A couple of days ago, my bitcoin deposits were being delayed, but they eventually showed up. That had never happened before, so I assumed they were having problems with their bitcoin node.

Now this happens. So my guess is that it either a DDOS attack or some sort of server maintenance/upgrade. There has been no official announcement from them, however. So who really knows.

Why doesn't anyone seem to be doing arbitrage between KuCoin and Poloniex for Monero?

I see big spreads there, sometimes close to one percent. KuCoin has much more liquidity and far cheaper rates that Poloniex.

There's a reason I'm bringing this up. I do a lot of trading in P2P markets (Bisq, Haveno, UnstoppableSwap) between bitcoin and Monero. I don't deal with KYC exchanges, so I am stuck using Poloniex (and when I reach my unverified daily limit, TradeOgre) to settle my trades on the back end and lock in my profits. But the lack of liquidity on those exchanges is really cutting into my profit margins.

So I have a proposal. Someone who is willing to do all the KYC bullshit and document the source of funds and all that can open a verified, unlimited account on KuCoin and Poloniex. Keep Monero on Poloniex and bitcoin on Kucoin.

When I say, place a market (or limit order that will quickly be filled) buy order on KuCoin order for n number of Monero, and simultaneously, on Poloniex, place an offsetting limit sale order of Monero at 0.5% above what you paid for it on KuCoin. The combined fees on Poloniex and KuCoin should equal about 0.2%, so this would leave you with a net profit of 0.3% on every trade. Your piles of bitcoin and Monero would steadily grow. I would immediately place a market order on Poloniex and buy your Monero. Then, once the trade is completed, you withdraw your bitcoin from Poloniex and send it over to KuCoin, and then send the Monero you bought on KuCoin over to Poloniex so it will be ready for our next trade.

When KuCoin sees all the Monero withdrawals, they may freeze your account and do some AML bullshit. At that point, simply document the source of your funds and explain that you are doing arbitrage between their exchange and Poloniex.

For those of you who don't want to have to speculate on the price of Bitcoin and Monero, you could just short them (and if you don't want a bunch of capital tied up in those shorts, use leverage).

I feel that this arrangement would be ideal for people who are long-term bullish on Monero and Bitcoin and have no objections to doing KYC (and documenting the source of their funds, which I have heard KuCoin requires of anyone doing substantial Monero withdrawals). Even better for someone who could make a bot to automate this entire process, but I don't think this would be necessary at first.

Anyone who is interested, let me know. I'm looking forward to hearing from anyone interested in making their bitcoin and Monero bags grow!

So LimeChain got back to me and told me to wait until early January for the estimate. I'll post here again when they next contact me.

So I have spoken to a few dApp development companies, and here is what I have taken away from it:

- To start, it's going to be Bitcoin (on the lightning network) and native Monero.

- The off-chain orderbook is a no-go. Customers will be more likely to trust a dApp powered by contracts they can see on the blockchain.

- It's cheaper to make a browser extension than it is to make a desktop application, so the Fornash DEX will be a browser extension.

- It's going to support limit orders and market orders, with bi-directional atomic swaps.

- Basically the same UI/UX as Uniswap V1.

Of the three companies I interviewed, LimeChain (limechain.tech) was by far the most impressive. They said they will have a quote for me some time next week. I'll post here again after I next speak with them.

Thanks for pointing that out. Yes, I was checking into their background too and found that a) they don't have much in the way of crypto development experience, and b) they have a bunch of complaints.

https://www.nbcmiami.com/investigations/fast-growing-sunrise-software-company-buffeted-by-lawsuits-complaints/2911788/

I also have read that their contracts contain a non-disparagement clause, and that they will threaten to sue and keep the IP rights to the software they develop if you leave them a bad review! So yes, I'm going to go with a different development company.

I looked online for some companies with dApp development experience and sent out a bunch of requests for quotes. I'll hear back from them on Monday probably. Once I've spoken with them and made a decision I'll post something on here and hopefully get some more constructive feedback.

