How much did MobileCoin pay for inclusion in Signal?
https://www.wired.com/story/mobilecoin-cryptocurrency/ It is Moxie's, the creator of Signal, pet crypto project.
Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
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Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#52Congratulations on the announcement. >> Those outputs contain the entire original supply of MobileCoin (250 million MOB) [1] Is the entire supply of 250M MOB available for sale on FTX, or is only a restricted number of MOB tokens available for sale to UK residents? Is it fair to assume that the MobileCoin Foundation has no plans for an airdrop (unlike Stellar)? [1] "Mechanics of MobileCoin", v0.0.39, pg. 133
A majority of the supply of MobileCoins is available for purchase at https://www.buymobilecoin.com. We have many plans for how to help users get coins but none that we are prepared to disclose today beyond the aforementioned website.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Signal is competing against some big players in the messaging space, at least some of which have money transfers. As long as they abide by their principles and none of these features impact privacy, I don't see how it wouldn't be viewed as a win. A case could be made for it being bloat, but most consumers don't care, and for Signal (or any messaging app) to be successful, it needs to appeal to the common denominator.…
Signal needs to be reliable, safe and have a low barrier of entry to achieve its goals of allowing widespread private communication. I thought that when I recommended that my peer group use it (at this point, all of my normal contacts use it extensively), I could trust that it would remain clearly focused on its mission- now I'll need to recommend it with a caveat to just click through the scam marketing, ICO offers…
You’re being really cynical in a way that doesn’t reflect the reality of the situation. This doesn’t entail scam marketing, ICO offers, and airdrops just because that’s something that happens in a lot of the rest of cryptocurrency space.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
We use a modified version of the Stellar Consensus Protocol that we reimplemented from scratch using Rust. https://github.com/UkoeHB/Mechanics-of-MobileCoin/blob/maste... << Page 81 is where you want to go.
How does Stellar Consensus prevent double-spends? Imagine I have a private key to an address with 10 coins. Imagine I spend the same amount of money (10 coins) on Mars and Earth at the same time. There is a 10-lightminute gap between Mars and Earth. Assume Mars and Earth have a similar number of Stellar nodes. What happens in Stellar Consensus?
Stellar actually does nothing to prevent double-spends as it is the consensus layer and not the ledger. The ledger prevents double spends in mobilecoin by using a proof called a "key image" which is part of CryptoNote (https://bytecoin.org/old/whitepaper.pdf). Essentially, a ring signature is produced by the user which says "one of these N transactions belong to me" and the key image proves that one of the members of the set is a valid transaction without revealing which transaction was valid (and preventing future reuse of the valid input).
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#55For those wondering about volatility...
> MobileCoin also remains even more volatile than older cryptocurrencies, with constant price swings that will significantly change the balances in a user's Signal wallet over the course of days or even hours—hardly the sort of issue that Venmo users have to deal with. (Since March 27, MobileCoin's value has shot up nearly 600 percent, possibly due to rumors of the impending Signal integration or possibly the result of a "short-squeeze.")
> To try to tame that volatility problem, Marlinspike and Goldbard say they imagine adding a feature in the future that will automatically exchange users' payments in dollars or another more stable currency for MobileCoin only when they make a payment, and then exchange it back on the recipient's side—though it's not yet clear if those trades could be made without leaving a trail that might identify the user. "There's a world where maybe when you receive money, it can optionally just automatically settle into a pegged thing," Marlinspike says. "And then when you send money it converts back out."
https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-payments-messa...
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#56I’d be super excited if this was about Monero :/
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
MobileCoin has not yet paid Signal anything for integrating MobileCoin. We intend to donate a great deal of money to Signal over the coming years. We believe in Signal's mission and we think that the world is a better place with Signal in it.
Moxie Marlinspike is listed as an advisor for MobileCoin, was this not a paid position?
Moxie != Signal.
Moxie, as an individual, is a paid technical advisor to MobileCoin but the reality is that we could never pay Moxie what his time is worth. I am thankful that he has chosen to help make this project a reality.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#58Is your backend open source, or not? Haven’t seen the git updated in a while.
Effectively not anymore. Here is a very recent german article about it: https://www.golem.de/news/crypto-messenger-signal-server-nic... No updates in the repo for over a year and no answers from the team. The whole crypto currency thing is also a red flag for me. Matrix seems to be the better option by now...
Just what are they trying to do? They are a non-profit which would make a money grab somewhat impractical. Are they worried they are going to get successfully forked or something?
Their unquestioned faith in Intel SGX is somewhat pathetic to be fair.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moxie Marlinspike is listed as an advisor for MobileCoin, was this not a paid position?
Moxie != Signal. Moxie, as an individual, is a paid technical advisor to MobileCoin but the reality is that we could never pay Moxie what his time is worth. I am thankful that he has chosen to help make this project a reality.
The revelations from the Platformer article [1] about how Signal works inside make it pretty clear that Moxie ~= Signal.
Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency
#60MobileCoin looks fantastic! Seems to solve the major pain points of Bitcoin: fast transactions, low transaction fees, private and no massive environmental impact with mining. Any ETA on when this will come to the USA?
Looks like it depends on SGX, so basically delegates trust to Intel. Bitcoin doesn't depend on trusting anyone.