
2018 Stellar roadmap - manojlds
https://www.stellar.org/blog/2018-Stellar-Roadmap/
======
yohann305
Two days ago, Stripe announced they were dropping Bitcoin. And now Stellar (A
Stripe-seeded company) announces their 2018 plans. Good job on the guy that
saw it coming in HN comments _!

Note: I'm not bashing Stellar, I'm actually a big fan.

_:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329)

~~~
tzakrajs
I feel really stupid. Back in 2015, their lead scientist David Mazières
explained Stellar consensus protocol inside the Gates computer science
building at Stanford to a small group of people back when Lumens were
worthless. I was in that group of people and I completely missed the boat.

~~~
jakobegger
And here‘s the problem with cryptocurrencies: They might have all kinds of use
cases, but people just see a quick way to get rich.

~~~
tzakrajs
I agree with you in general but in my case, Bitcoin had already experienced
several booms and I was aware of the crypto-[mb]illionaires back then. Either
way, if I would've jumped on the "get rich" bandwagon, I might actually be
today.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Don't feel bad.

I made and lost 30k speculating on dumb stuff like Mazacoin and Auroracoin. I
avoided looking up any numbers for a long time, but my non-tech friend asked
me the other day what it would have been worth. If I had invested 20k of that
in the Ethereum presale, it would be worth 30 to 40 million dollars (or would
have been when the market was high).

Could kick yourself for stuff like that (I read the initial posts about Eth
here on HN, figured it would be valuable, didn't know how soon it would be
valuable), but the market was scammy even then. Mazacoin was supposedly going
to be the first official coin of one of the Sioux reservations; that was
exaggerated, didn't keep it from spiking 10x overnight.

There's nothing special about making a fortune gambling and taking money off
other dummies throwing money into the hype. Regular people are getting hurt by
this. For every big winner, there's some family who had a dad who mortgaged
their house and lost it all. Maybe that's post hoc justification of missing
out, but there's nothing to be proud of.

edit: doing the math as of today; $24k would have bought you about 80k Ether
at the presale price of 2k eth per Bitcoin (about $600). 1 eth is about $1050
today, at a value of $1k that's 80 million dollars. The fortunes that people
can and have made at out of this are absurd.

~~~
BrazeBeefNoodle
>> For every big winner, there's some family who had a dad who mortgaged their
house and lost it all.

That's silly. Just look at the growth in the total crypto market cap over the
last few years (or even over the last six months) and it's clear that this
can't be true.

The vast majority of people who have been involved are way ahead.

~~~
adbachman
> The vast majority of people who have been involved are way ahead.

Strong disagree :(

Cryptocurrency investment is speculation in a zero-sum game. Every dollar
someone pulls out of the system in profit required someone else to put a
dollar in. All those people who sold bitcoin at $19k could do so because there
were buyers. Every single one of those buyers lost.

Cryptocurrencies are not shares in a corporation or bonds or any sort of
interest or dividend producing financial instrument. Even the ICOs that claim
to be so only work when new money is coming in. To get a (real) dollar out of
the system, someone else has to put a dollar in. To get more money out of the
system than you put in, someone else has to pay. For _that_ person to get more
money out, more people have to come in after them and pay. The top of the
pyramid gets paid, the bottom is left holding the bag.

The only growth in market cap is new money flowing into the system. Once
enough decides to flow out, the gig is up and the whole thing tanks.

~~~
greyman
> All those people who sold bitcoin at $19k could do so because there were
> buyers. Every single one of those buyers lost.

Only if they sold. Otherwise they might just wait until the price climbs back.

~~~
adbachman
The price still doesn't change unless new money enters, though.

------
bkolobara
As many developers visit HN I will use this opportunity to advertise the
Stellar Build challenge[1]. I participated in the past and it's great.
Especially to build some fun side projects, learn about distributed ledgers
and earn a bit of money.

[1]:
[https://www.stellar.org/lumens/build/](https://www.stellar.org/lumens/build/)

~~~
rememberlenny
You can make well over a few thousand dollars for learning about crypto and
working on a interesting side-project.

I agree to this. If you are interested in getting involved with building a
crypto project, but can't justify the time: check this out.

Stellar runs a monthly give away of Stellar coins for submissions by
developers. They set out a overall vision of projects, and reward a certain
designated amount of coins to the finalists.

~~~
sjs382
The build challenges are quarterly, not monthly.

~~~
rememberlenny
You are completely right. Thanks for correcting.

------
slig
From few days ago: "PSA: Check your inbox for email from stellar.org, you may
be sitting on $ " \-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16109292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16109292)

~~~
tgb
Thanks for this. Now what do I do, though? I'd rather not mess this up. I can
log in to launch.stellar.org and can "upgrade" to lumens. Do I do that? My
goal is to sell them for USD.