I just had a call with the people at Chetu, the developers I'm going to employ. They said they could get it done within five months for $30,000! I thought it was going to be like half a million dollars.

Right, this is not a fiat on- or off-ramp.

Bisq and HavenoDex are a pain in the ass to use. And BasicSwap? Forget about it! You have to do a bunch of crap in the command prompt, and set up a full node for any coin you're trying to trade... don't get me started on Basicswap. That sort of exchange is basically what inspired me to work on my user-friendly DEX.

Nodes, plural. There would be more than one of them. Any tech-savvy person with the DEX would be able to set one up. So not at all centralized.

And that's assuming we even need them. I talk to the developers on Friday, and I am going to bring up this point: could a bunch of people running the DEX on their desktops connect to each other without nodes, or are they going to end up being necessary.

And about the UI/UX issue: I don't understand how developers consistently and without fail spend the amount of money required to make something like Bisq, UnstoppableSwap, etc and think that everyone else is as technologically sophisticated as they are, and that the user experience somehow doesn't matter. That's the main problem that I intend to solve.

Somewhat similar to Thorchain, but it will be a desktop application, not a website.

As far as pricing/liquidity goes, the main issue with Thorchain seems to be the exorbitant fees. Thorchain has no limit orders, and the fees on a market order are typically 0.5% both ways. Hence the terrible liquidity. The Fornash DEX would charge 0.25% to the maker and 0% to the taker.

This DEX will be the only one available where people can trade BTC and DAI for Monero without KYC on a platform that only charges 0.25%. The cheapest other no-KYC platform for Monero is Bisq, and that charges 0.7%, has a complicated, confusing UI, and requires people to lock up 15% of the value of the trade in BTC.


Yes, it will be open source.


This is (for now at least) a solo project. I have been trading crypto for almost a decade, but my tech skills are pretty basic. However, I think that can end up being a good thing, because the problem with having a tech wizard make a DEX is they tend to assume everyone else is a wizard too, and so the UX ends up being way too complicated.


An off-chain order book means the exchanges that take place on the DEX happen through the DEX's internal accounting system as opposed to the blockchain. So let's say you deposit DAI and use it to buy Monero, exchange the Monero for Bitcoin, and then withdraw the Bitcoin from your account. When the exchange takes place, the assets don't move on the blockchain; the DEX will adjust your account balance from DAI to Monero, and then from Monero to Bitcoin. When you deposit the DAI and withdraw the Bitcoin, that of course would take place on the blockchain.

So in that respect, it would be like a centralized exchange. But the owner of the DEX (me) won't have the private key to the wallets on the blockchain where customer funds are deposited. And neither would the node operators; all they would do is process the adjustments to the DEX's internal accounting system when assets are swapped, in exchange for a slice of the transaction fees.



The main problem with the current DEXes is absolutely 100% what you just said: they lack a good UI/UX. Look at something like UnstoppableSwap. Fantastic technology, but using it to do anything other than buy Monero with Bitcoin requires more technical know-how than 99% of Monero users have.

Thanks for the feedback so far. Any more comments or suggestions that anyone has, I'm all ears.

Hello everyone!

So right now I am in the beginning stages of commissioning the development of a decentralized exchange, where people will be able to trade Bitcoin, Monero, and DAI. It will have an off-chain order book and critically, it will be simple and easy to use - if you're familiar with using any of the mainstream exchanges, using this one will be easy. No messing around in the command prompt, downloading the blockchain, running local nodes, opening ports, or anything like that. If you can download and install my desktop application, you should have no problem getting this up and running.

It will use third-party nodes instead of centralized servers. (Unlike trading on the exchange, I imagine setting up one of these nodes will probably require above-average computer skills.)

We won't have the the private keys to any wallets holding customer funds, nor will the nodes.

If anyone has any questions or suggestions, or reasons why this won't work, please let me know. I'm very interested in getting feedback on this idea. And what I cannot figure out is why something like this doesn't exist already.

Thanks for reading this.

-Tim