Recently there has been some concern and misunderstanding around the purpose of the fees related to listing on CryptoBridge. We would like to take this opportunity to provide some explanation to eliminate future issues around their purpose.

One of our many goals is to enable new projects at the beginning of their lifespan to connect with the greater marketplace. As with many such fledgling projects, coin developers have used the listing  experience on CryptoBridge as as a quality assurance and code-testing opportunity. While we do the utmost to support projects in this way, the provided code is usually of lesser quality, the time required in doing so is not trivial and compounds significantly when multiple projects require it simultaneously. Time spent attempting to compile and troubleshoot code base issues places us in the position of beta-testers if the diligence of quality assurance is found lacking.

Noting the obstacle that this scenario creates between us and our goal, we determined that some degree of financial compensation was required for specific types of updates. The simple fact remains that without a fee, the associated labor becomes an insurmountable barrier to our day-to-day operations and undermines the entire premise of the exchange: to assist projects in reaching the greater cryptocurrency trading marketplace.
The update fees as such are indicated on the listing application on our site.
Once the initial asset is created and proves stable, we are able to provide non-consensus changing updates (provided that 30 days have elapsed).

Blockchain forks increase the support strain on CryptoBridge as there is an associated failure of transactions. Forks of this kind are able to invalidate past transactions, and can cause a fractional reserve into wallets. Locating developers to provide reimbursement (indicated in our terms of service) incurs a loss of time as well, inconveniencing users of that asset. To prevent further incidence of these forks, we have recently begun dynamically adjusting confirmation times for each asset's hashrate vulnerability.

Once the chain has been repaired the user deposits must be honored. We refuse to allow a successful exploit to negatively impact the user and if the project is unable to cover the damage caused, CryptoBridge absorbs it. In some instances, the damages far exceed the listing cost by orders of magnitude.

Updating an asset daemon also has a small fee, however the the factors mentioned above are most relevant to the listing cost and should inform developers about the justification for the cost.

Changing the ticker of an asset is also an often misunderstood procedure. In situations where a project has been able to update the ticker on a non-blockchain-based exchange, generally this is a straightforward amendment. However, CryptoBridge is built on BitShares and once an asset is created, this data is permanent. A ticker change in this case is really the creation of an entirely new asset, which is no different than creating a new listing. Users are required to to withdraw from the old asset and deposit into the new wallet, and all setup steps must be undertaken again.

There is no comparison in the procedure with other exchanges, and this is the basis for requiring a fee.

The purpose of this article is to make known the reasons for fees, which unfortunately has at times been characterized as having no reasonable basis. We hope that this provides some clarity around the need for fees as an ongoing operational expense (and risk mitigation factor) and look forward to a better working relationship with the projects who choose to list with CryptoBridge.