About Counterparty vs Mastercoin, can some of you guys explain what is the difference between the scope of the two protocol?
Are they are trying to do the very same thing in a slightly different way, or is there an overlap but also some differences? For example will Mastercoin be able to do some stuff that Counterparty won't?
The are lots of differences, but a few of the most important ones are, IMHO:
- XCP is distributed much more fairly. Over 50% of MSC is owned by just a handful of people, who consequently have complete control over the price, potential proof-of-stake voting, etc. It's unlikely that anyone owns more than a couple percent of all extant XCP.
- Every MSC transactions sends a small amount of BTC directly to J.R. Counterparty does no such thing, proving that it's completely unnecessary.
- Mastercoin has serious, persistent consensus issues: you can never be sure how much MSC you have at any given time.
- Counterparty is developed much faster, has *many* more *fully-working* features, all while being community driven. It has virtual assets, broadcasts, bets, dividends, callbacks, and more. The Mastercoin Project has a lot of hot air.
- The Mastercoin distributed exchange, while barely functioning, many months late, and missing crucial features. simply will never be able to scale, because sell orders are not matched deterministically, but manually.
I gave up on Mastercoin months ago (though I was originally very supportive of the project!), when they refused to hire competent developers and develop a proper reference client.
Thanks a lot for these valuable informations.
And what about smart contracts and smart properties?
Mastercoin guys spoke about theses a lot in the early days, but not anymore. Does that mean they have abandonned the idea?
I have not heard Counterparty guys speaking about smart contracts and smart properties, does that mean there is not plan to implement them even in the mid-long term?