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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

#441

Post by josh2600 »

hiq wrote: post #164
josh2600 wrote: post #2

Hi! I'm the CEO of MobileCoin. If anyone has any questions please feel free to ask here. We've been working on this project for four years and it has been a labor of love. There's a lot of new technology here. We exist in a highly regulated space so it's possible some questions will require reaching out to lawyers to make sure we answer them in a way that's compliant so please don't feel offended if a response takes…

Hi, I still have to read the docs more thoroughly, but given that these HN threads die out quickly, I'd rather ask now that I have the chance, so forgive me if some of these are answered in the docs: 1. how does MobileCoin make money? 2. how many coins do you / does MobileCoin own? 3. related to that, are there mechanisms in place to prove that this is not a pump and dump? Or simply, how do I know it's not one and it…

1) MobileCoin will build a payments ecosystem around the protocol.

2) I have to check with the lawyers on whether we can disclose exact amounts, but our intention is to own a small minority of coins over the long term. We want the supply to circulate.

3) I don’t know how to prove this other than to tell you that MobileCoin is here to stay. You’ll know us by our deeds.

4) the threat model is 100% of nodes being compromised with an active attack against SGX. If there is even a single honest machine, the network will scream on any fault.

5) MobileCoin is fast and privacy-protecting (and it works on mobile without consuming tons of energy). There aren’t any other cryptocurrencies that presently fit that bill.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#442

Post by jakecopp »

This is one of the primary benefits of a messaging client that uses Matrix [1], if one app becomes undesirable there are dozens of compatible apps! [2]

I highly recommend giving Element [3] a try - it's polished and easy for non technical people to use, end-to-end encrypted and OSS.

[1]: https://matrix.org/

[2]: https://matrix.org/clients/

[3]: https://element.io

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#443

Post by jakecopp »

JeremyNT wrote: post #346
cdogl wrote: post #302

Long-time Signal user here, with a number of technical and non-technical friends, colleagues and acquaintances who also use it. I don't know who was asking for this. And I think it really dilutes Signal's message. I believe that everyone has a fundamental right to secure, private communication. Some people may hold the same belief for the right to transfer funds. I don't agree and I suspect many others feel the same.…

This kind of anti-feature is not what I signed up for. I just wanted a secure messenger normal users could understand! It seems like a simple enough problem that Signal solved well (apart from the phone number requirement). Sadly, now it feels like Signal was just a long game trojan for Marlinspike to onboard users to a cryptocurrency pyramid scheme. This has nothing to do with its core functionality and it makes me…

> The state of secure messaging is really bleak. I wish Matrix had an IM-style client that was decent enough for non-technical users to adopt.

See Element [1] which uses Matrix [2]. It feels like IM, and is super simple to onboard new users. I'm not involved with it, but I'm a huge fan of the Matrix ecosystem.

If you want group chats to be mixed in with 1-1 chats, try SchildiChat [3], a fork of Element.

[1]: https://element.io/

[2]: https://matrix.org/

[3]: https://schildi.chat/

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#444

Post by Thorentis »

This is a terrible decision.

Feature bloat is one of the worst things for a security conscious product. The more features, the more attack vectors. Nobody asked for payments in Signal. Where did this idea come from? It was never put forward prior to this, it was never on the road map. That only makes me even more suspicious of this decision, which leads to my second point...

MobileCoin has all the appearances of a scam. 85% of the coin is owned by the creators. The price rapidly shot up at the end of March. The social media of the developers was posting rubbish for a long period of time. There was no mention of this collaboration beforehand. This has all the hallmarks of a pump and dump. Have the Signal devs been duped? Or are they wanting to cash in on Signal's rising popularity?

Anybody at all with an interest in Signal needs to let the foundation know that this Beta needs to be scrapped, and that payments should never be added.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#445

Post by pa7ch »

challengly wrote: post #397
bilal4hmed wrote: post #103

With Signal not releasing their server code and now this, I regret using and asking a good chunk of my base to move to Signal.

Same. It's extremely concerning. Where's the transparency? If the backend has been compromised and turned into a honeypot, how would we know?

That would only compromise metadata as signal is e2e encrypted and the client has always been opensource and up to date.

