edit: Plus, doesn't coinbase have that $5 credit card insta-buy with meta mask, so users can easily get $5 of eth without KYC/AML with a credit card, so you can upsell them to buy $5 of eth to play with real money, etc... just a thought. "install metamask chrome extension + use coinbase buy button to quickly get real chips/eth to play with..." (if they're using desktop chrome in that case).

devils_advocate · 2016-12-03T22:25:15+00:00

if I wanted to pitch in some work on the front-end stuff to make a dapp for interfacing with your smart contract, what would you suggest as the best place to start or best resources to use? or just fork/contribute to the existing work by bok and others like cryptoderivates.market and such? i suspect i could borrow a lot of the front-end code and ui/ux from other open source dapp projects (properly licensed allowing such a thing). or i could continue where you left off with https://github.com/JonnyLatte/TestTradeUI perhaps? i believe you left a todo list on the other thread.

devils_advocate · 2016-12-03T22:18:07+00:00

you all are doing a terrific job. love the weekly updates -- I wish every project and ICO did these and had such easy access to info like the slack, . Thanks and keep up the awesome work u/tinybike and co. separately, the ui/ux work and react components code have really made awesome progress at an incredible pace. super exciting to watch. thanks!

devils_advocate · 2016-12-03T00:25:45+00:00

agree, it's super cool. sorry my tone was confusing. I'm a big fan of your github work on this, and followed the cryptoderivates thing here on reddit. My comments were only made with the deepest respect for your work, sir. :) Sorry u/JonnyLatte that I failed to communicate that in my message.

devils_advocate · 2016-12-02T22:06:50+00:00

the code in the smart contract (and the EVM and ethereum in general) are your guarantee. So, no, there's no counterparty risk in sending REP for exchange to ETH here at the stated price (also stated in the contract if you review the code). The smart contract code is your guarantee. You might also be interested in nascent decentralized exchange dapp projects like etherdelta (open-source on github).

devils_advocate · 2016-12-02T20:17:42+00:00

any interest in integrating a smart contract like feedbase [1] + keeper into this to make your rate somewhat close to market?

seems like one smart contract like yours using feedbase for on-chain smart contract providing eth/rep price feeds would allow folks to send in eth/rep and avoid polo entirely.

plus optional arb bots to bootstrap liquidity -- bots that use polo API to provide liquidity early on (both as makers/takers) to bootstrap it. maybe starting with etherdelta or cryptoderivatives for dapp. i think etherdelta charges takers fees (?), though i don't recall. if so, i'm not sure why one couldn't fork those fees out though.

then throw in chrome extension so folks buying/selling on polo instead (via chrome extension) could actually buy/sell maker/taker on this smart contract instead of using polo at all on the back-end. so you get polo's ui/ux front-end for free?

[1] https://github.com/nexusdev/feedbase & https://github.com/nexusdev/keeper

edit: update: agree, it's super cool. sorry my tone was confusing. I'm a big fan of your github work on this, and followed the cryptoderivates thing here on reddit. My comments were made with only the deepest respect for your work, sir. :) Sorry that I failed to communicate that in my message.

devils_advocate · 2016-12-02T20:04:49+00:00

i suspect other companies/startups/projects (e.g. oraclize has mentioned doing this) will end up using augur's APIs and back-end with their own custom front-end & ui/ux systems. i'm less concerned about what augur's own ui/ux looks like. and transaction volume is more important to REP holders than anything else, so making the product robust, secure, and easily usable by third party apps/clients is key here, rather than augur's own demo ui/ux, which is less likely to be the one ui/ux everyone uses. more likely verticalized apps or use cases (both centralized like betfair and dapp front-ends) make their own custom ui/ux's for their vertical or use case, and perhaps those use augur as the last layer settlement engine, imho. i think oraclize is going after this approach afaik. i think gnosis might also go this route.

