Tom from 0x here. Happy to answer any questions about Launch Kit or 0x more broadly!
After reading the Why page, I still don't have a concrete notion of what this is. So I'll jab a few questions that might help me make some sense:
First question is about decentralization. What is off-chain relay in this case? Is that a centralized part of the system? Are there centralized parts of the system?
Can this be used to implement more robust margin trading? To my knowledge, only centralized exchanges/brokers currently exist for margin trading.
What settlement speeds can be expected?
That's it for the questions. I don't want to retract from them, but I'll mention that the site doesn't work well with Dark Reader: all theme generation modes, except static, render most of the text invisible.
First question is about decentralization. What is off-chain relay in this case? Is that a centralized part of the system? Are there centralized parts of the system?
Off-chain relay is how parties find each other facilitate a trade. As a maker, I can create an order off-chain, but I still need to find a relevant taker who is interested in filling the order by sending it to the 0x smart contracts on-chain. Relayers pool together these off-chain orders and serve them up through a website, so that it's easy to find people to trade with. Note that this process is optional -- you can still trade peer-to-peer if I send you the order over email, SMS, etc. While relaying is centralized, relayers are non-custodial, so your funds are never at risk. We also have plans to make some parts of relaying less centralized in the future through 0x Mesh: https://blog.0xproject.com/0x-roadmap-2019-part-3-networked-...
Can this be used to implement more robust margin trading?
As for margin trading, yes, you can trade dY/dX tokens on 0x relayers, or combine 0x orders with any on-chain lending protocol such as Dharma or MakerDAO to get leverage.
What settlement speeds can be expected?
All trades currently settle on-chain, so the Ethereum block time is our bottleneck. Look for some updates on this near future :)
Some examples that have been gaining buzz recently (these are just examples, there are alternatives to each) if you want to read up and grok the statr of implementation and thoughts today: Plasma chains, PoA Networks xDAI, SKALE, PegaSys.
ergo, the user benefit here is that the user only needs a Coinbase or like account to transfer dollars to tokens, and then the user can obtain other tokens within any particular app. The user doesn't need to sign up to yet-another-exchange-with-my-personal-data-and-who-are-these-people-anyway-and-do-they-have-the-tokens-i-use-etc,etc. Now the user can readily take tokens not in use on one platform and transfer them to a token of another platform, all without leaving the platform specific application. That's a big win for the ecosystem.
I can see why you built the slick ui to demo your product, i think it's the right move because i can use it without a single line of code. I think the next challenge you will have is getting developers to adopt an underlying api client library. If I understand what you are doing correctly, perhaps build that client library in js to be used in react and a demo app that has reduced exchange funcationality for quickly swapping two tokens. it should look as simple as the interface for sending tokens to someone now.
If I guessed all that right, the company i work for may be willing to be an early adaptor. Let me know. We certainly aren't going to build yet-another-exchange, but i think empowering a transfer of btc/eth/eos/xrp -> myLittleUtilityToken within app would be very powerful.
While yes, that word is overused and misunderstood, and regular users still admittedly do put trust in open source code on a public network, it's a much more open system than we've been able to have before. The trust users depend on in this instance doesn't rely on faith in any single entity to tell you what's changed in their private DB behind the scenes, you can verify it for yourself.
Just like when you push your code to a git repo. It's guaranteed immutable, tamper proof. Data side is handled by appending to the blockchain as well. But this doesn't mean it's bug-free.
You have essentially a tamper proof Database with Stored Procedures that doesn't need DBAs. I imagine it as a giant growing BitTorrent file that is maintained (and rewarded) by many computers worldwide. Any tampering to this file, it's immediately detected via hashing (just like in BitTorrent).
The only way to break this is by branching out like you do in git. But in Blockchain, you will have to convince those computers to maintain your fork. And on this note, a Blockchain is technically not controlled by 1 entity, it is the choice of every individual blockchain maintainers (aka miners).
What you are saying is not a technical problem. But a problem in Human Society. Or even just an inherent due to it's novelty. This issue is present to almost anything that is not yet widely adapted.
With that said, giant evil mega corporations have grouped up to work on an 'enterprisy' version of Ethereum with a standard spec for interop. We're on a good track to get more 'thought leaders'.
I'm extremely curious what the business model here is.
Who is paying for this to be created, and what do they get out of it in the long run?
A dapp of any sufficient complexity will have bugs, some of which can probably be exercised to steal funds.