BlockTrades shutting down BlockTrades Gateway (But Bridge remains operational)

[dannotestein]

As a side note, a couple of people have asked me privately if this shutdown signaled a movement away from the BitShares community on BlockTrades' part. Therefore, I wanted to clarify that BlockTrades is still a big supporter of BitShares: we will continue to help promote its growth via our technology and expertise,  and I personally believe it has a bright future.

[yvv]

This is unfortunately. Now, the only usable gateway is openledger, which is not good.

Well, I can say with certainty that no one was really actively using our gateway (admittedly we weren't promoting it either).

If someone does want to operate another gateway, we could always license the technology for the gateway to them for a price (or they can create their own, it's hard, but obviously not impossible to do, metaexchange has done it and I think transwiser as well).

best regards,

Dan Notestein

Yes, I understand that it is hard to stay in business with tiny deposit/withdrawal volumes. Good thing that you keep running a bridge. Thanks for service anyway.

[Musewhale]

do it

[dannotestein]

Would you consider open sourcing the gateway code which you had implemented?

No, because the gateway code is mixed with the code used by our bridge system, so there's no easy way to release it without reducing the barrier to entry to competitors to our bridge business.

[R]

Would you consider open sourcing the gateway code which you had implemented?

[dannotestein]

This is unfortunately. Now, the only usable gateway is openledger, which is not good.

Well, I can say with certainty that no one was really actively using our gateway (admittedly we weren't promoting it either).

If someone does want to operate another gateway, we could always license the technology for the gateway to them for a price (or they can create their own, it's hard, but obviously not impossible to do, metaexchange has done it and I think transwiser as well).

best regards,

Dan Notestein

[yvv]

This is unfortunately. Now, the only usable gateway is openledger, which is not good.

[dannotestein]

Hi everyone,

We are shutting down the BlockTrades gateway (not our bridge, just our gateway). We created it originally mainly as a prototype for the technology used by OpenLedger, and we think the OPEN assets adequately serve the community. I've left the TRADE assets operational just so there was a backup gateway, but it's really hardly ever used, so it requires us to maintain an entire gateway for little purpose.

Note that we will be continuing the operation of our bridge, which is actively used by the Bitshares community.

We'll be shutting down the gateway in stages. In the first stage, which has just begun, we've disabled deposits to the gateway. Inevitably, someone may still use one of their old deposit addresses, in which case we'll manually refund them. We also request in this stage that anyone who holds TRADE assets to perform a withdrawal on those assets.

Eventually, we will also disable withdrawals as well, but I will leave in place a 1-1 market order on https://bitshares.openledger.info/market/OPEN.BTC_TRADE.BTC for a while after that to allow users to exchange any remaining TRADE.BTC for OPEN.BTC. I'll place similar orders for any other TRADE assets that remain outstanding after withdrawals are disabled.

best regards,

Dan Notestein