How I just made it easy for dozens of exchanges to adopt Steem!

TxBits is a very popular open source package for crypto currency exchanges, that is extremely well built and secure by default.

I stumbled on TxBits while searching for a solid base to build TradeQwik from. Immediately upon finding it, I set about performing a full audit of the code and what I found just amazed me. I kept saying to myself over and over again "ok, sure they thought of this thing, but what about ..." and each time I was surprised to find that they had taken the time to do it right!

So the deal with TxBits is that while it's not exactly drop dead simple to install, it's still pretty easy to work with.
GitHub shows 55 forks being actively developed, and I'm quite certain that there's at least a hundred exchanges running this software.

A few weeks ago I completed my audit and left the TxBits team a nice letter explaining my findings.
They mentioned that the software was no longer being actively developed or maintained despite being substantially complete. I offered to take over as official maintainer and they accepted.

So now I run an exchange AND I am developing some really great opensource exchange software!

Pretty soon, I realized that there were certain hurdles to clear in order to integrate currencies that are not derived from bitcoin. TxBits just made this assumption that all cryptos are derived from Bitcoin and because of that it's extremely difficult to integrate currencies which are not from that pedigree.

I wanted TradeQwik to support STEEM, SBD and GOLOS and GBG as first class citizens.
It took awhile to sort out the instabilities, and the recent change to API endpoints that was pushed through without any notice really made the task more challenging and interesting. In the end though I got my integration and I realized something.

I want every exchange running TxBits to be able to support steem.

So I isolated my changes and created a patchkit of sorts and released it for free along with a new project called TxBits connectors. The goal of this particular project is to make it easy to support other cryptos without a bitcoin pedigree and we start with step by step instructions on integrating steem.

Why am I doing this?
It's because I believe firmly that with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow. I also know if you try this as an aspiring programmer or devops person, you'll gain skills, perhaps find things we're missing and contribute back which makes the software better for everyone.

How cool is that?
Feel free to hop on over to the project's github repository, fork it and have fun learning what's involved in starting and running your own exchange and what it takes to integrate your favorite cryptos too!

That's it for now, thanks for taking the time to read this!

This post is 100% Steem Powered!