Do you imagine B&C will list the trading pairs with more trading volume or take a more open arms approach with alts seeking to be listed?
We would tentatively expect that Bitcoin, NuBits, BlockShares, and BlockCredits are available on the first iteration of the decentralized exchange.
Your question is an excellent opportunity to educate any new readers on the "Motion" functionality we refer to in the Nu protocol. A brief description and tutorial video is here:
https://nubits.com/nushares/voting-mechanics#how-does-a-motion-vote-workA motion allows NuShare holders (and once the network is operational, BlockShares holders) to make their feelings known on any topic. It is expected that developers strictly adhere to the terms of a motion that has been successfully passed by shareholders.
An example motion that you could raise as soon as you have BlockShares would be: "B&C Exchange should expand its capabilities to include Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Peercoin trading pairs." Or, another example motion could be "B&C Exchange should never offer PayCoin trading pairs." Motions are one of Nu's unique mechanisms that have served as a powerful tool for determining community opinions through blockchain consensus.
Who is your target market as far as customers go?
Anyone who is interested in trading cryptocurrencies with lower trading fees and with less risk of centralized theft will be the users we target. We think that users are enthusiastic about the idea of decentralized exchanges in general; the Bitcoin community is just waiting for a contender to offer the right mix of technical capabilities, user experience, and ownership incentives. We believe our design accomplishes these goals.
How do you think the trading experience will compare to that of a centralized exchange? I have seen the 10 trades a second ceiling in the paper, but that doesn't necessarily mean actions will be completed in 1/10th of a second, does it? What stops anyone from front running a trade or action before it is 'confirmed' on the blockchain?
The trading experience as compared to a centralized exchange is a very broad topic. It is almost certain that B&C Exchange will be superior in some regards (such as safety and cost), and weaker in others (such as trading speed, where the confirmations required to execute an order will be shareholder configurable, but 3 is a likely setting, so three minutes to execute orders is likely). There will always be trade-offs between centralized and decentralized services. Our goal is to provide a familiar centralized website user experience, without the risk of that website controlling user funds. From the design document:
Unlike centralized exchange websites, exchange operators will have zero access to funds and zero responsibility for customer account information. If an exchange website disappears suddenly, a user can simply go to another site that uses the same open source exchange software, or use another application that supports B&C Exchange and continue using the same account without interruption. This is because all account information is stored on the blockchain.
The design document also details current limitations of decentralized exchanges and provides expected future development solutions that can resolve many of those concerns:
Some observers may have concerns about the scalability of the solution. The initial design can scale to handle approximately 10 orders per second, along with all the other transactions needed to support orders. There are many changes that can be made in the future to improve scalability. They require additional development, so it doesn't make sense economically to implement them at this time. As network latency reduces over time due to hardware improvements block intervals can be collapsed, validation messages can be merely broadcast but not placed on the blockchain, a derivative of Cryptonite's mini-blockchain can be employed, delegates can be employed, etc. The solution proposed here can be evolved to scale far beyond 10 orders per second.
In regards to front-running, we will research best practices on how orders should be ordered and processed within blocks to ensure fairness for all market participants. There are many different possible solutions that have been
previously examined by groups like BitShares that will help inform our design as well.