The Trade Portal, was initially the main service for the Qortal blockchain is a COMPLETELY DECENTRALIZED peer-to-peer (p2p) trade platform, built inside the Qortal User Interface.

Qortal’s Trade Portal aims to remove the need for centralized exchanges and ‘decentralized exchanges’ which riddle the blockchain space with all sorts of flaws. That is not to say that all exchanges which claim to be decentralized are flawed, but surely most are. The idea of the Trade Portal is to provide true peer-to-peer (p2p) transactions between buyers and sellers without the need of the middle man by utilizing cross-chain trades in the form of the ‘ACCT’ SmartContract (Atomic Cross Chain Trade). The only authority over a trade taking place is solely between the buyer and seller! The custom trade bot for the buyer and seller automates the multiple stages involved in a true cross-chain trade so that the Trade Portal is as simple to use as any centralized service but without any of the associated risks such as 1) historically these exchanges have been prone to hacks and failure, 2) depositing assets into a wallet or temporarily releasing control of assets during a trade, 3) any need for KYC/AML tools.

How can Qortal guarantee no theft can occur within the Trade Portal? Simple. The fact is, the Trade Portal utilizes LOCAL wallets to make trades. At the time of this publication, Litecoin is natively supported. Bitcoin is not supported for trades, only wallet services. This implementation of cross-chain trades can be reused for any number of Litecoin forks that work on the same transaction sending and address generation schemes. The Dev Team has taken extensive time to ensure that only LOCAL wallets are made use of and the keys for those wallets are never exposed in an unencrypted fashion. Therefore, the Trade Portal is just as secure as sending from a local wallet to another, except they are one chain to another.

The Portal is a system that makes use of the ACCT system by the CIYAM developers (http://ciyam.org) with which to make completely cross-chain coin/token trades.

Initially, support for only BTC was implemented but found to be too expensive and slow to continue at this time. LTC was then implemented and has replaced BTC. In other words, BTC trade have been discontinued while the BTC wallet feature remains. There are currently LTC/QORT markets only. Native BTC and LTC support in Qortal allows users to store BTC and LTC in their Qortal UI wallet, just as they would in a BTC local wallet. Without the need for installation of a BTC or LTC wallet itself.

The system allows for completely cross-chain trades between LTC and QORT! Users NEVER RELINQUISH CONTROL OF THEIR COINS/TOKENS. Never have to 'deposit' assets in order to make trades. This allows for COMPLETE SECURITY. Never again, will there be worry about centralized exchanges failing, and taking with that failure, users' assets.

As time goes on, and development progresses, support for other coins/tokens will be implemented into the system. Votes in the system will be the primary factor as far as which new coins/tokens will be added, however, a vote is not a guarantee of listing, there will also be an independent verification done on the project pre-listing, to ensure only the most quality projects are listed in the Trade Portal.

The Trade portal functions by making use of an automation system that creates and executes placement of ATs on behalf of the private key of a 'logged in' account.

The account's 'bot' (for lack of a better term) takes the trade data from the user, and issues a SmartContract (AT, ACCT AT to be exact) that then awaits input from another user, then picks up on behalf of both users, to execute a Cross-Chain trade.

All that is necessary for the user, is leaving their core running.

Important note: If you wipe your database then you will lose access to any funds tied up in trades (QORT or LTC). For pretty much the same reason as if you wiped your Litecoin wallet DB.

Below is an infographic with the steps of the Trade Portal easily understandable cross-chain trade explanation.