<DevTalks: /> July 2019

by LocalCoinSwap Team

Hi everyone and welcome to the DevTalk updates for July! It's been an exciting month and we have a lot of development updates in the works so let's get straight to it...

Crypto-To-Crypto (C2C):
First and foremost, after many months of it being requested by the community, we have begun the implementation of crypto-to-crypto (C2C) trading. This is being rolled out in stages as we test how users will interact with this new feature during each stage.

For the first part of the implementation we have added a couple of the major currencies as payment methods including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), TrueUSD (TUSD) and Tether (USDT). More cryptocurrencies will be added as demand for trading dictates. This will allow us to more easily test the support process for each of the cryptocurrencies involved.

Worldwide Payment Option:
Some astute users have requested the implementation of a worldwide payment option. We will consider adding this only for crypto to crypto trading as it would complicate the regular trading experience to allow this for all advertisements.

Delisting BNB:
As announced earlier this week we plan to delist BNB. The reason for this decision was the switch of the BNB token from the ERC20 standard to a Cosmos-inspired permissioned Blockchain. As trading volume on BNB is extremely low it does not make sense to expend the significant development effort required to support this new chain. It's also important to note that the BNB token conversion can only be performed on Binance and their terms of service do not allow us to perform the conversion on users behalf. Therefore if we did not perform the delisting all BNB held in our exchange wallets would become invalid anyway.

Whilst the vast majority of users previously holding BNB on the site have already withdrawn their balances, the total sum of BNB balances remaining on the platform as of this post is 1.119242704288375113 BNB which equates to $32.01 USD at current rate. Any users holding amounts of BNB greater that the minimal withdrawal amount, can raise a support ticket to request it be sent to their external wallet. All other BNB "dust" left on the platform by the delisting date will be added to the community venture fund.

Switching Tether to ERC-20:
Another currency announcement: we will be switching our Tether support from the Omni token to the ERC20 token which is rapidly gaining in popularity across major exchanges. This will simplify our backend architecture and also provide better support for users.

New Marketing Banner:
A small change to the homepage was added this month, with a collapsable banner which displays important announcements such as our latest trading competition to users. This is optimised in all 3 languages (English, Russian and Spanish) and allows us to drive traffic from the platform to specific promotions and make other important announcements that will help with retention.

As discussed in our last DevTalks, the LocalCoinSwap team are currently in the process of working on a major new feature set. I am now proud to announce that this feature is the switch to non-custodial trading and wallets on the LocalCoinSwap site.

Non-Custodial Trading:
Non-custodial trading means that users will not be required to hold funds with the site, and trading will occur through multi-signature transactions in the case of BTC-based cryptocurrencies, and a smart contract in the case of ETH-based cryptocurrencies.

Non-custodial trading has a multitude of benefits, including:

  • No risk of sites funds being hacked, as the site will not be holding any funds
  • No security delays with withdrawals as users hold their own funds
  • If the site goes down users still have full control over all their funds
  • Cheaper withdrawal transaction fees
  • Greater compliance with current and future regulations across international jurisdictions

The style of non-custodial trading LocalCoinSwap will implement, and the multitude of cryptocurrencies it will been implemented in, has never been performed before by any other exchange. We are excited to deliver a world-first to the community.

Initially, non-custodial trading will launch with support for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all Ethereum-based assets including Tether, LCS Cryptoshares, and TrueUSD. Other Bitcoin-similar assets will follow after launch including Dash, Monero, Bitcoin Cash, and LiteCoin. We are still investigating the possibility of supporting non-custodial trading in XRP, as it may not be possible but we will continue to update the community as we have more information.

In the lead-up to the launch of this feature it will be necessary to make a number of further delistings to currencies which are not based on Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Ethereum-based assets. We will perform these delistings in advance of the non-custodial launch to minimise any negative impact of the launch on users, and also to minimise the difficulty involved in the migration from custodial to non-custodial trading.

The exact launch date for this feature will not be announced until we are closer to completion, as to ensure the launch goes smoothly we cannot lock in a date and risk delays or a bug-prone product. However, we will keep the community updated with the progress of development.

With regard to the plethora of new features that we have been developing of late, we will also be introducing a new blog series called 'New Features' that will allow us to delve into further detail regarding each new feature on the site. One of the first posts in the series will be an overview of what non-custodial trading is and why we are implementing it. As we know you may have questions, we would love if you could please submit those questions via our Telegram or Discord channels and we will respond to everyone in the new blog post in approximately a fortnight.

Thank you again to everyone for their ongoing support and contributions to make LocalCoinSwap the best P2P marketplace worldwide for buying and selling cryptocurrency peer-to-peer.

Happy Trading!
Nathan Worsley
CTO & Co-Founder, LocalCoinSwap

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