Greetings, Bisq users!

It’s been an exciting few months here on the Bisq team. We’ve been relatively quiet during much of that time, hard at work on a number of important improvements including the Bisq DAO and the forthcoming 0.6.0 release of the Bisq exchange. This means we have a lot to cover, so let’s get right into it!

NEW AND NOTEWORTY

The Bisq DAO began operations. A Decentralized Autonomous Organization for Bisq has been in the works for over a year now, and October 6th marked its official start of operations. We wrote a paper about it, and have just completed our first round of compensation request voting. It’s still early, but we’re excited—the Bisq DAO is all about achieving maximum censorship resistance for the Bisq network and its users. Onward!
 

Exchange volume continues to grow. Since Bisq went live on Bitcoin mainnet 1½ years ago, our global transaction volume has doubled roughly every 4 months. We’ve gone from $30K and $40K months in mid-2016 to being on track for a $600K month in November. This means more liquidity for everyone, and that there’s never been a better time to trade with Bisq.
 

The first cut at a Bisq trading API is available. Programmatic trading has been one of Bisq’s most requested features, and @mrosseel has just shipped the first cut of an HTTP-based trading API for Bisq. You can see it in action, browse examples, and read the docs. Feedback is welcome via the project’s GitHub repository.
 

Attention China: Tor pluggable transports are coming to Bisq. Using Bisq behind the Great Firewall has been difficult in the past, but no more! Bisq 0.6.0 will use @JesusMcCloud’s new netlayer library to enable Tor pluggable transports and make Bisq as easy to use in China as it is elsewhere in the world.
 

An important new security feature is on the way. @ManfredKarrer has been hard at work on the new payment account age witness feature, which will bring additional protections against bank account fraud to Bisq’s already secure trading protocol. Watch out for it in 0.6.0.
 

Bisq is prepared for SegWit2X future contentious hard forks. The SegWit2X hard fork has been called off, but we’re going ahead with our plan to operate a set of Bitcoin Core full nodes that will provide stability during turbulent network conditions and improve user privacy. Bisq will connect to these nodes by default in 0.6.0 with the ability to opt-out or specify your own.

IN THE MEDIA

Bisq was on the Changelog podcast. @cbeams had a great conversation with the guys at the Changelog about Bisq and why privacy and security are so important when exchanging cryptocurrencies. It’s an excellent resource to share with friends and family who are just getting into Bitcoin.
 

We did an interview with World Crypto Network. @cbeams did this 15-minute video interview with Mad Bitcoins and the WCN crew. It was fast-paced but comprehensive, covering what Bisq is, why we built it, how it works, and what we’re up to now with the Bisq DAO.
 

Bisq was featured in Bitcoin Magazine. Giulio Prisco did a nice write-up on decentralized bitcoin exchanges, including an extended interview with @cbeams on decentralization and freedom.
 

... and in CoinJournal. Kyle Torpey interviewed @ManfredKarrer about the Bisq DAO and why the BSQ token is not an ICO cash-grab.
 

We dropped in on Block Digest #25. @ManfredKarrer talked decentralization and privacy with Chris Ellis, Ricardo Spangni (@fluffypony) and others in this fun Block Digest episode on YouTube.

ON THE ROAD

We gave a talk at Hackers Congress 2017 in Prague. @cbeams delivered a talk titled How to Bootstrap a DAO at last month’s excellent #HCPP17 conference. The slide deck is available now, and video will be published soon on the Paralelní Polis YouTube channel.
 

We’ll be at Baltic Honeybadger 2017 in Riga Nov 26th–27th. The speaker lineup is amazing, and tickets are still available. See you there!
 

… and Chaos Communication Congress in Leipzig Dec 27th–30th. If you’re one of the many thousands of attendees that will be there too, come find @emzy, @mrosseel, @ManfredKarrer, @cbeams and other Bisq contributors at the Bitcoin Assembly.

CONTRIBUTORS WANTED

Help us make the Bisq user experience even better. @ripcurlx has put together clickable prototypes of the screens involved in creating an offer and taking an offer in Bisq, and is looking for your feedback. Please leave your comments within the prototypes on things you don’t like, don’t understand or just would do differently. Thanks!
 

We have a new contributor mailing list. The old Bitsquare Google Group is dead, long live the new bisq-contrib mailing list! If you want to stay up to date with important conversations and announcements about contributing to Bisq, please subscribe. Everyone is welcome.
 

Join us in Slack. Bisq’s Slack workspace is the best place to collaborate in real-time with other Bisq users and contributors. Join us!

Thanks for reading, and we hope you’ve enjoyed this new format for the Bisq newsletter. If you have any questions or feedback, please resply to this email and let us know. You can also follow Bisq on Twitter to stay up to date with news and developments. Until next time!