We work in an "agile" manner and thus do not deliver to timescales. As a rough estimate which cannot be taken as a commitment, I'd suggest that the timescale for the UI is "a couple of months" and SPV multiwallets "6 months." I may be mistaken though.



The better answer: we are aware that mass-adoption of an exchange technology requires low friction, thus removing the need to download at least two blockchains before trading. So SPV is at the top of our list of enhancements.



Work has already begun on the UI.



The Blocknet is the only project in our awareness that decentralises the four core functions of an exchange - capital deposits, order broadcast, order matching, and coin exchange.



all coins stay in wallets



orders are broadcast over an inter-chain DHT network overlay



order books are compiled by local applications, not a central or distributed entity



coin exchange is atomic and trustless, utilising OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY and not requiring the control of any third party.



As for interoperability in general and the emerging token ecosystem, the Blocknet is deliberately designed to function as infrastructure. No central chain is required, enabling services to be built on any chain and monetised and delivered over xbridgep2p, our "blockchain router," to nodes on any other chain and to dapps harnessing blockchain services.



Regarding waves, it's a coloured coin approach. As such, as a trader, you'd have to deposit your coins for some underlying token in order to trade. This does not decentralise deposits, even if the underlying architecture is distributed. Additionally it requires you to trust some manner of intermediary to redeem your coloured coins for a real coin when you want to withdraw.



My opinion on this is that if you're building a decentralised exchange, the main objective is to provide an alternative to having to trust some intermediary with your coin deposits.



Coloured coins cannot achieve that, and so I cannot consider any exchange of this type a decentralised one in the true sense of the word.



As for Cosmos, (a) its consensus algorithm is DPOS and (b) it relies on anchors/validators and so is vulnerable to collusion attacks.



These two points amount to Cosmos being a distributed system, but not one in which control is decentralised (that's what "decentralised" means btw - it's about control).



Thirdly - and correct me if I'm mistaken - Cosmos' approach is architecturally ill-fated to run afoul of the emerging "token ecosystem" by requiring inter-chain services to run on its chain only.



This is another way of saying that it is "inter-chain centralised," may be fine for sidechains, but is not suitable for an inter-chain era where it becomes the norm for dapps to become inter-chain orchestrations of on-chain microservices.





monetised API consumption

digital service delivery



The Blocknet is designed as infrastructure for the emerging token ecosystem. Any service or orchestrated sequence of microservices provided by dapps may be delivered over the Blocknet's infrastructure.



Using decentralised exchange, these services are intrinsically monetisable, removing the friction and high costs of traditional payment networks - friction which has prevented the monetisation of the bulk of the API ecosystem.



Due to the decentralised exchange, consumers of a service may pay in their native token even if the service consumes a different token.

Currently the only things on the Blocknet are its core infrastructural services:



blockchain router



coin exchange protocol



trade fee collection nodes ("service nodes")



in-wallet order book and order-creation/acceptance controls



p2p end-to-end-encrypted data transport



If you're looking for concrete examples, the scenario is the same as current apps with a microservices architecture: you can build any of them with a monolithic architecture, but they'll struggle to scale, bugfixing is harder, a bug anywhere can break the entire thing, and they're not composable (i.e. they cannot be broken down into sub-services which may be used and monetised in other ways).



So... take all the dapps in existence. We're making the case that it's best to build many of them as inter-chain dapps.





There are two types of node: a "service node" and a trader node.



Service nodes do not handle or control any trader's coins. Their function is to collect and distribute trade fees. Typically a service node operator will run multiple full node wallets of whichever coins (s)he wants to support, in order to garner as many trade fees as possible.



Trader nodes enable one to trade on the decentralised exchange.

Yes, there are fees, though they are significantly lower that centralised exchanges (with a minimum fee that's just above the dust threshold).



The fee structure is as follows:



transactions over the networks of each of your currency pairs will remain subject to their normal network fees for P2SH transactions



a tiny trade fee is charged in BLOCK and the software takes care of securing some BLOCK to pay the fee.

current implementation: trading is from the Blocknet wallet and you can buy BLOCK using it or on any other exchange. This is then used for fees.

future implementation: trading will be from any trading dapp built by anyone. The protocol is likely to involve a second trade for the BLOCK trade fee, without requiring your dapp to have the Blocknet's blockchain



Just saw the devs have answered a load of questions on the reddit AMA:Summary: (dev answers in red)What is the timescale for the UI and SPV? Just roughly. Are we talking a couple of months, 6 months, end of year, next year? Cheers.How is Blocknet different from projects like WAVES, COSMOS, SWARM CITY and so on. In general, how is Blocknet's approach to build a decentralized exchange and an interoperability protocol different from its competitors?What are the possible applications of the xBridge other than a decentralized exchange?Do any of these dapps exist already or will they have to be built?Anymore concrete dapp examples would be great - helps me spread the word and keeps it simple.This is potentially very exciting because if a service is in demand and people are buying Block to use the service then it makes the price go up.What are the benefits of running a node? And how many blocks do I need to run one?Will there be fees for buying/trading on Blocknet like there is with Coinbase/GDAX?Click the reddit link for more answers.