Today we are excited to introduce the community to a ground breaking decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, EtherEx. We believe everyone deserves an exchange with open, verifiable transactions and it is our goal to finally provide that service. No longer will centralized exchanges be the focal point of the crypto community, casting negative shadows on worldwide adoption. It's time for a change.

What
EtherEx is a decentralized, open source cryptocurrency exchange built on the Ethereum blockchain using smart contracts. Due to the incorporation of the blockchain technology, every trade will be open and verifiable. Beyond just cryptocoins, EtherEx plans to offer more advanced financial trading abilities in the future which will handle items such as stocks, commodities, and more.

Why
Over the past few years, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been gaining in popularity at an unprecedented rate. However, one area still demanding innovation and clarity is that of cryptocurrency exchanges. Currently, all but a few exchanges are centralized, going against the mission of the community which is that of decentralization. If users wish to trade upon these platforms they have to entrust strangers to hold their cryptocurrency, fiat and identity documents. Many concerns come into play for users, whether it be the security of the website or what the exchange founders are doing with the funds. A decentralized exchange removes the need for centralized companies to hold your funds, instead placing that trust on the Ethereum blockchain using peer to peer transactions.

When
The launch of our exchange relies heavily on the public launch of Ethereum itself, which at this point is slated for Q4 2014. Development is already in progress and EtherEx aims to go live on the same day.

Where can I find out more?
Please visit our website at http://etherex.org for information and to sign up for our newsletter, through which we will be providing updates and future information on how to sign up for our private beta. Also join us in #etherex on IRC for all discussions related to the project.

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There is a decentralized exchange available today, built on Bitcoin. Here is a video showing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZziQ2Ns8314

Smart property creation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyzA5Lj1ajM

And where you can access the interface shown in the video: https://counterwallet.co/

counterparty looks good too. one of the projects in my radar. i hope i did the right decision pulling out all my BR and started buying into crypto.

it would suck playing penny stakes for a long long time. loloololol.

Rising nicely. Too bad I sold 2/3 of my coins while it was going up. Thought it would correct for sure.

Just decided to look into NXT a bit more, and, wow, it's impressive all the stuff they have working on the platform now.

The initial launch wasn't as unfair and restricted as I had thought(based on comments I'd seen). It seems reasonably well distributed now from what I can tell.

If half the things they have planned take off, they could be a serious challenge to bitcoin. The exchange looks class, and seems to have already attracted a number of interesting investment opportunities. Definitely worth checking out.

NXT rubbed me the wrong way with their incessant shilling at Texas Bitcoin Conference. Give it another few months and Ethereum will be the new buzz, then another few months and the next "new and improved" project will be the buzz.

These alts just have such an upward battle to actually make it to anything, gonna be very hard for any of them to gain traction, even if they have some cool bells and whistles.

You could be right. Definitely hard to gain traction for any of these alts. But if one of them does gain a foothold, then it might be hard to dislodge. Ethereum will have a bit of catching up to do when it comes out (though it already has the buzz, just needs the tech). The next one after that? Going to need a hell of an idea to blow up the ranks, assuming everything else hasn't been floundering.

On the other hand, it's easy to see a big company developing something, putting its muscle behind it and blowing everything else out of the water. These community projects would need a hell of a lot of traction before they could even think of withstanding that kind of pressure.

Terming NXT, Ethereum, and other 2.0 projects as "alts" is a bit of a misnomer as they provide, or will most likely provide, significant additional utility over bitcoin.

yup totally. they are a leap above altcoins.

It's more that there are so many junkcoins out there that lumping these projects, which actually do something unique, in the same boat, is certainly a distinction. Junkcoins arent' even worth my breath. NXT, Ethereum, XCP, all have the potential to do something different. It's still a huge upward battle with some unique use cases. And then, Bitcoin could possibly put in an upgrade path to add some of those features, if they really were so beneficial.

I agree with most of your statement, but that last part I'm not so sure about and "some" really is a very key word in the statement. Sidechains, for example, have promise, however, there are significant hurdles that need to be overcome for them to actually work. If all the security issues are overcome (saying this pre-whitepaper is a little bit meh anyway), there are still at least the following issues...