All the SGX stuff is about making metadata more private for features that absolutely must be done serverside. So a compromise in SGX is more an issue if Signal itself becomes adversarial or gets compromised. Most services only rely on this for security and don't use things like SGX to hide things from themselves.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#446

Post by sequoia »

reader_mode wrote: post #337
sequoia wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Early in Signal's development they would add privacy features. Lately they have been adding social features. This is intentional and relates to Signal's growth in the past few years. It's not "a hacker tool for nerds" it's "a friendly, easy to use chat app with stickers & voice messages (also strong encryption)." IRC does one thing and does it well, and barely anyone uses it. The "clean technical vision" story isn'…

> a friendly, easy to use chat app with stickers & voice messages (also strong encryption). Except it's not, strong encryption and privacy emphasis goes against easy to use. I recently got my family to switch to Telegram (because I like the interface) - my sister works in an environment where she has to have a separate work phone without a camera and everything synced up out of the box, history, etc. Brother lost his…

You’re totally correct that there are trade offs. Coming from a background of using IRC, google chat & Facebook chat with and without e2e encryption and deleting accounts etc I’m used to not always having forever message history and I can see how not having that would be a nonstarter for some users.

Yes there are sacrifices and trade offs for the security signal offers and it’s not 100% as convenient as Facebook messenger in that regard, but it’s also not 100% as cumbersome and impractical as GPG email. It strikes what I consider a decent balance of being secure and private and usable enough for non-technical users. Yes the message history story is lacking, I lost my messages moving iPhone to iPhone because I did it wrong and yeah it made me sad for a moment but I’m philosophical about it I guess. Dust to dust and all that.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#447

Post by dogecoinbase »

whimsicalism wrote: post #323
gruez wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As we saw with GameStop, they can rug pull on you at any time. With decentralized cryptos like BTC & ETH, that can't happen from your own private wallet. You can always transact. ETH is probably not the best example here because they have rug-pulled people with a hard fork.

> they have rug-pulled people with a hard fork. "People" here being criminals that exploited a flaw in the DAO, yeah?

At the time of that fork, the Ethereum website literally said "the code is the contract". Then, when someone found a perfectly legitimate use of that code that the creators failed to anticipate, they forcibly altered the contract. There are criminals here, but they're not the ones you think.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#448

Post by centimeter »

mikeyla85 wrote: post #61
centimeter wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they weren't using this as an opportunity to pump some shitcoin, this might make sense. Bitcoin Lightning integration would be much less suspect, for example, because A) it's already well established B) they're not going to make a quick buck off it.

Lightning doesn't have privacy and Signal needs privacy.

What in the world do you mean? Lightning has excellent privacy; payments are onion-routed.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#449

Post by sequoia »

luma wrote: post #338
sequoia wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Early in Signal's development they would add privacy features. Lately they have been adding social features. This is intentional and relates to Signal's growth in the past few years. It's not "a hacker tool for nerds" it's "a friendly, easy to use chat app with stickers & voice messages (also strong encryption)." IRC does one thing and does it well, and barely anyone uses it. The "clean technical vision" story isn'…

I love IRC but saying the IRC protocol does anything well (or is even a documented and agreed-upon protocol) is a bit of a stretch. Otherwise, agree with the thrust of your statement. I believe getting Signal into the hands of more users is an overall net good and if stickers are the answer then get to making some stickers.

Haha yeah I never did learn all about modes and had to google commands or go to the mod channel and ask for help not infrequently, but irc does get held up as an example of “a simple and perfectly decent tool” and my point is that being simple and perfectly OK is not enough, it needs to also be user friendly and accessible to the lay person.

I think we’re violently agreeing.

Re: Signal adds a payments feature with a privacy-focused cryptocurrency

#450

Post by Thorentis »

josh2600 wrote: post #441
hiq wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, I still have to read the docs more thoroughly, but given that these HN threads die out quickly, I'd rather ask now that I have the chance, so forgive me if some of these are answered in the docs: 1. how does MobileCoin make money? 2. how many coins do you / does MobileCoin own? 3. related to that, are there mechanisms in place to prove that this is not a pump and dump? Or simply, how do I know it's not one and it…

1) MobileCoin will build a payments ecosystem around the protocol. 2) I have to check with the lawyers on whether we can disclose exact amounts, but our intention is to own a small minority of coins over the long term. We want the supply to circulate. 3) I don’t know how to prove this other than to tell you that MobileCoin is here to stay. You’ll know us by our deeds. 4) the threat model is 100% of nodes being compro…

The correct answer to (1) was: "by selling the coins we pre-mined (85% of current float) at a high price, after using the popularity of Signal to pump the price further".

Shameful.

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