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Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

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Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#41

Post by icelancer »

I won't repost my entire comment here, but I noted in 2017 on Hacker News some pretty shady stuff going on with Stellar/XLM and their customer support team / developers.

You can read the entire account here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15935583#15936174

It starts with this:

---

I was given 6000 XLM and I left it in their official wallet for years. On May 12th, 2017 I wrote them an email asking why my wallet, now converted to some newer official wallet, was empty. I did not receive a reply for 2 months, at which point I followed up and received a reply within a day, which was:

"I have investigated your account and it looks like an account merge operation occurred some time ago merging your lumens with another account. If you did not commit this action, it could be possible that someone was able to obtain your account information.

You can see the merge operation here: https://horizon.stellar.org/accounts/GD2CPSK2E3TUNC2N5NGGQJQ....

Unfortunately there is nothing we can do to retrieve your lumens at this point.

Apologies we cannot be of further help."

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#42

Post by mirimir »

gumby wrote: post #29
feanaro wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I associate crypto with shonk, which puts keybase.io in the "this is a crypto thing? Hmmm.... shonky." category. This is unnecessary bias, though. If you look past the drama, cryptocurrency is a powerful and useful invention.

> cryptocurrency is a powerful and useful invention. Can you explain? Intellectually interesting? No question. But powerful or useful (I consider them synonyms)? I'd like to see some actual examples. This is genuine curiosity, not snark. I'm on the board of a blockchain startup who has a legitimate application for a blockchain -- an aspirin. But this application could have been done 20 years ago if there hadn't been…

Basically, it's Internet money. So like the Internet, it's very difficult for governments to fsck with. They can try, of course, but there will always be levels of overlay networks that they can't touch. This is one aspect of the cypherpunk vision.

Being ~anonymous online, cryptocurrencies are my only option for buying and selling stuff online. Leasing VPN services, servers, VPS, etc. Getting paid for writing and other consulting work.

The speculation aspect is just meme-driven bullshit. What we need is cryptocurrencies with stable values, for online commerce. I'm not sure what you mean by "aspirin" vs "vitamins". But for me, getting out from under the thumb of government is extremely interesting.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#43

Post by drexlspivey »

seibelj wrote: post #39
drexlspivey wrote: post #37

Stellar is a pretty cool platform. Here are some features: Any node can issue tokens pretty easily. Tokens are basically IOUs and come with counterparty risk. For example you want to issue tokens for carbon emission trading, you can do that with a few lines of code but people have to trust you to redeem them for whatever they are worth at the end. The only asset that comes without counterparty risk is the native asse…

My biggest problem with Stellar (and Ripple, which it was forked from) is that it's a centralized blockchain. Transactions are public, but you cannot become a block-producing node (validator). This allows censorship if they do not like the person proposing transactions, or the transaction itself, and could rollback if they wanted. I'm a much bigger fan of Cosmos and (future) PoS Ethereum, which is permissionless to b…

This is true for Ripple but not for stellar. In stellar you become part of consensus when any node adds you to their quorum slice. For example IBM runs a node, if they do business with your company they want to add you to their quorum and you are part of consensus.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#44

Post by thanatos_dem »

icelancer wrote: post #41

I won't repost my entire comment here, but I noted in 2017 on Hacker News some pretty shady stuff going on with Stellar/XLM and their customer support team / developers. You can read the entire account here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15935583#15936174 It starts with this: --- I was given 6000 XLM and I left it in their official wallet for years. On May 12th, 2017 I wrote them an email asking why my wallet,…

Yup... I was part of one of the first XLM grants. I saved my credentials and stopped paying attention until recently when I tried to go to my account. There was some sort of wallet migration needed due to a security issue, and it needed to be done years ago, so it’s all just gone now.

Stellar, like the rest of the cryptocurrencies, can go die in a fire as far as I’m concerned.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#45

Post by chrischen »

mirimir wrote: post #42
gumby wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cryptocurrency is a powerful and useful invention. Can you explain? Intellectually interesting? No question. But powerful or useful (I consider them synonyms)? I'd like to see some actual examples. This is genuine curiosity, not snark. I'm on the board of a blockchain startup who has a legitimate application for a blockchain -- an aspirin. But this application could have been done 20 years ago if there hadn't been…

Basically, it's Internet money. So like the Internet, it's very difficult for governments to fsck with. They can try, of course, but there will always be levels of overlay networks that they can't touch. This is one aspect of the cypherpunk vision. Being ~anonymous online, cryptocurrencies are my only option for buying and selling stuff online. Leasing VPN services, servers, VPS, etc. Getting paid for writing and oth…

I’d rather call it internet “cash” rather than just internet money. We can use money online (credit card, paypal), but there’s so much consumer protection stuff that goes along with it that makes it hard to use like paper cash—irreversible, untraceable.m, unsanctioned usage.

Perfect for things governments hate: illegal stuff like extortion and drugs.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#48

Post by fmajid »

andrewstuart wrote: post #12

I'm not convinced that association with cryptocurrency does much to give the appearance of credibility, trustworthiness and stability to keybase.io I associate crypto with shonk, which puts keybase.io in the "this is a crypto thing? Hmmm.... shonky." category. I guess it depends on what the corporate goals of keybase.io are - I think it was identity management or something rather being a crypto player. edit: I should…

Exactly. I haven't used them until now, I will make sure to actively avoid them now.

To paraphrase Keynes, it's not good security policy to base it on the workings of a casino.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#49

Post by drawnwren »

xur17 wrote: post #25
api wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The defense is to point out some genuinely useful work going on in the space that doesn't revolve around speculation.

* Bitcoin's lightning network * Stable coins (Dai, USDC, etc) * What Keybase just built (much easier way to manage keys for wallets) * Makerdao's decentralized loan system The first 2 enable you to transfer value over the internet in a cheap and non-revokable way (internet cash). The third one simplifies wallet management for the first two. The last one opens up a bunch of new opportunities for borrowing money withou…

I agree that crypto could be valuable.

But, (1) the lightning network has been repeatedly attacked as unworkable trash and (2) there needs to be a reason to make crypto transactions other than drugs or vaguely crypto-anarchist philosophy.

(b) Tether's recent scandal has made all stable coins fairly suspect.

(d) The makerdao system has some pretty serious problems. High liquidation rates and skyrocketing fees both come up.

If anything, crypto has taught us (through the plethora of 2018/19 crypto scams) that revokability is a feature of transactions that is _valuable_.

I'd say my biggest takeaways from crypto, currently, are that there is not such thing as 'without having to trust the other party' and that all of the middlemen in the current financial system do provide more value than just taking a cut (while that value is probably not proportional to the cut that they take).

All that said, I'm still optimistic on crypto. However, I think it's unrealistic to expect it to replace a significant part of the web in its current form.

Re: Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone

#50

Post by timerol »

filleokus wrote: post #7

If I have a good understanding of how the bitcoin protocol works, and is well versed in cryptography, does anyone have a tip on what to read to understand about the Stellar protocol? Just some quick Googling on my phone led me down cryptobro low quality content, unsurprisingly. EDIT: And also, this implementation looks really neat, congrats! It made me excited about crypto currency again!

For an amusing walkthrough, I'd recommend https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/08/05/harry-potter-and-the-cr...
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