Has anyone else here been keeping up with tbDEX and/or read the whitepaper? From what I can gather, if I had to try to sum up the whole whitepaper simply, they outline a vision of a protocol that combines elements of TCP, PKI, Uniswap, eBay, and Twitter. Almost like a version of Uniswap (the protocol, not platform) that also provides a way to BID and ASK through proxies that protect the identity of either individual. Their main focus seems to be bridging web 2.0 / fiat ecommerce with some of the elements of web 3.0 / DeFi, while also retaining legal compliance as a fiat on/off ramp. It is definitely ambitious, and is obviously very very early in it’s development at this point… but what is missing in my opinion is who will actually host / coordinate / verify any of the steps of their protocol. It feels like they want the best of both worlds - having a decentralized protocol but also containing all of it within a monolithic structure.
Here are some interesting points for me…
The tbDEX protocol facilitates decentralized networks of exchange between assets by providing a framework for establishing social trust, utilizing decentralized identity (DID) and verifiable credentials (VCs) to establish the provenance of identity in the real world.
Accessing decentralized financial services […] requires multiple asset transfers and transaction fees each step of the way. Aside from gatekeepers and cost, the complexity and sheer unintelligibility of this process today is a prohibitive barrier to entry for most.
The tbDEX protocol borrows heavily, if not completely, from well-established models of decentralizing trust, such as the public key infrastructure (PKI) that is used for securing the internet today.
The protocol itself does not rely on a federation to control permission or access to the network. There is no governance token. In its most abstract form, it is an extensible messaging protocol with the ability to form distributed trust relationships as a core design facet.
● The system must be open, public, and permissionless.
● The system must be robustly censorship resistant and tamper evasive.
● The system must produce a record that is probabilistically finalized and independently, deterministically verifiable, even in the presence of segmentation, state withholding, and collusive node conditions.
● The system must not be reliant on authorities, trusted third-parties, or entities that cannot be displaced through competitive market processes.