Stellar
stripe.com
stripe.com
> Development is led by Jed McCaleb and Dr. David Mazieres in collaboration with a small team of others. (The technology is based on the open-source Ripple project, originally created by Jed a few years ago.)
So, is Stellar fundamentally the same thing as and/or a fork of Ripple? They've hired the same guy who started Ripple (Jed McCaleb), and as I recall there were a lot of concerns around that, as noted in a WSJ article [0] and other places. Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members -- and so wields a considerable amount of influence.
If so, then doesn't it have all the same problems and concerns as Ripple? Centralized authority holding a large chunk of initial funds, questionable governance decisions, etc., just to name a few of the political problems, not just the technical ones.
I'd love to see the "IP layer for currency" described by Stripe succeed, but I'm not sure that this implementation of it represents a good idea. And I'm also concerned about whether Jed, the cofounder of both MtGox and Ripple, has the best interests of Stellar at heart.
[0] http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/22/ripple-alternative...
Correct. Like Ripple, Stellar requires special (and dangerous) trust in certain nodes. For example, gateways (https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-stellar/#gateways) have to be trusted by the Stellar network as they send messages like "a user deposited 100 USD via a bank wire transfer, so please accept this digital representation of 100 USD, trust me". This trust is dangerous as people running an (initially) honest gateway may start acting maliciously and lie about how much USD or EUR or other currency exist on the network. By the time the malice is detected, maybe the network could trace all USD or EUR that was issued by the gateway, and revoke it, suddenly pissing off a lot of users who owns this currency as it would disappear from their wallet. Users would then loose trust in Stellar, and the network would collapse...
Stripe would presumably be the first gateway trusted by the Stellar network. Okay, so what if Stripe decided they could not trust other gateways and wanted to remain the only gateway? Well Stripe would be the only way to inject USD or EUR or other currencies in the network, effectively making Stellar a fully centralized digital currency, with the entire Stellar network being dependent on Stripe not being hacked, not being abused by a malicious employee, not shutting down, etc.
This is the complete opposite design principle of Bitcoin which requires absolutely no trust in any specific authority.
This means there needs to emerge a good system for users to decide which gateways to trust, but a malicious gateway can only directly harm the users who have decided to trust it.
The beauty of this model is anyone can become a gateway at any time. See for example the gist linked at the end of the Stellar blog post: https://gist.github.com/thejollyrogers/b114b5a98fa11a5a4ad0 — becoming a gateway is just two API calls.
Anyone can be a gateway, so Stripe can't prevent others from succeeding. The only barrier to entry to becoming a successful gateway is earning the trust of the folks transacting on the network.
This is incorrect. A trustline between a user and a gateway is no different (https://ripple.com/wiki/Ripple_for_Gateways#Gateway.E2.80.99...), special or any more dangerous than a trustline between any two users on the network.
I can extend a trustline of $20 to my buddy Jim or I can extend a trustline to a gateway for $20. It makes no difference to the network.
For example, gateways (https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-stellar/#gateways) have to be trusted by the Stellar network as they send messages like "a user deposited 100 USD via a bank wire transfer, so please accept this digital representation of 100 USD, trust me".
Also incorrect. The only trust required is for the user to trust a gateway to hold a balance on their behalf. The consensus process--you might want to read about it at https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus ensures that the all nodes agree to this change in the status of the ledger.
This trust is dangerous as people running an (initially) honest gateway may start acting maliciously and lie about how much USD or EUR or other currency exist on the network.
Wrong again. Both Ripple and Stellar's consensus process require that all of the nodes agree on the state of the ledger before any new transactions can be added to it. Bogus transactions or changes to the ledger are easily detected.
From Ripple's wiki (https://ripple.com/wiki/Consensus#Liars):
If someone should be dishonest, the honest actors will notice them lying and can disregard their future attestations. That is, if you lie once, you have no gain as the network doesn't care and they won't care what you say in the future.
The ripple protocol requires validators to sign the consensus ledger after each validation interval. If a validator fails to do this, it will be easily detectable. Similarly, if a validator signs a ledger and then signs a ledger after that which cannot be reached by a combination of valid transactions, this will also be easily detectable.
