The Bitshares DEX supports bartering?
Yes, the Bitshares decentralized exchange supports on-chain peer to peer bartering; it was implemented between 2018-2019 in the Bitshares web-ui and showcased to the public in the new features spotlight page.
The Bitshares bartering system enables users to suggest asset swaps with other Bitshares accounts, this happens outside the order book and can include an escrow.
Want to know more about bartering? Check out its wiki page!
Why barter?
Say someone has an asset on the Bitshares blockchain that you want, such as an NFT, but it's in their portfolio/inventory not on the open market, how would you buy it?
If their Bitshares account name isn't associated with an user on telegram/matrix/hive, then your only outreach option is to send them a transaction with a memo explaining your desired market trade, with the hopes they read it and decide to place it on the open market.
Alternatively, say two users in an on-chain game decide to trade game items between themselves in an in-game safe zone (like a marketplace), you would use this bartering mechanism to enable peer to peer trading on-chain.
How do you barter on the Bitshares DEX?
Within the reference Bitshares wallet, navigate to the spotlight page, then to the barter page, you'll see the following UI:
You need to specify the other participant in the bartering exchange, alongside the trade contents and justification, such as:
So I've been able to propose a peer to peer trade between myself and another blockchain participant, without a middleman system between us introducing risk.
Now, say part of the bartering exchange includes an activity, like creating content, you can include an escrow participant who will securely hold my payment funds, and upon verifying the creation of the negotiated content will release the barter fund contents to peer 2.
The escrow participant in this example was the bitshares committee, however in an on-chain game this could be set as the auction house auctioneer if within the bounds of a safe zone.
How much does it cost to barter?
As you may have spotted in the above screenshots, the fees for a barter exchange include:
| Fee type | Non-LTM fee | LTM fee |
|---|---|---|
| Peer 1 creating the barter proposal | 9.65218 BTS | 1.93044 BTS |
| Peer 1 accepts barter | 0.86869 BTS | 0.17374 BTS |
| Peer 2 accepts barter | 0.86869 BTS | 0.17374 BTS |
| (Optional) Escrow approves barter | 0.86869 BTS | 0.17374 BTS |
Some observations from the above fee table
- If Peer 2 rejects the barter exchange they pay no fees
- If Peer 2 wants to propose alternative barter exchange terms then they will become Peer 1 in a new barter exchange.
- If the escrow agent is not consulted prior to being selected as escrow, eg like picking the Bitshares committee to oversee an ingame item trade, they may ignore/reject the barter due to the imposed cost of fees. Contact an escrow agent prior to selecting them as peer 3.
- Escrow agents fees will need to be covered by either Peer 1 and/or Peer 2. Due to this, non-escrow P2P bartering is the entirely unbiased option.
- Since new barter proposals are expensive, establishing communications via initial memo for further trade negotiations would save participants fees.
- It's worth purchasing a life-time membership on the Bitshares blockchain to reduce the cost of on-chain P2P bartering trade exchanges.
Some questions for the community!
Have you used peer to peer trading in games before? Do you think a manual escrow participant could have benefited any of your trades? Or would it have slowed things down for you?
Would you use in-game P2P trading for an on-chain web3 game?
Are there any new Bitshares features you would like to see introduced to the spotlight page?