Bitshares is a decentralized exchange with UIAs MPA and Private MPAs.
It is not a decentralized crypto-currency exchange yet however.
The only functions for other crypto currency currently is things like meta and block to convert BTC etc into BTS so that then you can participate in markets here.
I was just having this conversation this weekend with someone regarding bunkermining.
In our current state to start having altcoins trade here someone would have to basically accept the alt (thats centralized), would have to liquidate whatever they got into BTS via another centralized exchange, and then borrow from a private MPA market using the BTS as collateral. You can't do a 1:1 either. You would have to have 175% or so in value against whatever the alt is. Some alts are running some ok volume, but others are down to like $50 a day in volume.
SO at present, anybody who wants to setup a market for alt coins right now doesn't have the incentive to do it because it is a bad deal for whom ever runs it. I haven't even touched on the regulations issue in the US as of September this year that this brings into the picture.
This is not a lack of advertising... we just are not setup for this specific use case in a way that makes a good business case.
Oh.. there is also using UIAs of course.. but you are back to centralized again in that situation where you hope and pray who ever is holding the real thing is really holding it. Every time I have had this conversation with people... there was always push back about using the UIAs too.
The only way to make this work well is to spend a fair amount of money and have a hardfork. Anybody here remember the proposal for the decentralized wallet network for alts from last month? That would have facilitated what we are talking about here. The worker proposal got struck down with vengeance though. It's dust remains lay in waste for all to see: http://cryptofresh.com/workers (#9:#14)
you're overcomplicating the matter, this entire fiasco could be resolved with a single centralized service, however great trust is needed here and well at the end of the day isnt a single shred of trust what always has everyone so twisted in crypto?
All that would need to be done if willing to use an asset say called altBTC which a fairly large supply. Look at proof of burn:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_burn for each alt coin a PoB address is used, and being monitored. A user enters our centralized website, and says "hey this is my address for X (where X is some coin, BTC, DOGE, w/e).. and this Y is my bts address". We list PoB addresses for all the coins we want to accept. A user sends their funds to the proof of burn address, and a bot monitors all the addresses, when it sees a new transaction on X's PoB, it then sends the equivalent market-value amount of altBTC to Y.
altBTC gets its value from the sense that some real crypto currency had to be burned to obtain since a currency, "X" is being burned.
The issue with this is who holds the supply of altBTC? Whats to prevent this person from stealing some of this altBTC once stealth tx's exist? What's to prevent them from dumping some on the market? Etc.