And then you say…
By the time the malice is detected, maybe the network could trace all USD or EUR that was issued by the gateway, and revoke it, suddenly pissing off a lot of users who owns this currency as it would disappear from their wallet. Users would then loose trust in Stellar, and the network would collapse...
Nope; see above why this can't happen.
Stripe would presumably be the first gateway trusted by the Stellar network. Okay, so what if Stripe decided they could not trust other gateways and wanted to remain the only gateway?
The model isn't based on trusting any particular gateway; it's based on trusting multiple gateways to not collude against you.
Example: you may not trust a gateway run by the Democratic National Committee or one run by the Republican National Committee, but you can be pretty confident they aren't going to collude against you. And because they'd both are on your Unique Node List, if they agree with the other nodes you talk to, you can be confident the ledger reflects the true state of the network.
Well Stripe would be the only way to inject USD or EUR or other currencies in the network, effectively making Stellar a fully centralized digital currency, with the entire Stellar network being dependent on Stripe not being hacked, not being abused by a malicious employee, not shutting down, etc.
Wrong. Again.
Anyone on Ripple (or Stellar) can be a gateway or market maker and provide liquidity on the network. There's nothing special about Stripe, except that they have more money and reputation than most of us do.
It does mean that lots of people will trust Stripe to hold USD balances on their behalf.
If you're totally paranoid, with Ripple or Stellar, you can decide to only transact fiat currencies with people you know and trust and act as gateways for each other (https://ripple.com/wiki/Ripple_for_Gateways). The beauty is you can transact with people outside of your circle if one of your friends has extends trust to someone you don't know. You don't have to trust them, but as long you trust someone in common, you can transact with fiat.
This is the complete opposite design principle of Bitcoin which requires absolutely no trust in any specific authority.
Because the bitcoin protocol doesn't take into account the concept of gateways between the blockchain and fiat currencies, bitcoin users are left with relying on exchanges like Mt. Gox to address this. How did that work out?
Stellar is a nonprofit organization and will have public financials and governance documents. It will also hold just 5% of the stellars -- 95% is being given away as quickly as possible. The board is composed of Jed, Keith Rabois, and me. A number of other advisors (http://stellar.org/about) are ensuring that everything is run well and fairly.
I'm not sure that this actually answers my questions, though. You seem to have more or less restated what I said without specifically addressing anything.
For instance, I said, "Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members -- and so wields a considerable amount of influence." Then you said that "the board is composed of Jed, Keith Rabois, and me".
I'm not sure how that allays any concerns that Jed, who was specifically criticized in a number of Ripple-related efforts, is now on a similar organization. All it does is restate what I earlier said -- that Jed is on a small board, and apparently has an equal vote, and apparently wields a lot of influence.
In any case, I'm more interested in hearing about how Stellar is or isn't like Ripple. Is it essentially the same technology with a different governance structure on top of it? If not, in what way(s) is it different?
- Stellar is a nonprofit. No one owns it. The board and advisors represent a diverse group of people in tech, finance, nonprofit and academia to encourage cross-pollination of ideas. The board is also required to expand to 5 members by year-end.
- Almost all the stellars will be given away for free (95%) because the goal is to educate and provide access to digital currency/financial services. This is really good for cryptocurrency as a whole because it provides access to a huge segment of the world that would not have access to digital currency otherwise.
This should all help the effort be open and transparent.
And we are talking about a full fledged monetary system here with legal repercussions in terms of international law. With Bitcoin, no one was technically "responsible" for what folks did with Bitcoin. Will the Stellar organization be responsible for oversight and arbitration for any legal or financial fraud? And will the board BE held accountable or responsible for any systemic issues rising from speculation or any other activity?
The original Ripple was a much more loose unfinished idea for a much more reliable solid decentralized means-of-trade. It wasn't even a currency, only a protocol, a scheme, a nice good thing[2]. Then this bad Ripple came and got the name from him and he accepted their proposal, maybe because he thought his project was dead, but in the minds of the people who thought about it it will never die!
For anyone who's interested in the earlier stuff:
It's funny to me that even though I doubt Stellar will be more than a flash in the pan (due to the reasons you mention and what they imply) I'm still willing to give up privacy for the shot that 5000 STR might buy me a sandwich one day.