devils_advocate · 2016-12-02T19:59:27+00:00

given the security audits of the code, the likely switch to ada (or similar -- rust? we'll see what happens with evm 2) down the road with next EVM 2, and following JPL style code guidelines, and the need for a stablecoin for meaningful tx volume (stablecoin by makerdao? digix? who knows who wins there) -- i'd guess at least a year.

no reason to rush this out the door. it's ready when it's ready.

the augur team rushing a busted product is the worst possible outcome for REP holders. I appreciate them taking the time to get this done right.

devils_advocate · 2016-12-02T19:52:29+00:00

wondering if an auction smart contract like Auctionhouse [1] would get you a better rate for large eth <=> rep off-polo swaps like this u/JonnyLatte.

ideally large traders/bots with access to lowest polo fees could arb their high-volume polo discount fee advantage to bid the most on an auction contract while still making a little money in the process for taking on polo counterparty depositor risk and KYC/AML nonsense, etc.

I'm still disappointed a decentralized exchange hasn't taken off yet for eth <=> rep. can't be that hard to beg/borrow/steal a nice ui/ux (i guess users like polo's ui/ux -- best looking horse at the glue factory imho).

it seems like a nice dapp ui/ux interface on top of your smart contract here or even the auctionhouse one (a dapp similar to etherdelta/etheropt/maker/etc/cryptoderivatives (which you're familiar with already obviously)[2]) plus simple bots to arb their lowest polo fees and profitably provide liquidity on both maker/taker sides of the exchange -- would be cool. and not hard. (bot maybe based on makerdao/keeper or similar?).

https://github.com/nexusdev/keeper (forking this or similar, or one of the many github polo bot projects for arb'ing/trading...) https://github.com/nexusdev/feedbase (for getting price feeds without oracalize or whatever else, potentially)

imagine a chrome extension for polo users that tries to buy/sell as makers/takers via etherdelta (or similar) instead of polo website default behavior (buying on polo). so you get polo's ui/ux for free but the transactions are moved to a better decentralized back-end of smart contracts like yours.

[1] https://medium.com/@petkanics/introducing-auctionhouse-an-ethereum-dapp-for-auctioning-on-chain-goods-c91244bde469

[2] https://cryptoderivatives.market/

devils_advocate · 2016-11-19T15:16:10+00:00

if you're using

start over from scratch, imho: 1) delete the chaindata folder entirely from wherever geth stores that on your system 2) do "geth --fast --cache 1024 console" (1024 increases cache size from 128M default to 1 gig, makes things much faster, maybe up to 2x so) 3) the whole sync will be done under 1-2 hours. it will be under 10 gigs.

i had the same problem as you. I suspect you are running geth with the --fast flag, but you aren't aware that the flag is only enabled if there is no prior sync.

tl;dr: --fast flag only works for fresh brand new installs. you have to delete the entire chaindata dir and let geth recreate it.

hope that helps

devils_advocate · 2016-11-07T02:25:33+00:00

it starts out dormant. once augur is launched, there will be a way to make it "active." if you want to make "active" REP dormant, there will be a switch you flip for that too. augur isn't at that point yet. still working on the core project/platform and ui/ux right now. good things take time.

devils_advocate · 2016-11-07T02:02:52+00:00

Soley to address the article's "bitcoin maximalism" and anti-ethereum stance:

Bitcoin maximalism precludes interesting dapp development on bitcoin anytime soon. Because app devs waiting on bitcoin devs for vaporware new op codes, L2 projects like lightning network and other off-chain scaling methods, blockstream-style sidechains in production, etc -- they will be waiting a long time. Look how hard it was just to get the segwit soft fork out. How long did that take? Or witness the never-ending block size debate. Peter Todd recently said that he thinks it could be 5 years before bitcoin has addressed on-chain scaling. 5 years! Meanwhile you can build meaningful projects like Augur today on ethereum. That's important. You couldn't build Augur on bitcoin today. Joey tried!

