XCP Price
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Counterparty Features

Tokens

Custom Counterparty tokens can be used for a wide range of purposes and act as their own cryptocurrency, while still running on the Bitcoin blockchain. Unlike ordinary bitcoin, custom tokens can be used to represent any kind of value.

Tokens are being used today to:

conduct successful crowdfunding and voting,
monetize access to decentralized application (“DApp”) software features,
represent a product or personal brand,
act as a sort of “blockchain domain name”,
as an authentication token,
to represent digital goods, such as in-game cards,
as a proxy for a real-world good or service (i.e. tokens exchangeable for paper, biofuel, etc),
act as a reward for providing valuable time or resources,
as an educational service to explore the functioning of a blockchain,
and purely for fun.

Learn how to create Custom Tokens >

Asset Exchange ("DEX")

In the physical word, exchanging assets is fraught by risks and problems, such as potential theft and reliance on an escrow agent or central counterparty. On Counterparty, the roles of escrow agent and clearing house are filled by the Counterparty protocol itself, eliminating unnecessary costs, time, and third-party trust. In any transaction the required funds are debited from each party’s address immediately, and are not released until the conditions of the contract have been met.

View the latest status of the DEX >

Payment Channels

Work on the upcoming Lightning Network promises to enable nearly instant, cheap and safe exchange of bitcoin between untrusted counterparties.

Features in Counterparty are under development that will allow for use of uni- or bi-directional payment channels with Counterparty tokens. Future work will allow the use of the Lightning Network with Counterparty, enabling rapid, decentralized and off-chain exchange of tokens that settles onto the Bitcoin blockchain.

Learn More about Lightning Network >

Voting

Blockchain-based voting avoids many of the issues inherent with voting in “real world”. Digital signatures allow for identity and voting rights to be easily established and verified, and the blockchain itself provides an unalterable, append-only record of who voted, and when.

Counterparty provides multiple methods to perform fully decentralized voting on the blockchain:

Counterparty tokens may be created and distributed and then sent to specific addresses to signify a vote for a specified option (e.g. DevParty),
Counterparty broadcast messages may be used (e.g. the recent Counterparty board elections), or

XCP stake voting is under development, to allow for powerful, decentralized governance of the Counterparty protocol.

Multisignature Addresses

Multisignature transactions require signatures from more than one Bitcoin private key to spend their funds. Counterparty supports various multisignature schemes, such as 1-of-3, 2-of-3, 3-of-5, and more. Using our technology, a Bitcoin “multisignature address” may be created, and some quantity of a Counterparty token sent to it. Some quorum of signers will then be required to digitally verify and sign any transaction that sends these tokens somewhere else.

In practice, this allows for enhanced security measures around Counterparty token access and distribution. Scenarios where this could be useful include:

Allowing team members and third-party firms to initiate transactions that can be approved later by management,
allowing issuers of tokens to safely store these tokens, as well as to control their distribution, and
allowing third-party auditing services to ensure the delivery of goods and services once contractual obligations have been satisfied, and only release funds once verified.

Learn More About Multisig >