This is what makes me uncomfortable. The biggest point about cryptocurrencies is that they are not centralized. In that sense Stellar seems a lot worse than regular currency. With a regular currency, at least the respective Central Bank or other monetary regulatory authority has credibility and accountability in the sense that they are indirectly elected by citizens as they are selected by the elected government. As such they have to have a history of integrity and monetary experience, and can be removed if they act unethically.
Stellar's board, on the other hand, is self-elected, and with all due respect, don't need to have the level of accountability or have the credibility of running such an organization, which even if it owns "just 5%" (+2% of Stripe's) of the currency can potentially have substantial control over it. And being a non-profit doesn't add a stamp of either, means little.
To clarify, of the total 5% reserved for operations, ownership is currently:
- 2% to Stripe (the majority of which we're going to auction off to other companies, with net profits being returned to the foundation) - 2.5% to employees (https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensat...), vesting over four years
As needed, the organization will also hold open auctions to raise funds from its remaining pool of stellars (https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_...), which will conveniently distribute the stellars further.
Note also there's a five-year lockup for the founders: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution.
Are there actions you're worried that the organization might be able to take given this?
As a good example what you mentioned: "As needed, the organization will also hold open auctions to raise funds from its remaining pool of stellars".
This is a huge thing! Who decides when "as needed" is? If it's the board, what's the basis of their authority? Just being a non=profit doesn't stop one or more of the board members to act in self-interest.
It's not fully distributed. All the decision-making nodes are controlled by Stellar. Just because there is stake-based voting involved does not mean the underlying system is distributed.
Cynical, maybe, but as a good utilitarian I'll take results over ideals any day.
He is also the one who dumped 9 billion XRP after that argument.
"Keep this code SAFE. Anyone with this code and your username can gain access to your account"
Where I'm from, that is a password.
I say un-encrypted based on their claim that the code + username can be used to gain access; typically sites will encrypt the recovery code with your password. Based on this, I conjecture that they decided in favor of usability in the usability-security tradeoff.
[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawi...
University accounts might be another way. Some people who don't like centralized services like Facebook and Google will still have a university email address.
I just find it strange that a supposedly forward-thinking new platform would require technology most people I know abandoned last decade. You don't appeal to early-adopters by requiring they use dead-tech.
erm, lol ?
You don't need to get the 5000 stellar.
Figure 1 is particularly helpful.
I had the opportunity to meet David Mazières at SOSP 2005 in Brighton. Clearly a sharp fellow, and the funkiest dresser at the conference.
That's in Chrome. In Safari, I don't even get a response to clicking on a settings toggle. Merely loading the dashboard gives me a CORS error.
Edit: Spoke too soon. My wife can't sign up. Button just says "Sending" indefinitely.
Edit 2: She just got an email confirmation code, despite the signup eventually failing outright. But she can't log in, says the username is invalid. So what is the confirmation code associated with?
Edit 3: It finally worked. Yay!
I don't have a facebook account so that's an automatic rejection for me :-/
I'll revisit this once they add some other alternatives.
For example I could offer an ebook coughshameless plugcough:
https://leanpub.com/ideas_are_a_dime_a_dozen
And then have people send me Stellars to user id '007' rather than pay through the website.
The book is free to download but you get the idea.
I also don't have a Facebook account but providing something of value is my strategy.
No, the whole point of connecting with facebook is to focus on the UX of making electronic payments. Who's going to remember their coffee date's wallet is 1BeX1pVAjD94hNs6C5d2dB3TRnLx53dXg3? QR codes are cute, but haven't quite hit the mainstream. It's a lot easier to say "Ben Bitdiddle" and have Ben's facebook picture pop up.
The network effects of scanning your entire social graph (and the data contained within) doesn't hurt either. Works fantastically for Venmo.
EDIT: now unable to log in with my username and password combination.
Mandatory connect to Facebook? No, thanks.
Also, anyone can create an account/wallet without even registering your email. FB auth is only for the giveaway.
Anyways, I just did the "Set up password recovery", and instead of getting 1.000 stellars it forces me again into FB.
People complain about the distribution of Bitcoin being imbalanced. This is 100x worse.
