Guys in regards to Asset for Asset trading understand 2 important things:
1. Fees in NXT are required.
2. Further fees in NXT are required to create and execute an AT.
Also the idea of adding an alias to an Asset IMO is a *bad* one - you've just let the squatters/scammers back in who now look like they are more legit (because naive people are going to believe that Software.Microsoft really is Microsoft as that's how you've described it to them by calling it "branding").
Just "because you don't like non-unique names" is really not a good reason to *support* scammers (which is how it will be perceived when people work out "they were tricked").
The idea behind a unique "suffix" is to make it easier for the user to identify the *same* issuer, not for the user to blindly trust "Microsoft". I imagine if one day Microsoft ends up using NXT AE, they will find their alias squatted, so they'll simply make a new alias "MicrosoftAE" ie. something else. Then on their main website they will announce that is their NXT AE "brand". This is also why I proposed the <AliasToken> - the client would send a auth token request to the URL provided by the issuer, in this case:
www.microsoft.com. Then it will display to the user: "This token is verified by the issuer for the site:
www.microsoft.com. If the URL is incorrect, the user can see the wrong URL. The chance of being scammed then becomes the same as a user buying from a phony website.
On-top of all this, like Wesleyh mentioned, there could be a rating service provider, which clients could interface with and receive a "trust index" to increase users trust in assets. If this happens, yes, I agree that the unique "branding" in the AE can be removed and let these service providers provide the client the correct names for issuer accounts. There is a trade-off however, this list becomes more centralized (better if we had multiple service providers confirming this information) but that's the price you pay for trust. (There is no trust in decentralization) However, these service providers will have very little incentive to scam their customers, since they would then lose their entire client-base on both sides, so it is not so bad.
Another option is to let users have a list of trusted issuers. However, they would still have to confirm manually, this may potentially turn off some newer users.
My ideal scenarios, in order:
1) If service providers are available (and a valid option), use this method. Otherwise
2) If there are no service providers providing "trust lists", then use "branding". However, if this is an issue, then
3) Make users manually name each asset issuer, that way the user is *forced* to research each issuer. Trade off is that this list is stored locally unless the user sets up a cloud account and keeps it synced.
(If you noticed, this is basically in the order of easiest to hardest for users)
IMO, chance of users getting scammed by fake "Microsoft" would be the same chance as me saying I'm Barrack Obama and you believing it. You would only believe me after I provided the correct information and you confirmed it personally.
Great!
Great work.
One word about more code in common: run for it. I think JL is open for that.
About the non-uniqueness of assets. Well, nice idea of having a branding via an alias, but I still do not like it. It is just a feeling.
Maybe, somebody could give me a good feeling of non-unique asset names.
As others have mentioned, the "original" asset name may not be the "real" asset, so the original name has no real meaning. Also, it solves the issue of different issuers selling the same product. Because their alias is unique, no one can fake their brand.
Pandaisftw
The problem with the alias thing is that it's a hack, I show this as a proof of concept and hope that we can get another field added to the asset exchange table format. (unique suffix). That's the only purpose that the alias serves, and could just as well be integrated in the asset table itself.
Same for tagging, which should follow a similar approach to the DGS.
I tried to provide a way without modifying the core. If the core is changed, then yes, we won't need aliases or tags in the description.
Pandaistw
