Show HN: Stellar-backed Twitter upvote bot | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Stellar-backed Twitter upvote bot

gdb.svbtle.com

50 pointsgdb14 comments

Why not use coloured coins (Bitcoin) or something like that instead of the Ripple/Stellar scam?

Because pre-mined != scam. Only Bitcoin adopters that are only used to common-style cryptocoin launches think it is. And for just a bitcoin-clone, it is a scam. Ripple/Stellar's currency is not the point of the protocol at all, just a side effect.

And only scammers say that pre-mined != scam. Else explain why you tried so hard to remove all the Ripple references from Stellar's code, and market it as a completely new system (after selling all your ripples of course and crashing its price).

Because they don't want to be associated with ripple. It looks like the point of stellar is to restart ripple but with a not for profit organization and a fair + open distribution scheme.

They are also focusing heavily on getting non technical users. (As evidenced by using facebook as a free funds distribution method.)

A non-profit organization that is accepting money and sending it straight to its founders' pockets.

And of course those founders are always here on HN ready to downvote any criticism.

Link evidence with your accusations. I don't know if it is true or not.

Ripple/Stellar isn't a scam becaues of the pre-mine. It's a scam because it isn't the decentralized system it claims to be.

Can you explain?

Suppose I set up a coin called "FunCoin" and issue 1 million FunCoins. I store the FunCoin ledger in a MySQL database, and provide an API for transfering FunCoins using private key cryptography. I am the only one in control of the FunCoins ledger. This system is completely centralized, and so is fragile. The FBI/NSA/etc. could shut me down easily, or I cloud disappear tomorrow with the entire database.

The Stellar/Ripple approach to this problem is to replace the single person with multiple people who vote on the ledger. The hope is that while a single person can be easily corrupted, it is much more difficult to corrupt multiple people.

At present, if you pull the code from github.com/stellar/stellard, it will by default install the following "validators". "validators" correspond to pub/priv keys, and under the default config, if 3 of 5 of them "approve" a ledger, then the client considers that ledger valid:

    # The latest validators can be obtained from
    # https://gostellar.org/stellar.txt
    #
    [validators]
    nakuKsirzNq66iejBfxKxt8Rw4t7kP5ZWSrvWzVKEVSHSkJKYd1 SDF1
    n3gVwaSDBtVi4Xd2XBh7rvcwis4uBabu5aNn7WKtEqazJbLHR9n SDF2
    nfozTPzMytTKuuHBJrPB9DVxPccKeNVh8vsEomUAwNWuWrNxwDB SDF3
    naSBAykwFkmw6JLKqPG7HPFMK1GZqu1rdnwbhtTxyTmVX1b6b8z SDF4
    nf3yCmpieMFvAbv5r5jBhGeXheuhc3boAkdmBbpXb6HC7HDkf13 SDF5

    # Ditto.
    [validation_quorum]
    3

I'm not sure what "SDF1", "SDF2", etc. are, but I'm guessing they stand for stellar foundation 1, 2, etc.

Correct. To summarize, the stellar foundation basically runs the accounting ledger and has absolute control over what transaction are and are not processed.

Of course the standard Ripple/Stellar response is to say "but you can run your own node and get people to use yours instead!" Which is of course true, except that the consensus mechanism diverges when the network contains nodes with disjoint validator lists and there are hostile actors present.

So for the system to work at all, all nodes much share a common subset of validator nodes in their lists, which in practice ends up being the default set, which are given de facto control the transaction selection.

Which is to say, Ripple/Stellar is not significantly better than the PayPal model.

If "stellars" are not free, then pre-mining is a scam.

They are being given out freely.

How can you say that with a straight face? That's like saying Bitcoin was being given out freely just because there have been a few faucets running for some time. You are a scammer by any standard.

I have nothing to do with stellar.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com