Also, mining obviously has many benefits, but it's still limited to people who are highly technical and/or who have money to spend. We wanted to provide much broader access to digital currency, and so stellars will be given away for free at the click of a button.
To encourage transparency, anyone can see how many stellars have been given away here: https://www.stellar.org/stats/
I created a Stellar account but am in the minority of people who don't have a Facebook account and was a little disappointed.
http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg
Oh but it has integration with Facebook, so I guess that changes everything! /s
There is also nothing fundamental about the idea of issuing coins as a reward for mining. It's just one possibility among many, there's nothing intrinsically "fair" about it.
Then he launches Stellar, the XRP clone. Didn't even bother to change the total token amount (both XRP and Stellar have a cap of 100 billion tokens).
To that end: how do we disclose a security vulnerability? Is there a PGP key posted, or some other system for us to do that?
The stellar.org post set off HN's voting ring detector.
Edit: I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed the parent meant that HN itself was boosting certain URLs, as opposed to, say, name-recognition by users. The latter kind of thing is no doubt a factor.
EDIT: Looks like more folks are reporting the same issue.
(which would be silly, so there must be another reason! :-)
> To prevent spam, each transaction burns 10 microstellars (that is, 0.00001 stellars).
They must have been transferring +1 Stellar to cover the transaction fee. An 5k balance looks better than 4999.
Maybe the values are stored as a float? But that would be silly, so there must be a better reason.How unfortunate. And strange seeing as the account is many years old.
IIRC Ripple's founders (including Jed) kept about 20% of XRP, and Ripple Labs kept about 25%, so only 5% is a lot better, but it's still a very centralized solution to distribution.
I do like that they're distributing 20% of the Stellars to BTC (and XRP) holders, though: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program
The Foundation is also being transparent about where the remaining stellars are going, namely: 2.5% to existing employees (https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensat...), and over time it'll distribute more stellars in order to raise funds (https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_...).
But, yes, solving the distribution question is a hard problem :-).
Hope we can integrate with Stellar as soon as possible.
Oops! Our spam detection checks say your Facebook account isn't eligible. If you are a legitimate user, we apologize and are improving our detection algorithms. And we will release new ways to grab stellars soon, so please check back.
Is there any way to prove that my account is legitimate? Maybe my Github account, where I manage a somewhat popular open-source project, Min (http://minfwk.com) My username both on Github, HN and Stellar is owenversteeg. This seems like an interesting idea, and I'd like to play around with it.
Edit: Because this is generating some discussion, I'll clarify that it is not actually my main account which is why I have no friends or photos, but I don't like giving third parties access to my private main account information. The spam detection seems to have worked well on me, I was just pointing out that account age is not the only filter.
Will the date for snapshotting the Bitcoin blockchain be publicized in advance ?
I think there will need to be a strong client wallet, rather than just the web client, but that's obvious, and the web client was an easy place to start.
I'd really like to see how one would integrate chaumian blinded tokens into this. I may be an outlier in thinking unlinkability and anonymity are critical for "real currencies" over time, but I think recent events have shown this to be correct.
I liked Ripple 1.0; Ripple-of-today not as much, so since this seems to be basically Ripple 1.0 plus some lessons learned, it should be interesting.
SSL_accept error from mail-182-5.mailgun.info[23.253.182.5]: 0 warning: TLS library problem: XXX:error:XXX:SSL routines:SSL3_READ_BYTES:sslv3 alert bad certificate:s3_pkt.c:1258:SSL alert number 42:
At least they retry without SSL aftwards, and manage to deliver the emails.
If you drop us an email at support [at] mailgun.com with your domain I can take a look at the specific issue we are having delivering over TLS to your domain.
5% as a consumer spread on international transfers is ridiculous, and seemingly only avoided using some sort of forex exchange with high minimums and excessive red tape.
Bitcoin exchanges do not offer reliable or timely deposit/withdrawal in most local currencies to consider it an alternative.
The trust points are no worse than existing banks / currency exchange / forex models that allow this type of transfer to take place. If we are lucky, we can improve and decentralize those choke points further.
Yes, those who control the choke points have the potential to make stupid amounts of money based solely on traffic, much like existing banking models and many startups.
