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Et Tu, Signal?

stephendiehl.com

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Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#281

Post by approxim8ion »

mixedCase wrote: post #269
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually working very bad in most practical situations. The way to go is Telegrams way, where you store all data on the server and happily sync ut easily between devices. Just do it on your own server using xmpp. E2ee helps mostly against server owner, and you eliminate this risk by being your own server owner.

You run your own datacenter?

XMPP is extremely light, you can use a moderately powered personal computer to handle traffic from several users. I don't have the numbers with me but last I'd heard, the number was in the hundreds.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#282

Post by piffey »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #151
ElectricMind wrote: post #134

I don't understand what all the all fuss about. How much money people have really that you need 100 payment apps to send money on top of existing banks? I just wise/transferwise for overseas transfer other than that my bank. You think I am poor minority and don't care about payment drama?

It’s not really about payments. The scam is to create a new altcoin, give most of the altcoin supply to the founders, then try to force as many people as possible to use the altcoin by deploying it as part of something popular like Signal. Now if anyone wants to use Signal’s money transfer feature, they have to buy MOB. The CEO of MobileCoin was in the threads yesterday pushing the website where they were selling MOB…

Can't you just shape that as any founder creating something though? Like oh, they own 50% of the company with their co-founder, then just grow it over 10 years to 100M ARR, then sell it to private equity to make a profit! Can you believe it?

If their implementation of a secure, fast, mobile cryptocurrency works and is accepted mainstream as a way to send money anonymously and securely then why shouldn't they make a dime off it? They'll have to sell their shares eventually. Everyone always does.

Don't get the hate here. I'll likely never use it, but they're trying something, and if it works let them get paid for it.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#283

Post by stjohnswarts »

derefr wrote: post #212
lottin wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockchains and privacy are antithetical. The whole purpose of a blockchain is to keep track of transactions so that everyone knows how many coins everyone else has in order to prevent double-spending. You can try to achieve anonymity through obscurity but this will never work in principle or in practice.

The process of reaching consensus on the current state doesn’t have to involve reaching consensus on the past state for all participants . A blockchain can be built such that all historical previous state + the txs required to get to those historical states are discarded after a quorum of nodes reach consensus on it, leaving only the current state. (This is basically what already happens if you do a “network version…

wouldn't mean there wouldn't be any rolling back by consensus since there is nothing to roll back in case of an issue? Wouldn't the software have to perfectly retain state in the present since it always deletes old transactions?

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#284

Post by dleslie »

josh2600 wrote: post #275

Good Morning, I am the CEO of MobileCoin. A few points: 1) I started MobileCoin to fund Signal. That’s it. I believe that a world with a well-funded signal is a better place. In order for signal to compete in the 21st century with messaging apps around the world they need a payment story. MobileCoin is the only thing ever built that is both privacy protecting and fast that meets the standards of data retention signal…

Why another altcoin and not simply ETH or BTC? You state privacy and performance: could you be more specific?

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#285

Post by efnx »

I actually didn’t mind the stellar/Keybase deal and thought it was a pretty cool value addition. I don’t know if this holds for signal but at least on Keybase you’re not _required_ to purchase coins. You only use them if you want.

Also - the free XLM Keybase distributed are now worth hundreds! It’s the only app that has ever paid me to use it. I have obvious complaints but I do like the app.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#286

Post by sarakayakomzin »

josh2600 wrote: post #275

Good Morning, I am the CEO of MobileCoin. A few points: 1) I started MobileCoin to fund Signal. That’s it. I believe that a world with a well-funded signal is a better place. In order for signal to compete in the 21st century with messaging apps around the world they need a payment story. MobileCoin is the only thing ever built that is both privacy protecting and fast that meets the standards of data retention signal…

>2) MobileCoin Inc. intends to maintain an extreme minority of the coins once the dust settles.

In other words, cha-ching! then what?

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#287

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

approxim8ion wrote: post #281
mixedCase wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You run your own datacenter?

XMPP is extremely light, you can use a moderately powered personal computer to handle traffic from several users. I don't have the numbers with me but last I'd heard, the number was in the hundreds.

ejabberd can host ~2k active connections on $2/month server.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#288

Post by derefr »

Igelau wrote: post #258
derefr wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be true of the particular decoy approach used with Monero, but I don’t think it’s true in general; e.g. with mixer/tumbler services. If every transaction that everyone does has some outputs to darknet markets (because they’re popular and high-volume), and some outputs to legitimate businesses (because they’re also popular and high-volume) then that really is reasonable doubt that any particular individual…

> If every transaction that everyone does has some outputs to darknet markets ... and some outputs to legitimate businesses ... then that really is reasonable doubt that any particular individual did anything bad. It says that no particular individual made a Bad Guy payment, but that all of them facilitated it by providing cover noise.

Are you facilitating a Bad Guy payment if you use a bank that the Bad Guy also uses?

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#289

Post by whywhywhywhy »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #158

Just make an in-app purchase button that allows me to buy a year of usage for myself as well as gift for others. I'd happily pay a couple of bucks per month for myself and my family.

Scooping the cream off every monetary transaction between some friends is a more appealing proposition than hoping some people will pay for your software.

Re: Et Tu, Signal?

#290

Post by bdcs »

simias wrote: post #20

I definitely agree with the article that it felt a bit like a betrayal. I've pushed some friends and family to use it over Telegram despite significant usability issue, and now I see that instead of implementing some IMO basic features like proper message sync and easy backup when you get a new phone, they prefer to implement a... micropayment system? Based on some niche altcoin which doesn't even exist on mainstream…

Mobilecoin (Foundation) is a technological, ethical, and legal tour de force. I recommend you read their FAQ, but, to me anyway, it is obvious why Signal/Moxie needed to create a new coin (tl;dr: It needed to be a private venmo-like experience). To prevent conflicts of interest, a new org was created. Hence Mobilecoin, not SignalCoin. A few highlights:

Technological: * First Oblivious RAM implementation, "fog", so that transacting parties cannot be revealed * Their Rust codebase is really nice * Instant transfers with little computing power (CO2 emissions)

Ethical: * Moxie and Josh Goldbard hold no MOB, along with the employees. The Mobilecoin foundation has some awesome partners, e.g. the Long Now Foundation. * Mining is not ethical, it pollutes the planet and is just bad. The only alternative is a "pre-mine" given to an independent org, ie Mobilecoin Foundation

Legal: * The US's laws are not clear on what is allowable with privacy coins, so Mobilecoin has played it conservatively by saying US residents can't own the coins.

In summary, the critiques of Mobilecoin (in any of its incarnations, foundation, moxie, etc.) are assuming the agents involved have a financial interest in MOB being expensive -- I contend that is not the case. Please show your evidence.

PS. I am assuming good faith and honesty in statements, eg "Marlinspike notes, however, that neither he nor Signal own any MobileCoins." https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-payments-messa...

PPS. Some direct responses:

>Let's assume that they integrated with Bitcoin or Litecoin or some "mainstream" CC, would it still be a good idea?

No, not private. Also slow. Also pollutes planet. Monero is close on the privacy front, but takes 3 minutes to send (very stressful). It's possible a coin with the proper attributes could be made on stellar, but that raises questions towards ownership of Lumens (and pumping them) and their stellar reimplementation in Rust is likely more secure.

>Niche coin

nit: MOB has a top 15 market cap with 250m coins in distribution. Though I would hesitate to compare to other cryptocurrencies which are almost entirely scammy, polluting garbage.

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