I would like to hear your feedback on a project that I have just thought about. It is called a Distributed Asset Trading Network. It consists of Traders and Nodes. They trade Products (asset classes). A Product may be an Intel share, or a bond, or an option on S&P 500, or whatever. Who and how defines what the Product unit is is beyond the scope of this document. Each Node in the Network is a clearing corporation that is supposed to be a legitimate operation. To cover possible liabilities, Nodes can post [ecash] bonds to each other. They are ultimately liable for all counterparty defaults in Trades. Traders are clients of Nodes. They have Accounts. To buy or sell Products, they place Orders to these Nodes. The Nodes broadcast the Orders and collect Potential Trades (opposing orders that have not been filled yet). Nodes may have Policies that require Traders to meet certain requirements, in order to avoid potential liability. (ie, to sell stock, you have to have it on your Account, or have enough equity to cover the short sale liabilities, etc). The receiving Node has a short period of time (seconds) to decide which counterparties and which amounts to choose. The sending Node acquires Locks on the submitted Potential Trades and is liable to produce the Asset (or Cash) if the positive response comes back within that time period. This architecture can create a trading environment that is a) independent of borders and national laws, at least to some extent and b) eliminates certain forms of arbitrage, and c) more resistant to denial of service attacks (??), and possibly eliminates the bid-ask spreads and a whole lot of highly-paid intermediaries, and c) potentially increases privacy for transactions. The technical issues that are open, at the moment, are 1) clock synchronization, 2) the need for a central authority to clear liability issues and 3) potential denial of service attacks through acquiring too many locks (again, maybe with the proper liability agreement, it is not an issue). I think that such a system is not all that impossible to develop. Whether it will, or can be made to, work in the technical and social environment that we have is another question. I am curious if something like this has aleready been implemented. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- char*p="char*p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} \=/, _-===-_-====-_-===-_-==========-_-====-_ | @___oo ( )_ /\ /\ / (___,,,}_--= ) ) /^\) ^\/ _) =__ Anything is good and useful if ) ) /^\/ _) (_ ) ) _ / / _) ( ) /\ )/\/ || | )_) (_ it's made of chocolate. ) < > |(,,) )__) ( ) || / \)___)\ (_ __) | \____( )___) )___ -==-_____-=====-_____-=====-___== \______(_______;;; __;;;