Decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange Bisq has halted trading due to a “critical security vulnerability” until further notice.
The developers said they were investigating the security problem in an announcement posted on April 8, and are warning users not to send any funds if they are involved in any trade.
Bisq is expected to issue a hotfix “within a few hours” for the critical vulnerability, so far an alert key has been used to “temporarily disable trading.”
“Bisq is a proper distributed peer-to-peer network. So you can override the latest alert key functionality that blocks trading. But we highly discourage you from doing this for your own security,” authorities said
The Bisq exchange is a peer-to-peer application that lets users buy and sell crypto in exchange for fiat currency.
Now let’s take a look at what peer-to-peer exchange is and how it functions, and some of its benefits.
Peer-to-peer exchange is a decentralized form of exchange that is maintained and operated exclusively on software. As the name implies, peer-to-peer means that there is no third party in between. Simply put, P2P or peer-to-peer exchanges allow buyers and sellers to trade with each other directly without having to trust a third party to process their trade.
Since you deal directly with other traders, whose funds are not managed by the owners of the platform themselves, the element of confidence would be higher. That also provides privacy benefits.
Since there is no third party involved, merely the buyer and seller negotiate. Communication between the two parties shall be kept confidential. This only becomes public after the order has been issued and is ready to be applied to the blockchain. Because the exchange happens on the blockchain, no identifying information will be used. In addition, features of blockchain, such as distributed ledger, immutability, and encryption further improve the security of the entire network.
Secondly, fees on the P2P exchanges are far more reasonable. Fees range from 0 percent to 0.7 percent on most P2P exchanges.
Thirdly In a p2p exchange, every transaction occurs in the public ledger of the blockchain. It removes the need to think about the credibility of the counterparties. Furthermore, their KYC information remains in line with the blockchain database. So the risk of identification and other kinds of fraud will be much less.