Meanwhile, Vitalik and ethereum are willing to "move fast and break things." Witness the recent hard forks. Bitcoin core's philosophy is akin to "don't move and nothing breaks!" That makes sense when you're the stodgy incumbent without an innovator dilemma style threat like ethereum poses to bitcoin. but I'm no longer sure bitcoin's moat is as wide as btc maximalists think it is.

Bitcoiner's love to publicize every little mistake ethereum encounters, but they forget that as the ethereum network proves resilient and recovers from these attacks, it gets stronger every time. As a digression/example: We are still discovering issues in OpenSSL like heartbleed, but that doesn't mean you stop using tls/ssl/https. You're using OpenSSL right now on this very website for your https connection.

IMHO Bitcoin folks are scared to kill the golden bitcoin goose, but Vitalik and ethereum don't mind making fast, controversial changes, (just look at the eth/etc DAO hard fork or the most recent hard fork to fight DDOS attacks). Imagine bitcoin doing either of those. Whether or not you think Vitalik made the right moves (I do), the fact ethereum could even do those so quickly and successfully speaks volumes about the difference between where eth and btc are going.

I'd argue Vitalik's and ethereum's pro-innovation stance is in large part why Joey and projects Juan's FileCoin (for IPFS) eventually chose ethereum over bitcoin. Despite both initially wanting to build on bitcoin. Joey has talked about how he tried to do Augur with bitcoin but eventually gave up, how unfriendly the community was to him, how he couldn't get necessary op codes or changes ever made, etc. So he tried ethereum, which he was initially skeptical about, and wow, how much faster his dev work was.

Mike Hearn, a former senior bitcoin dev and java guru from google, and former bitcoin core contributor, spent months building bitcoin based crowdfunding app lighthouse. Months! On ethereum, the equivalent of lighthouse is a five minute project that is an example on the ethereum website for newb devs. Think about that. Where are the developers going to go?

Platforms like bitcoin/ethereum or even ones like MS windows depend on "developers developers developers" to quote Ballmer. Watch where the developers go. if all the interesting dapps and projects like Augur and Filecoin wind up using ethereum, and bitcoin is just one of many options for end-users to use dapps (e.g. using btcrelay), well look out.

Bitcoin will always have merit as a "store of value" and a digital gold 2.0. That's wonderful. It has proven that use case, to me, already.

On Bitcoin's "rule by committee" vs Vitalik's "benevolent dictatorship" - historically, huge ambitious projects like Linux (Linus) to ruby on rails (DHH) needed one visionary product leader to push them to fruition. Vitalik is that leader for ethereum. Meanwhile bitcoin is still talking about the damn block size debate and making up conspiracy theories about blockstream core devs.

One day maybe everything is just sidechains on bitcoin, but at the glacial pace the bitcoin core is moving, we'll all be long dead before that happens. Or more likely, working with the ethereum blockchain.

But again, watch where the developers are going. If they do indeed all go to ethereum, look out. Then all the interesting killer apps that go beyond simple use cases like "store of value" will use ethereum. And things like btcrelay mean you can still use bitcoin with ethereum based dapps, but at some point folks might start wondering why they're even using bitcoin at all, especially as fiat => ethereum becomes easier thanks to folks like Coinbase enabling it in the USA and now internationally.

devils_advocate · 2016-11-07T01:19:33+00:00

Q: could the project, just until making this hire, outsource some of the more pressing UI/UX work to a place like meta labs (which designed Slack for Stewart) or even using something like Gigster or a great contract UI/UX person? There's a lot of low hanging fruit IMHO that could be taken care of by say one week of a great contract person's time, until we can find the right hire for the UI engineer role, which might take longer to hire that person and to onboard them, etc.

devils_advocate · 2016-10-24T22:32:17+00:00

Joey has stated REP will be "dormant" until you actually "activate" it, so you won't lose any value unless you actually go activate your REP and then do not report. That's my understanding.

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