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Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

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Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#481

Post by menzoic »

dperfect wrote: post #348
pc wrote: post #46

There are lots of crypto skeptics on HN (and we ourselves were disappointed with crypto's payments utility for much of the past decade), so it might be interesting to share what changed our mind over the past couple of years: we started to notice a lot of real-world businesses finding utility in stablecoins. For example, Bridge (a stablecoin orchestration platform that Stripe acquired) is used by SpaceX for managing…

It sounds great, but every time I see this argument, I end up going down the rabbit hole of actually studying how stablecoins operate. And every time, I come to the same conclusion: they always rely on trust in an off-chain oracle or custodian. At that point, a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent. Bitcoin (and possibly a few others) is one of…

>At that point, a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent.

This is missing the fundamental idea behind blockchain. You need a consensus mechanism and immutable ledger in order for it to be secure and truly transparent. Once you add those boom you have yourself another blockchain :-)

>So what are stablecoins really trying to do? Circumvent regulation?

No, stablecoins have less regulatory burden because of the public ledger removing the need for manual review and verification by various intermediaries. They are still compliant with regulation.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#482

Post by davidlee1435 »

dperfect wrote: post #348
pc wrote: post #46

There are lots of crypto skeptics on HN (and we ourselves were disappointed with crypto's payments utility for much of the past decade), so it might be interesting to share what changed our mind over the past couple of years: we started to notice a lot of real-world businesses finding utility in stablecoins. For example, Bridge (a stablecoin orchestration platform that Stripe acquired) is used by SpaceX for managing…

It sounds great, but every time I see this argument, I end up going down the rabbit hole of actually studying how stablecoins operate. And every time, I come to the same conclusion: they always rely on trust in an off-chain oracle or custodian. At that point, a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent. Bitcoin (and possibly a few others) is one of…

I think the most disruptive thing about stablecoins is the ability to opt-into your monetary system of choice.

It's hard for the average non-US person to opt-into the US financial system. Sure, they could hold dollars in banks, but local monetary policy can nix that privilege at anytime by imposing foreign exchange controls. It's happened before, in some of the largest economies in the world: China in 2015, India in 2013, Argentina in 2011.

The current way users solve this problem requires a lot of resources. That's why you usually only see rich people have Cayman accounts, Canadian real estate, and shell companies in Panama. Stablecoins on permissionless blockchains make this process 100x more accessible for the average person.

So yes, stablecoins currently let you circumvent regulation.

But regulation can be a prison where you can pay to be free.

So what happens when it costs nothing to get out of jail? What kind of strains do this place on economies that people escape, as well as the economies that people join?

I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#483

Post by paperpunk »

jrm4 wrote: post #223
petertodd wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is nothing that a Stripe controlled blockchain could offer that a database could not. One way of thinking about a blockchain is to think of it as a shared datastructure to keep databases in sync. Any time you want to distribute your database over more than just a single central place, in a cryptographically secure way, you're probably going to re-invent a blockchain to do it.

I understand all of this and I stand by my claim of pointlessness. Stripe, nor any other bank or bank-esque thing needs this because they have already well solved their problem of "trust." "Blockchain" is pointless overhead here.

I wouldn't really say trust is a solved problem in cross-border transfers. Why only today I've seen transactions where:

- an intermediary credited another institution only to realise later they didn't have the money, and have to beg pretty-please to return the payment over a SWIFT message (there is no guarantee here, at best there is "market practice" which is basically just manners, but for banks)

- an intermediary failing to credit the next institution because of a processing error, but when inquired from remitter claiming they had in fact credited it

Many of these cases are very expensive to resolve. Far more expensive than the value of the payments in question. And for that reason they are often left unresolved.

Now I don't know if I'm convinced on stablecoin remittance, I find many of the counter-arguments extremely compelling, but some days I sure do think gee it would be nice if everyone was transacting on a shared public ledger and I could have some certainty of the status of a transaction.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#484

Post by j2kun »

bravoetch wrote: post #359
j2kun wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, Stripe is adding themselves as a middleman. Whether or not it was the point of Bitcoin from the start, "removing the middlemen" is bullshit because you still need exchanges, wallet providers, people running nodes, etc. Cryptocurrency in practice just transfers power from traditional middlemen to new technically-advantaged middlemen.

The middleman that bitcoin is cleaved from is banks (that have control over all balances and transactions), and payment processors (same controls). Previously these were required unless you handed physical cash to someone. Now electronic transactions are free of those controls and the associated risk. Exchanges are not bitcoin, you can transact freely without them. Wallet providers are not bitcoin, they are 100% opti…

And people could just do all their business in cash to avoid banks. But that's not practical just like avoiding exchanges and not using wallet providers is impractical.

