The Counterparty Platform

Counterparty extends Bitcoin’s functionality by “writing in the margins” of regular Bitcoin transactions, opening the door for advanced features not possible with just Bitcoin Core.

The Counterparty Protocol

The Counterparty protocol is open source and extensively tested. Besides allowing users to create and trade any kind of digital token, Counterparty enables anyone to write specific digital agreements, or programs known as Smart Contracts, and execute them on the Bitcoin blockchain.

XCP

XCP was created by “burning” bitcoins, which involved sending coins to an unspendable address in exchange for XCP, ensuring an even and fair distribution of the currency. In January 2014, over 2,100 bitcoins were burned, creating about 2.6 million XCP.

History of Counterparty

2014-01-02 – Launched on Bitcointalk [view]
2014-02-02 – 2,648,755 XCP created in Proof of Burn [view]
2014-02-15 – Counterparty Bug Bounty program established [view]
2014-04-15 – Counterparty codebase audited by Sergio Lerner [view]
2014-03-12 – Dividend payments [view]
2014-07-01 – Rock-Paper-Scissors (RPS) and Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock (RPSLS) [view]
2014-11-12 – Ported Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) [view]
2014-11-28 – Multi-signature support & free numeric assets [view]
2014-12-03 – Counterparty Foundation established [view]
2015-01-09 – Improved quality assurance and increased unit test code coverage [view]
2015-03-20 – 2015 Counterparty foundation elected [view]
2015-04-01 – Added HTTP REST API [view]
2015-10-29 – CIP1 – Counterparty Improvement Proposals program established [view]
2015-11-04 – CIP2 – Counterparty Payment URI Scheme accepted [view]
2016-01-24 – Support for 80-byte OP_RETURN
2016-03-20 – 2016 Counterparty foundation elected
2016-07-11 – P2SH support
2017-03-15 – CIP8 – Implementation Bounties established [view]
2017-03-20 – 2017 Counterparty foundation elected [view]
2017-05-01 – CIP4 – Subassets [view]
2017-09-28 – CIP9 – Enhanced sends with memo field support [view]
2017-09-28 – CIP11 – Shorten Transaction Type ID Namespace [view]
2017-09-28 – CIP12 – Memo Requirement through Broadcasts [view]
2018-12-28 – CIP 15 – Segwit Support [view]
2018-12-28 – CIP 19 – Upgrade Counterparty to latest Bitcoin and Indexd [view]
2019-07-15 – 2019 Counterparty foundation elected [view]
2019-10-24 – CIP 6 – P2SH data encoding [view]
2019-10-24 – CIP 10 – Multi-Peer Multi-Asset Sends (MPMA) [view]
2019-10-24 – CIP 20 – Sweep Support [view]
2020-03-03 – CIP 21 – Dispenser Support [view]