Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 258 posts

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#11

Post by kossTKR »

TD-Linux wrote: post #9

This coin uses Stellar, which is not a decentralized consensus like Bitcoin, but rather federated. It's not really surprising that it has performance advantages. Also not sure how I feel trusting the fate of a cryptocurrency to the strength of Intel's SGX.

"MobileCoin does not rely solely on SGX for maintaining transaction privacy. Transactions are designed to employ CryptoNote1 one-time addresses and onetime ring signatures, so MobileCoin will still maintain transaction privacy through unlinkable addresses if an attacker is able to defeat SGX and view transactions on the network."

https://www.mobilecoin.com/whitepaper-en.pdf

Other than that, i very much share your concern..

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#12

Post by TD-Linux »

kossTKR wrote: post #11
TD-Linux wrote: post #9

This coin uses Stellar, which is not a decentralized consensus like Bitcoin, but rather federated. It's not really surprising that it has performance advantages. Also not sure how I feel trusting the fate of a cryptocurrency to the strength of Intel's SGX.

"MobileCoin does not rely solely on SGX for maintaining transaction privacy. Transactions are designed to employ CryptoNote1 one-time addresses and onetime ring signatures, so MobileCoin will still maintain transaction privacy through unlinkable addresses if an attacker is able to defeat SGX and view transactions on the network." https://www.mobilecoin.com/whitepaper-en.pdf Other than that, i very much share your con…

It also says that the clients transmit private keys and PINs to the SGX nodes, which presumably allow spending of their coins. Maybe it's designed in a way that they lose their money, but maintain the privacy of their previous and other transactions going through the node.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#14

Post by berberous »

1) Both Kin and MobileCoin have moved to Stellar as their back end this week. I haven't paid Stellar much attention before. Anyone have any good links that explains Stellar and/or discusses the technical pros/cons? Trying to avoid any shill/pump or baseless FUD.

2) Am I correct that if any vulnerability were found in the SGX, an attacker would gain access to the encrypted private keys that are stored on a server node and would just need to brute force the PIN?

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#16

Post by [deleted] »

berberous wrote: post #14

1) Both Kin and MobileCoin have moved to Stellar as their back end this week. I haven't paid Stellar much attention before. Anyone have any good links that explains Stellar and/or discusses the technical pros/cons? Trying to avoid any shill/pump or baseless FUD. 2) Am I correct that if any vulnerability were found in the SGX, an attacker would gain access to the encrypted private keys that are stored on a server node…

[deleted]

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#17

Post by grandmczeb »

pilingual wrote: post #7

Here is a year old paper from Imperial College and Cornell where they implemented trustless transactions using Intel SGX. https://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/egs/papers/teechan.pdf

“SGX” and “trustless” aren’t two things that really go together.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#18

Post by superquest »

tuccinator wrote: post #15

I feel like the real appeal of Bitcoin is the decentralized aspect. I am not totally intrigued at the idea of having a controlled system, even if it offers complete privacy and faster transaction speed.

Something like this could make sense for "petty cash spending"

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#19

Post by mtgx »

kossTKR wrote: post #11
TD-Linux wrote: post #9

This coin uses Stellar, which is not a decentralized consensus like Bitcoin, but rather federated. It's not really surprising that it has performance advantages. Also not sure how I feel trusting the fate of a cryptocurrency to the strength of Intel's SGX.

"MobileCoin does not rely solely on SGX for maintaining transaction privacy. Transactions are designed to employ CryptoNote1 one-time addresses and onetime ring signatures, so MobileCoin will still maintain transaction privacy through unlinkable addresses if an attacker is able to defeat SGX and view transactions on the network." https://www.mobilecoin.com/whitepaper-en.pdf Other than that, i very much share your con…

Interesting. So it has the same privacy protections as Monero, the only cryptocurrency with a track record of being untraceable so far?

I wonder if the Stellar network is "leakier" than a decentralized network would be, though.

Post reply on HN