Normal people cannot function in a cryptocurrency ecosystem without these new tech middlemen. This is exactly what I mean when I say _in practice_. Average people are still left to the whims of cryptocurrency corporations that are worse than banks because they're unregulated, much greedier, and much less risk averse.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#485

Post by YawningAngel »

wredcoll wrote: post #385
SkidanovAlex wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important aspect of blockchain that is relevant here is that your counterparty half a world away and you both agree that you trust the state of this blockchain, and thus can transact on it. For business running the same code on their 1 node instead of N is not a replacement, because their counterparty has no reason to trust whatever is running on that 1 node. Your reasoning re: N nodes are expensive is also…

> For business running the same code on their 1 node instead of N is not a replacement, because their counterparty has no reason to trust whatever is running on that 1 node I mean, why are you doing this kind of business with someone where you can't even trust that? Aside from that, block chains only provide trust if they're meaningfully decentralized. These hyper specific b2b ones seem unlikely to pass that test. Ex…

You don't need verifiers. I interviewed at R3 (now Onyx) in JP Morgan and my take on the business was that it's more of a distributed ledger than a blockchain

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#486

Post by j2kun »

idiotsecant wrote: post #384
j2kun wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the other comments are missing the point: using blockchain technology is a means to bypass regulation. That's it. That's always been the point of cryptocurrency.

You say tomato I say removing the levers of power from world governments who have proven time and time again that they can't help but pull them to help themselves

The frequency with which people involved in cryptocurrency "pull the levers themselves" has far outpaced government manipulation of currency.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#487

Post by nikcub »

jama211 wrote: post #287
hvb2 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why can a traditional bank not solve this? In Europe you can wire money across borders for free, you just need to know the account number. Arrives in seconds at 0 cost. I feel like a lot of the fintech in the US is purely a result of a lack of regulation. For the example of Argentina, the real reason that business is using crypto is because their currency is unreliable. It might be a good fit there but trading in…

Australia too has instant and fee free transfers, so American staples like venmo just simply don’t exist here. People just send money to and from each other’s banks directly instantly and for free. So why would we need another service? Crypto here would similarly make very little sense.

It's not about the domestic use case - that is solved by regulation in stable economies. Try paying someone in Pakistan from Australia. Business is global now.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#488

Post by packetlost »

oblio wrote: post #462
algo_lover wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with multiple parties involved, who has the rights to read and write to the postgres instance? How do we make sure transactions were not forged? How do we know data at rest is not being tampered with? Blockchain solves that. Newer blockchain protocols especially an L1 is much faster, easier on the environment, and provides all the immutability, transparency, and traceability benefits.

You know you can just use regular cryptography to validate data, right? Also, you always have to trust someone, in this case Stripe. Regarding L1 blockchains, how exactly do they solve the speed problem for a distributed global database that needs to be replicated everywhere for the security guarantees to actually work? What do they forgo out of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAP_theorem ?

Pretty much always A. In systems like this, it's better to deny transactions than allow inconsistencies.

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#489

Post by cvs268 »

allknowingfrog wrote: post #479
raincole wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a shared ledger implemented with traditional databases / protocols would be faster, easier, and more transparent. Stablecoin is not a technology. It's an excuse. An excuse to do what banks do while not being regulated like a bank or using the infrastructure banks use. Similar to how Airbnb is not a technology but an excuse to do what hotels do without hotel's license. So it makes no sense to compare it to database,…

Do we have a term for this phenomenon yet? Airbnb is a great example. Uber is another. Regulatory loopholes are the way that these companies actually make money, but they call it "technology" and everyone kind of shrugs.

One term for it is "Regulatory Arbitrage".

Re: Stripe Launches L1 Blockchain: Tempo

#490

Post by stale2002 »

antirez wrote: post #344
stale2002 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> signing every block, to create a collaborative system that is perfectly suited for the same task. Indeed you can! We even have a name for that! Its called a blockchain. > This maintains many benefits of the blockchain and lacks many issues (fast, simple, near zero cost, controllable to a given extent -- no takeover possible, ...). Blockchains can do all of these things. Perhaps you are thinking of "bitcoin", instea…

No bizantine distributed agreement (work / stake), no blockchain. Otherwise we can name everything as everything.

> No bizantine distributed agreement (work / stake), no blockchain.

Actually yes there is a blockchain. The word you are looking for is "Federated Blockchain".

https://101blockchains.com/federated-blockchain/

> Otherwise we can name everything

No, because we literally have a word for this already. Federated Blockchain. It is a well known concept.

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