What's an Open Transactions server ?

Actually the Open Transactions server seems to also function as a generic "exchange", and with a very nice feature that none of the "exchanges" I have come across so far include: the ability to offer different prices at different volumes of stuff traded.

For example one could offer a cheaper price for 100,000 of a thing bought in one purchase than you offer for lower-volume purchases, thus allowing people to buy wholesale quantities of things and re-sell them in retail quantities. This could be particularly useful for people who are really not interested in selling fractions of a bitcoin at a time, or are willing to pay a premium to obtain some certain quantity of something but really have no use for less than that quantity of it.

For example game tokens are often sold at lower prices per token when you buy more tokens at once. So simply being able to offer a million of them at a millionth of a bitcoin each would not be as useful as being able to offer a million for one bitcoin, a quarter of a million for half a bitcoin, a hundred thousand for a quarter of a bitcoin, ten thousand for an eighth of a bitcoin or some other wholesale-discount type of pricing structure.

The types of markets we have usually been seeing almost do the opposite of wholesale discounts, prices sometimes get higher the more you try to buy. Which is also possible of course. The basic nice additional feature not seen in other exchanges is simply the ability to specify the chunks, the number-at-a-time: the granularity.

EDIT: I have made Open Transactions currency contracts now for DigiBTC and DigiDVC, so now just that easy I have a BTC<->DVC exchange set up.

EDIT2: I have now added I0Coins to its repertoire of currencies.

-MarkM-

Watching this ...

doublec ... there is wiki at the github for OT server and Moneychanger also (the client)

https://github.com/FellowTraveler/Moneychanger/wiki

Wake me when there's a web interface.

This is great news.

I am glad I did this as "alpha test", wow, getting this "whitespace problem" squashed has been a marathon.

The full set of fixes are in the smartcontracts branch of FellowTraveler's GitHub repo, not yet merged back into the master branch.

I have generated new certificates, used them to create a new nym to serve as admin/signing nym for a new server, and used that nym to sign a new DigitalisOTserver.otc which I have uploaded to the galactic milieu files download directory on SourceForge.

I have also created a sample/example "empty" ~/.ot directory for clients, it has no nyms no currencies no accounts but does have my new server-contract and uploaded it to SourceForge as dot-ot-empty.client.tgz

I have lots of currency contracts to write and sign using the latest fixed versions of the OT server and client, as I create those I will put the .otc files of the contracts on SourceForge and also start putting a dot-ot-clean.client.tgz that will have the main currencies my server intends to work with as well as my server's contract.

We are still in alpha; FellowTraveler intends to check that my contracts work on his installed client and so on tomorrow.

However, even in alpha it is worth being aware that although Open Transactions is not totally married to its past with merkle trees like blockchains are, there is some one thing building upon another involved. So if at any point you feel ready to create some nym or contract or account that might make you not want to totally delete your ~/.ot and start over again from a fresh new dot-ot-empty.client.tgz or dot-ot-clean.client.tgz that is the moment when you should seriously consider the stuff that is in ~/.ot/client_data/certs/special.

In there we have placed a certificate authority (ca.crt) and a certificate signed by that authority (client.pem).

You will probably not want to use those distributed ones for creating any mission-critical nyms, nor presumably any nyms created using them for any mission-critical accounts and especially not for signing any mission-critical contracts.

I am right now going through everything on my side making sure they are not the same ones my server's client_data has nor the same ones my personal ~/.ot has.

Well actually, the ca.crt seems to stay the same, as it is not part of what gets generated when you do the make in the source code's ssl directory to generate new certs for the client and server. So I am not yet sure who the certificate authority actually is or was. But the rest of the special stuff does get made fresh. (In sourcs dir, do cd ssl then touch *.cnf or actually tailor the .cnf files to your needs, then make).

If you have a "real" certificate for your http website or whatever, then maybe you might want to use that for creating your website's client_data so signing things relating to your website using OT will have some kind of actual back-trail all the way back to the root cert that signed the certs of the cert authority that issued you your website cert.

-MarkM-

EDIT: When you "make" OT, it does NOT currently at time of writing use your fresh new ./ssl stuff to create fresh new sample data. We probably should add to OT's make the making of a frsh newdot-ot-yours or somesuch, I don't think (tho not positive) that the ~/.ot make install creates for the user who runs make install (usually root, since it tries to install binary executables intousr/local/bin) uses fresh new ./ssl date you maybe created, either.

Some of the files in the ./ssl look like they might be intended for use as, or for making, a ca.crt, but I am not clear what exactly is going on there so thus far I have only been copying a newly made fresh client.pem from there into the ~/.ot/client_data/certs/special directory. So possibly I am not actually ending up with a ca.crt that matches the client.pem. All this will have to be thoroughly checked out to figure out exactly what one should end up putting there, especially in cases where you have real certs signed by a real authority (such as yourself heh. )

I have put a binary for Fedora Core 15, built on a 64-bit machine, on the sourceforge downloads site.

I have also added more currencies and still have more to add, will keep plugging away at that.

-MarkM-

If separation of powers is used, where the issuer of a currency is spearate from the operator of a transactions server, then publishing of all receipts is the usual way to provide the issuer assurance that no more of their currency is being issued than they authorised.

By making these public, the public can also check that they all add up and thus that the issuer of the currency is not issuing more of their currency than they claim to have issued.

I am not sure where the Fed's list of all the serial numbers of bills it has printed and which ones are still outstanding is, nor even of the total amount printed in any given fiscal period. Hmm....

Publishing all receipts challenges users' pseudonymity as everyone can see exactly which accounts sent how much of what to which other accounts, so would probably increase the price those who do want to try to obscure their trail will need to pay. For example they could generate hundreds or thousands of wild goose chase accounts to spew transfers between and generally try to create vast amounts of actrivity by innocent sockpuppets in an attempt to make the actions they are trying hide amongst the crowd possibly a little harder to pick out.

It is maybe a bit of a trade-off, do you want to use an issue that publishes all receipts or one that does not? Different strokes for different folks?

-MarkM-

Well it seems to me I would not want to run my whole server in cash-only mode just because some of the currences or shares or stocks or bonds or commodities supported choose to be cash-only instruments.

So the cash-only setting should be a per-currency setting, I think.

-MarkM-

MTGOX = Doomed.
no, not neccesarily. the server operator cannot modify account histories.
the system is(AFAIK) more like current bank system, where banks are opening account in each others banks.
it is working like diaspora(the p2p facebook.).