1. You rely on what is now 12-15 miners to mergemine your sidechain and always agree with what you are doing so that they don't attack you and steal your coins. Attacks like this have been carried out in the past (Luke JR, one of the few "real" 12-15 bitcoin miners and also a contributor to the bitcoin source code)

2. The three day transit time to get your coins from the main blockchain to the sidechain and then back again.

3. The interesting concept that bitcoins on various sidechains may be worth less than bitcoins on the main chain, raising possible fungibility issues.

4. A public perception issue if there were an issue or undesirable behavior on sidechain. Would the general public and media understand that this is "not bitcoin" and actually a sidechain?

5. Getting people to develop on sidechains as there is no financial incentive to do so. There is also an insane barrier due to the qualifications required to work on sidechains. It's not simple stuff.

Then you have treechains by Peter Todd. They sound awesome, but we're probably quite a ways out from them as well and by then some of these 2.0 platforms will probably see significant use, possibly.

Sidechains certainly seem flawed in a lot of ways, Peter Todd did a great job illustrating it. The point is you could theoretically add a feature to Bitcoin that a 2.0 coin has, if it was a real threat, rather than a niche use case. Say you needed an operation for something you could do for XCP, like a contract with a feed that automatically pays a fee. If that was a killer app and a real threat, Bitcoin would add it out of necessity.

That may not be true as the bitcoin devs appear to be quite conservative. It's hard to argue that the ability hedge or increase exposure to all currencies and commodities, peer-to-peer, is a niche case. People with deep pockets have been asking for this for year(s) now.

Bitcoin is having significant trouble even adjusting the way fees are distributed, which is a real issue in itself, let alone adding new features such as contracts for difference and so on.

Of course they are conservative, but the idea is if something was a real threat, it would be time to act.

The fee problem is actually pretty close to being resolved better.

I think that's where we disagree. I don't have the faith in the core developers that you do and it's not close.

There's no reason to be anything but conservative when you are in a position of power and dominance. When you are facing the verge of irrelevance, that changes. If it would have to go above core developers heads, it would, there is too much money to lose.

Above the core devs is the 12-15 miners who hold the real power and now you're talking about LukeJR, et all. Again, I do not have the faith. I see them as the biggest threat to bitcoin while you see them as making the correct decisions with a high probability that they will continue to do so.

if they know that something is a real threat, it's probably too late

I have $10,000. I want to buy $10,000 worth of bitcoin on a decentralized exchange. To whom do I give my money?

You can not put fiat on a decentralized exchange as there is nobody to convert it. You have to get digital money first.

So at the end of the day, cryptocurrency will always need to rely on 3rd parties, until people just get paid in crypto and everything can be bought with crypto and there's no use for fiat

There will be semi-centralized smart properties as well, but yes, you will always need to actually get bitcoins or some other digital currency somehow and your entrance (and exit) into the digital currency space will be known unless you use Local Bitcoins or another similar service.

I initially thought that none of the altcoins had much worth, but I've come around to the view that PoS is such a dramatic improvement over PoW, and that PoW is so wasteful in comparison that it gives PoS coins a chance to catch up with bitcoin.

If good money drives out bad, then the fact that bitcoin still has large inflation over the next 4/5 years (that goes to paying miners, mining computers and electricity), and the PoS coins have none (or inflation that returns to the holders) gives other coins a chance.

Bitcoin can never introduce PoS, because the miners control the network and turkeys don't vote for Christmas/Thanksgiving. And it's the whole PoW infrastructure that gives bitcoin many of its major flaws (increased centralization, lack of full nodes, energy wastage, inflation). So I don't agree that bitcoin can just implement any altcoin feature it wants.

Still, the massive network advantage that bitcoin has seems like it will outweigh its disadvantages.

You have it backwards, the miners are at the mercy of the users, not the other way around. Even more, the pool operators are not the miners, but leaders who miners get behind. If they do anything that is a threat to the value of Bitcoin, the miners switch pools to ones that don't.

I also disagree with that almost entirely, but understand your perspective.

I would point to Eligius in order to illustrate my point.