Hi,

I intend to implement trading across chains in a P2P manner (as described by Mike Hearn in https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_5:_Trading_across_chains). Note, this is indended more as an alternative chain development, I don't have any plans for merging it back into main client (not because I don't want to, but because I think it wouldn't be accepted). Before I dive into it, I thought it might be a good idea to ask here if the community has any useful ideas or comments on this topic?

Thanks to Gary Rowe I know about Open Transactions. They can do "multicurrency trading" too, but it's objectives are quite ambitious and I'm looking at making relatively small changes in the mainline Bitcoin client rather than diving into something entirely new.

A little background on why am I doing this, can be found here. In short it's part of research towards my Master's thesis (more precisely, an excuse to hack on Bitcoin and sell it as research :)) which should be about multicurrency (alternative chains) in Bitcoin.

Thanks,

Petr

PS: I hope I'm not too off topic here, but this thread indicates it should be fine to post alternative development questions on this.