MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike • Hacker News Board

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#61

Post by zulucrypto » Sat, Dec 16, 2017, 12:11 AM UTC

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…

I've done some work with Stellar and the implementation in the whitepaper sounds very different than how Stellar currently works.

For example, users control their own private keys and they're never exposed to a node, so I'm not sure why the whitepaper mentions storing private keys in the SGX. Perhaps they're going to host wallets for a user and store all keys in the SGX?

I'll be very interested in more details about this project since it doesn't appear to use the Stellar network, only the consensus protocol.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#62

Post by CryptoPunk » Sat, Dec 16, 2017, 12:13 AM UTC

Stellar is run by a set of trusted third parties, which makes it permissioned. If it gains any sort of traction, it will undoubtedly come under the control of any number of governments, thus negating the "peer-to-peer" part of cryptocurrency, and making usage conditioned on approval from some set of intermediaries.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#63

Post by lumberjack » Sat, Dec 16, 2017, 12:15 AM UTC

espadrine wrote: post #47

Using Stellar’s Federated Byzantine Agreement as a basis for consensus is a solid foundation. David Mazières’ paper[0] displays strong insights and proofs into the structure of byzantine systems with open membership. [0]: https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pd... I wonder where the code for MobileCoin is, or when it will get open-sourced. All GitHub yields currently is this clearly non-affiliate…

I'm not sure I understand correctly, but from what I got, Stellar is a distributed ledger, but not a currency. There are no coins as such. But the upside is that the consensus is reached without a taxing algorithm.

Everyone can run a node, but the whole system is not itself decentralised, because you need "anchors", which are banks or payment processors, to get your money in and out of the system.

So then, what is the point of the decentralised ledger? GNU Taler seems like a more simple solution.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#64

Post by superquest » Sat, Dec 16, 2017, 12:16 AM UTC

highd wrote: post #59

superquest wrote: post #4

> "Nobody actually transacts in cryptocurrency," Goldbard says. "So making something that people can actually use is our first goal. And then we want to find additional ways that people can implement it over time. But initially all we want is to make it so people can actually complete transactions." Amen. Too few projects have this focus.

This is secondary to there being no benefit to the average user for transacting in crypto vs Visa. What incentive is there for an end user to use even a hypothetically optimal crypto system? Then is that incentive sufficient to overcome network effects? The appropriate and interesting applications of crypto seem to be totally leaving p2p cash behind - it just doesn't seem like a good fit.

The hypothetically optimal crypto system would be cheaper for merchants, correct? So it would have wider adoption than Visa, at the very least.

I do agree that crypto keeps drifting away from p2p cash ... that's a good observation. But I hope people keep shooting at that target.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#65

Post by CryptoPunk » Sat, Dec 16, 2017, 12:16 AM UTC

bkolobara wrote: post #52

Great to see more cryptocurrency adopting Stellar's Consensus Protocol. Decentralisation and scalability without the environmental impact of proof of work.

Stellar is not decentralized. It is federated, meaning a number of trusted third parties act as the intermediary, and eventually, will become the gatekeepers as governments deputize them to enforce their respective laws (e.g. capital controls in China).

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#66

Post by lumberjack » Sat, Dec 16, 2017, 12:19 AM UTC

superquest wrote: post #51

wmf wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can't get rich building it and you can't get rich hodling it and the press won't create much buzz.

Why can't you get rich building it? I doubt one would get rich as Bitcoin creators, but one could still make a killing .... Edit: And this stands to reason. We're relatively later in the game, and so new contributions are less fundamental by definition.

> Why can't you get rich building it?

Because it defeats the point. There is no "coin" that will exponentially appreciate in value, making you a billionaire. There is also no centralisation, so you cannot be the owner of the payment system in the same way that Paypal or Visa are.

At best you can be the Linus Torvalds of your payment system non-profit. Which would be a good gig in itself. But that comes with lots of hard work, not the easy riches that you can do from some hype-pump-dump scam in less than 6 months.

Re: MobileCoin: A New Cryptocurrency from Moxie Marlinspike

#67

Post by bkolobara » Sat, Dec 16, 2017, 12:20 AM UTC

icelancer wrote: post #55

bkolobara wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are complaining about receiving free money, but not caring about it until the price went up recently. How is this even remotely Stellar's issue?

>>You are complaining about receiving free money Aside from the fact that this is a terrible line of argumentation ("Person A gave you $100 and then Person B later stole it out of your house, what's your problem with that?"), that is not the point of my comment at all. I suggest you read a bit more specifically in regards to service, transactional security, and the fact that the coin is federated and not decentralize…

You didn't even realise for a long time that you lost access to it. It's like me remembering that I had some BTC, but can't access them anymore and blaming Bitcoin developers for not getting rich.

Stellar not being decentralised, even 90% of nodes are not run by the SDF, makes it somehow unsecure? If you have some specific complaint about the security point it out, instead you are just ranting on an anecdote.