Decentralized exchanges have paralleled projects such as Colored Coins that allow for individual claims of ownership via the blockchain. But they've always edged more towards crypto enthusiasts or experts in terms of access because they only exist on 2.0 platforms such as Counterparty, NXT, and Bitshares. But Koji Higashi and his team at IndieSquare have produced a wallet capable of a native solution for these issues.
The Indie Approach
Taking the initiative to combine the native features of a mobile crypto wallet and the Counterparty system is an accomplishment in itself, but IndieSquare has managed to go one step further by natively supporting Shapeshift.io features within the wallet app, or as Koji himself put it:
“For a lot of users getting XCP is a big hurdle. That's one of the reasons we added support for ShapeShift so beginners can start experiencing Counterparty and the decentralized exchange more casually. Now we have integrated ShapeShift in our wallet, if you have some btc, you can purchase XCP, a native Counterparty token, easily and can issue your original token or start trading for other Counterparty tokens through XCP all within IndieSquare Wallet. So yes in a way, you can consider our wallet a bitcoin wallet with Counterparty features.”
When asked why his team chose Counterparty over any other 2.0 platform, Koji gave this response:
“I see. A very good question. So the big part about choosing Counterparty over say... Colored Coins, for example, is Counterparty already has a functional decentralized exchange where you can trade your own tokens with other people in a decentralized way. When we started working on the project, we have looked into BiShares, NXT, and others too as they have their own decentralized exchanges. Some of the drawbacks we saw were of course they are using their own blockchains and the stability of the chain was where we had some concerns about.”
Bitcoin or Broke
While this enhanced functionality is certainly good promotion for Counterparty and mobile wallet devs, is it possible that the addition of shapeshift.io could open up vulnerabilities to the wallet app, thus hindering the extra security gained from the Bitcoin Blockchain? To get an expert view we contacted Ethereum Co-Founder and Founder of Kryptokit, Anthony Di Iorio for his input on the matter:
“It shouldn't offer potential for breach of security if done properly. I'm not a fan of exchanges due to the complexities typically associated with setting up accounts and dealing with bid and ask orders. Alternatively, products such as ShapeShift that remove friction and simplify processes are beneficial to the cryptocurrency community and will appeal to new users.”
Shifting back to IndieSquare, Koji says they plan on releasing an update next week featuring an enhanced GUI to improve user friendliness and enhance the stability of the IndieSquare wallet app.