An simple idea that seems to have been ignored on the official forums...
Wouldn't it be easier to just allow dots in the asset names (hint: Global_trade_repo's hierarchy idea)?
That way BTT.UNIQUESILVER and BTT.RARECOIN would not collide with someone else's UNIQUESILVER and RARECOIN?
As suggested by Global_trade_repo, the asset names with dots in them could cost less to issue.
Not only that, but the buyers could be more confident that the assets were issued from BTT without rechecking/verifying the description/catalog. An impostor could issue a VERYRARECOIN with a description poiting to BTT's catalog for example. But the impostor cannot fake a BTT.VERYRARECOIN asset if it's required to own the BTT asset first.
We should also allow other characters such as #, $, %, and digits after the dot in the asset names. So BTT can issue BTT.SILVER$100 or BTT.GOLD#1906 for example.
Otherwise, assuming a business can issue 100000+ assets, how does it go about organizing/tracking assets efficiently? It much easier to match BTT.GOLD#1906 or BTT.RAREGOLD#18394 from a catalog than to search for BTT.GOLDXFR and BTT.RAREGOLDSXR to identify the asset.
If Counterparty is a protocol like TCP/IP, then we will need a flexible asset naming scheme that works almost like the domain naming system.
Upon first glance this seems pretty damn genius. It's genius because its so simple its almost obviously the way it should be. I hope the developers strongly consider implementing this or something quite like this, as soon as robot/human-hybridally possible.
Edit: That being said this may be something left to other developers to build on top of Counterparty, but I think its fundamental enough to be included in the protocol layer itself.Think:
Issuer.Issuance.Sub-Issuance
And so once an issuer name is chosen, that issuer can create other issuer names of course but they will be the only ones who are permitted to create issuances and sub-issuances relative hierarchically to their issuer name.
And then perhaps blockscan can implement a nice new GUI feature which will allow for collapsing and expanding assets based on this hierarchy of issuance. This will make searching for assets and trusting assets that are issued much much easier and much cleaner of an experience. Good idea GLaDos.
Edit 2: In addition, fees can be adjusted, say... maybe 5 - 10 XCP more or less to register an issuer name, but the issuance might be half that and then the sub-issuances might be even half of half etc., This makes sense to me, but I'm waiting for someone to tell me I'm an idiot or that its not feasible as is common round these parts. -___-Agreed, this is a good suggestion.