so I’m looking on coinmarketcap and see a Monero volume, suprised as as far as I know it’s impossible to add XMR that dosen’t have a multisig option. I also searched the forum and see nothing about it. What’s going on? 
In order for crytocurrency to become base currency in Bisq, it requires a multisig. Is this what you were referring to? This is why Monero wasn’t an option for base currencies.
But it can still be traded, like other altcoins and even fiat by utilizing Bitcoin’s multisig. The trade volume makes sense to be high for Monero on Bisq, as it is the best option for an exchange when someone cares about anonymity, I would say.
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XMR <-> BTC trades are of course already possible, multisig is in BTC
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Multi Sig is part of the last release 0.12.0.0.
Do we need any other feature before Monero can become a base coin and currency?
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This is true, perhaps it could be added, since it seems like it is most traded altcoin on Bisq.
Recently we have been decreasing support for other base currencies, but adding Monero might really be useful. Not just since it is often traded, but because it might offer better privacy for trading on Bisq.
If multisig transactions in Monero offer the same level of privacy as other Monero transactions, it should be practically impossible for a bank to figure out if you are using Bisq for trading.
We should probably look into this more.
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Changing base currency to Monero would be a huge dev effort. I think there is also no java implementation of Monero. If we move some day away from BitcoinJ and have a native wallet shipped with the app it might become a bit more feasible. From privacy perspective it would be great of course. But downside would be that we narrow the market to those who have and use Monero. Having multiple base currencies had no significant support from traders so far (we removed DOGE and DASH already and LTC might get dropped as well soon). It is hard enough to bootstrap a Bitcoin market.
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sadface. i understand though. what would have to change about XMR for reconsideration? much larger adoption?
I guess higher user support for that base currency, yes.
A dev that is familiar with Monero enough and can help out in integrating it in Bisq would help as well, I guess.
Hello Manfred, thanks for your reply here, I have been sent here from a Reddit post.
There is already a Java RPC implementation for Monero, however you still need a full node running and probably nobody from Monero will want to maintain a full Java node implementation in parallel, since Monero hard forks every 6 months to integrate new features and it’s hard enough to make the base C++ implementation stable and secure. Like Bulletproofs implementation has been recently audited by three different external entities.
Monero’s Multisig implementation offers the same level of privacy like every other transaction.
Well, I assume these coins had no significant support at all on Bisq and this is obviously not the case for Monero and we see like 90% of all volume on Bisq is between BTC/XMR. I think most serious Monero users hate to use centralised exchanges with all the KYC eg., so also LocalMonero even when it’s a quite young project, it has pretty much volume already for a single coin marketplace.
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I think after the DAO we will focus on the off-chain trade protocol idea, which solves many problems (privacy, arbitrators,…) and with that there is no base currency required anymore (but BSQ is required for a one-time bond similar to open a lightning channel).
See: https://github.com/bisq-network/proposals/issues/32
Well that sounds quite similar to a new base currency, BSQ instead of direct trading like now and it probably will come with some of its downsides like additional volatility eg.
Most users I know would rather like to trade direct currency pairs using MultiSig, but that’s just my opinion. However, I see massive demand in Fiat/XMR trading pairs, which without excessive KYC are currently only filled a bit by LocalMonero.
Not really. You set up a BSQ bond of any amount and then you can trade until that amount is not exceeded, similar to a lightning channel. So with one time setup a bond of say 10 000 BSQ equivalent to say 10 000 USD you can trade in parallet up to 10000 USD. Once a trade is completed the bond balance gets adjusted so you would only require a higher bond if you want to trade more then 10k in parallel, otherwise u can leave it for long time locked. But yes there is volatility risk, same as with a lightning channel, when you set up a channel with 1 BTC today (6500 USD) and close it in 1 months and BTC fell to 5000 USD your returned BTC have less USD value. But same happens if u leave it in your wallet.
I understand the demand for XMR/Fiat and if any dev is interested to work on that would be great. It is just quite a big project and having the requirement to have monerod running in background will hurt usability for many/some users (not so sure if monero users have much of a problem with that, though).
very cool to see monero in bisq 
Adding Monero wallet support to Bisq would be a feasible first step and will be still a valuable feature if we move one day to the off-chain trade protocol (https://github.com/bisq-network/proposals/issues/32).
Adding XMR as base currency is a huge effort. I would estimate 3-6 months for a dev experienced with Bisq and Monero.
I think we should focus instead on the off chain trade protocol where there is no base currency anymore.
The currently used multisig based protocol has several issues (which would be only partially solved if Monero would be base currency):
- Miner fees are high (4 tx are required, maybe 2 can be omitted if we find a optimization but not clear if possible). Once miner fees are high again that will be a burden. Not sure about XMR miner fee future outlook but it can be assumed that it will be a problem at some point as well
- On chain privacy issue with connected txs. As Bitcoin on chain privacy is pretty bad that is an issue. Not on Monero.
- Arbitrator as 3rd key holder carries unclear legal risks and has some security and centralisation issues. -> We are preparing a proposal to remove arbitrators completely and use a 2of2 MS instead.
- Trade speed depends on base currency and counter currency transfer. At BTC its 10 min. block confirmation. Depending on the altcoin side it adds another few minutes. With Monero it can be faster, but also has the limitation when doing repeated trades that Monero cannot spend own unconfirmed coins, so delay will be even longer.
So you see the tx fee issue would still be a problem and more important the confirmation time will be still a limiting factor for trade speed.
With the off chain trade protocol the XMR transfer will still be a part but at least it does not depend on the trade protocol. I users find an alternative transfer channel (like lightning network in BTC) it can be elimitated or at least optimized. At least on a XMR-BTC trade you could use lightning on the BTC side and have only the confirmation time on XMR as limiting factor.
Thank you, Manfred!
This has been already addressed in the current release, a simple transaction is below $0.01.
This is indeed a Bitcoin issue and is probably hard to address.
I’m pretty sure the unspendable balance is a wallet setting, not required by the protocol. Pretty sure, the Monero dev community will have a precise answer for that.
I will also join the discussion later on GitHub…