Worth reading is the recent blogpost that I'm sure most regulars have seen https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective.
Edit: They are calling the $3M a loan, so not sure if that is the full payment in stellars or not.
tommy at knoxpayments dot com
So does this mean that if one account has 5% of the vote and all remaining accounts have under 1.5%, that account will receive all of the inflation-creates Stellars?
I wonder if it'll be possible to vote for an account that promises to immediately distribute new Stellar back to its voters. If so, newly-created Stellar may always end up being distributed in proportion to the Stellar wealth distribution.
http://jpkoning.blogspot.de/2013/02/ripple-or-bills-of-excha...
[1] http://kottke.org [2] http://stellar.io
Oh wait, you're just using this as an opportunity to plug your own work... Move along then.
Can someone help me with what stellar is, and why it is better than, or a complement to, bitcoin or the traditional system?
The other big difference is that consistency is not maintained by mining but with consensus between trusted servers. This makes theoretically scale to larger volumes and better latency while not being fully distributed.
The Bitcoin cryptocurrency people hate it because it uses fiat currencies and is more centralized. Most people will probably prefer Stellar since it can interface with existing bank accounts and monetary systems. It can be complement to Bitcoin as it can act as a distributed exchange.
Also, I linked my Facebook and didn't get any indication of whether it worked or not. Now when I log in I have 0 stellars and the welcome panel doesn't show up. did this happen to anyone else?
Question.. how is the password used to decrypt the secret key? Which encryption algorithm is used? Can anyone technically explain?
We use scrypt to derive a key from your username and password. The key is used to encrypt your secret data with 256bit AES in GCM mode.
You can check out the implementation here: https://github.com/stellar/stellar-client/blob/master/app/sc...
Stellar doesn't actually transfer funds (like Bitcoin), it only transfers IOUs, the settlement (actual value transfer) occurs outside the Stellar network.
Stellar and Bitcoin achieve two different goals.
http://newfuturefoundation.org
They are currently paying a lot of fees to the bank fund nonprofit projects in Africa.
This would really be perfect for them.
Which is fine in one way - feel free to take your time handing me my free stuff. On the other hand, it doesn't give me much faith they can scale to the mass market...
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
How does that work for someone who has bitcoins in an e-wallet, like Coinbase ?
Seems to me that stella will only work and achieve broad adoption if the network has solid gateways operated by entities people already know and trust. Who do most people trust with their money? Existing banks and other well known exchange/trading platforms (xe.com / etrade / western union). If you want these institutions to start operating stella gateways, surely it would be a good idea to have an advisor to the board that's from that world, well connected and understands it intimately?
Concrete example:
I use XE.com trade for making international wires to people (most of the time it's GBP to EUR wires). Using XE is easier and cheaper than using my bank for this but the process is still painful. After locking in an exchange rate for the trade, I then have to wire my funds in GBP to XE.com's GBP bank account (with a reference number for the trade) and they then wire the equivalent EUR amount to the recipient's EUR bank account. I have to provide loads of bank details for the recipient (branch address, IBAN, SWIFT, intermediary bank etc.) and it usually takes 48 hours before the money arrives in their account (sometimes longer if they have a weird bank). It's also often difficult to work out what fees intermediary banks will extract en-route.
I'd love it if XE.com had stellar GBP and EUR gateways. I could then dump some funds in their GBP gateway, give them the stellar username I want to send the equivalent EUR amount to and hit send. Instant and easy.
Or maybe I've completely misunderstood the purpose of gateways and how they work?
Based on the Stripe investment of 3 million for 3,002,289,306.81 Stellars (3% of 100,076,310,227) I am calculating 1 STR = $0.000999237 right now ... is that correct?
Never got the plaintext recovery code.
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and tell your username to verify! :)
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"One key difference is that 95% of the currency is being given away for free at the outset, the bulk of it from an initial issuance of 100 billion coins created by the not-for-profit foundation that will run the project. New coins will be later added at no cost to the circulation at a rate of 1% per year."
http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/07/31/mt-gox-ripple-foun...
Stellar has a central authority that can mint new stellars. That is not decentralized. Bold-faced lie.
Username: JoshTriplett
EDIT: got 1000 from 'miha'
username: fela