Bitcoin Businesses
Interview with the Benjamin Bommhardt from draglet’s exchange
Nuno Menezes · @https://twitter.com/Blawpaw | Aug 06, 2014 | 00:57
The draglet exchange has been one of the new exchanges that has developed advanced features supported by remarkable new technology and security concepts specifically designed to present the best solutions to bitcoin businesses and entrepreneurs. This made the exchange, the leading company in a new industry inside the crypto ecosystem; draglet was the first company to host and provide the necessary tools for any Business to open their own exchange.
Bitcoinist had a chance to catch up with Benjamin Bommhardt one of the draglet’s exchange Team members for an written interview where he was able to enlighten us a little more about the draglet’s special features, current work and future expectations.
The Interview
Can you explain how did you come up with the idea for developing this project?
We are traders ourselves and were not satisfied with the trading experience. After having frustrations on several exchange platforms and the knowledge, that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have huge potential. We wanted to create a healthy company anyway and decided that Bitcoin would be a splendid opportunity to step into entrepreneurship. After developing software for bigger german corporates for decades, we could gain loads of experience in the process of software development. Thus, our strength lies in the analysis of existing systems and the complete “from the scratch” approaches where we can easily deal with complex problems and develop a sophisticated and reliable software for exactly the trading of cryptocurrencies. By starting draglet and offering our unique exchange software as white label solution, we want to help the cryptocurrency community by creating reliable and solid gateways into the economy. The times, where users have to “be so fair and stop trading, because the trading system is being upgraded” are over, because customers can now start their own bleeding-edge technology exchange and will be assisted with our professional methods like how to bring exchanges online and how to maintain or update them.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the exchange and how does it work?
The exchange is a white label exchange, meaning that everybody can use our software to start his own exchange. He will then be the legal operator and deliver compliance and the license for running the exchange. Besides promoting the exchange, he will handle user support and process user withdrawal requests. After the customer defines the design and logo as well as the content on the exchange website, draglet will start to customize the exchange software according to the customers’ needs. This also includes custom modification, like trading pairs for mining contracts or adding other cryptocurrencies. After setting the exchange up and hosting on the distributed and secure server architecture, we will maintain the software and grant industry grade availability. While our customers can focus on operative means of the exchange, draglet will then be able to focus on further developments of the exchange software.
I hear you offer a pack of five products. Can you tell us more about these products?
The flagship of our products is cxSuite, which is the full “crypto exchange Suite” and contains our 5 products, the cxWallet, cxServer, cxAdmin, cxClient and cxEngine.
cxWallet is the module that holds Bitcoins (or soon other cryptocurrencies) in a safe environment. What special about the wallet is the custom written encryption process (patent pending) that secures the user funds from inhouse and external attacks. Besides Two-Factor-Authentication and deep freeze (another custom process that automatically swaps Bitcoin from the hotwallet to the multisignature cold storage), the Wallet is secured by our second product, the cxServer.
cxServer is our clustered persistance layer that offers robustness and scalability – it is even possible to add and remove servers without downtime. Our DNS failover switches off dysfunctional nodes and instantly reroutes traffic to other cluster nodes. Built upon standard the standard LAMP technologies the utilized security mechanisms are broadly tested and highly reliable.
cxAdmin is our back end admin interface that provides frictionless fiat transfers, support handling and real time customization of exchange attributes such as transaction fee or minimum nominals. Login access to cxAdmin is only available via VPN to exclude potential attackers. The dashboard gives you an overview of open support queries and also a view of the support thread of each customer. Exchange configuration and deep freeze storage parameters can be displayed and edited on intuitive interfaces that make it easy for you to run your cryptocurrency exchange.
cxClient is our responsive, pure JavaScript wallet and trading interface and can be used on mobile phones and computers alike. Sensible user operations are secured with optional two-factor authentication via Google Authenticator and e-mail authentication that can be configured in user settings. cxClient features instant notifications of order matches, price teasers, order book and charts.
Last, but not least, our order matching engine called cxEngine. Robust and flexible, it offers a unique feature: optimistic fund locking. This is an important step to enhance the trading experience of exchange users. While all existent exchanges lock user funds as soon as orders are created, the user loses control over his funds and cannot withdraw or create other orders. With our unique optimistic fund locking, the user still has full control over his funds and can for example still withdraw funds. Besides matching millions of transactions per hour, the price determination keeps the volatility as low as possible by referring the previously matched price as a reference. Adjustable parameters like minimum nominal and trading fee with special options, e.g. maker-taker fees are taken into account. 
What are the primary features that make you differ from the other online exchanges?
Our offered services are unique because, unlike most competitors, we offer a complete “hosting as a service” for fiat-to-cryptoexchanges. draglet’s software is unique and on a bleeding-edge level, patents for the most important and distinctive features of our exchange are pending. Also, our exchange software can show a decent maturity: after conducting an open beta test over 9 months that attracted more than 1400 users, we can now offer solidly tested exchange software. Furthermore, we can excel in adapting the software to meet each customer’s needs, enabling our customers to realize almost every use case.
Your products are specially designed for businesses in the crypto environment. What are the features that can be most benefiting for companies operating in the ecosystem?
In my eyes, our flexibility is a very important factor for the Bitcoin companies that are currently sprouting. Every business case is unique and different; an “exchange software out of the box” can rarely handle those unique use cases. Our creative and result-oriented approach will enable us to realize the vision of each of our customers in an efficient way. Furthermore, we put a strong focus on security and availability for our exchange setup. This is a very critical point for companies that hold virtual funds. We want to give prospective exchange operators a good feeling by providing our patented software that is secured by multiple safety mechanisms. Last but not least, our shared order book will be a big boost for companies that want to start new exchanges. While the draglet exchange software will allow exchanges to build up a web of trust for liquidity flow between exchanges, users will then be able to match their orders not only on the local but also on other exchanges. This will increase the liquidity for each exchange and lower the negative network effects that occur when new exchanges get started.
Are you working on changes or new features to add to draglet?
Of course, we are always working on further developing our exchange software. Currently, we are implementing multicurrency and further increasing security configurations. While we have a lot of improvements for our exchange on our roadmap, we are looking forward to the shared order book, which is undoubtedly one of the biggest strategic propositions of draglet. We are currently hiring programmers to increase the frequency of new features and functions coming.
What are your future expectations for your project?
I personally think that we will see loads of new Bitcoin start ups, exchanges being amongst them. It could perfectly be that we will have around 500-600 cryptoexchanges at the end of the year. While the amount of exchanges will steadily rise, a time of consolidation will come and sweep those away that are not able to compete on professional level. draglet customers will surely be well prepared for this consolidation. We hope that we will be able to ease the problems that come into existence when opening an exchange and therefore do our part to help the Bitcoin economy growing, securing the gateways into the cryptocurrency world.
Images: draglet.com