~~~
asciimo
Yes, I went through that process and it was pretty painless. I recommend going
the extra step and getting a secure wallet to store them in. Ledger
([https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/ledger-
nano-s](https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/ledger-nano-s)) has an app for
Stellar Lumens.

~~~
j_s
A secure wallet is not super helpful if immediately cashing out (to fiat),
right?

A legitimate, soup-to-nuts "turn one email into $___ in cash" walkthrough
(perhaps the beginnings of which is below, though I can't personally vouch for
it) would do well!

[https://medium.com/@marckohlbrugge/you-might-
have-204-worth-...](https://medium.com/@marckohlbrugge/you-might-
have-204-worth-of-cryptocurrency-you-forgot-about-c9787e788730)

(Search "2\. Stellar" [no quotes] twice; does anyone know how to link directly
on Medium? This piece focuses more on breadth than depth, covering multiple
cryptocurrencies. The only useful Stellar info there seems to be
[https://launch.stellar.org/#/login](https://launch.stellar.org/#/login))

------
readams
I read this whole article and I'm still not sure if this is a real thing or a
parody.

~~~
guiomie
Same here. Hard to take them seriously.

------
mparr4
I recently started looking into Lumens and can't figure out the value
proposition of the token.

AFAIK the stellar network purports to be a place where you can do peer to peer
exchanges of currencies, with Lumens being one of them, but on the stellar
website they say things like:

    
    
      > Why does the Stellar network need a native asset?
      > The Stellar network offers all of the innovative features of a shared public ledger on a distributed database—often referred to as blockchain technology. The Stellar network’s built-in currency, the lumen, serves two purposes:
      >
      > First, lumens play a small anti-spam role.
      > Each transaction has a minor fee—0.00001 lumens—associated with it. This fee prevents users with malicious intentions from flooding the network (otherwise known as a DoS attack). Lumens work as a security token, mitigating DoS attacks that attempt to generate large numbers of transactions or consume large amounts of space in the ledger.
      >
      > Similarly, the Stellar network requires all accounts to hold a minimum balance of 20 lumens. This requirement ensures that accounts are authentic, which helps the network maintain a seamless flow of transactions.
      >
      > Second, lumens may facilitate multi-currency transactions.
      >
      > Lumens sometimes facilitate trades between pairs of currencies between which there is not a large direct market, acting as a bridge. This function is possible when there is a liquid market between the lumen and each currency involved.
    

and

    
    
      > You may choose to purchase lumens as a supporter of the Stellar.org mission.
    

What is the bull case for this cryptocurrency?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Formatted so it's readable on mobile:

> Why does the Stellar network need a native asset?

> The Stellar network offers all of the innovative features of a shared public
> ledger on a distributed database—often referred to as blockchain technology.
> The Stellar network’s built-in currency, the lumen, serves two purposes:

> First, lumens play a small anti-spam role.

> Each transaction has a minor fee—0.00001 lumens—associated with it. This fee
> prevents users with malicious intentions from flooding the network
> (otherwise known as a DoS attack). Lumens work as a security token,
> mitigating DoS attacks that attempt to generate large numbers of
> transactions or consume large amounts of space in the ledger.

> Similarly, the Stellar network requires all accounts to hold a minimum
> balance of 20 lumens. This requirement ensures that accounts are authentic,
> which helps the network maintain a seamless flow of transactions.

> Second, lumens may facilitate multi-currency transactions.

> Lumens sometimes facilitate trades between pairs of currencies between which
> there is not a large direct market, acting as a bridge. This function is
> possible when there is a liquid market between the lumen and each currency
> involved.

> You may choose to purchase lumens as a supporter of the Stellar.org mission.

~~~
mparr4
Thanks. I had thought there was some way to format quotes, but after looking
at the HN formatting doc [1] I see I was mistaken and I used the styling
intended for code formatting.

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

------
desireco42
I am pretty happy with my Lumens. I got them during the initial airdrop and
then later I got more. I followed on and off what is happening and Stellar
really looks promising to me. Transactions go very quickly, api is decent and
fairly easy to work with.

As far as Coinbase, I don't think they are very good in handling things,
BitcoinCash didn't go well. It would make sense for them to support Stellar,
but who knows what they are planning to do. It would make sense to support a
bunch of other as well.

~~~
riku_iki
The biggest problem for me, which prevents me from commiting to stellar is
that they have just 2 engineers in Poland on Linkedin. Comparing to Ethereum
Foundation it sounds like a joke. Where are those engineers who support
infrastructure?

~~~
desireco42
I see quite a few on slack channel. If this was true, I would be happy to join
them and work on stellar platform honestly.

------
celrenheit
tl;dr: Stellar distributed exchange and Ligthning Network coming in 2018

------
sanefive
The roadmap is fairly general, not detailed enough, and not serious enough. It
makes Stellar look like another startup, not like a company which wants to be
the next paypal or replace bitcoin.

I think most of those cryptocurrency companies need to invest in their
communication, PR and marketing in general. If they want to attract investors
in their coin, they need to have a perfect communication, inspiring
confidence. This would always be better than a stupid blogpost full of
jokes...

But this is a forum of developers so I am not sure how this tribune for
marketing is going to echo here ;)

------
oelmekki
I get it that it's a major use case for platforms allowing to issue tokens,
but I would love not seeing stellar going too far down the ICO road.

Buying in ICOs still doesn't provide any kind of clear value (beside selling
them) and issuing tokens could be used to do way cooler things (like issuing
state branded cryptocurrencies, or temporary currencies for big events, etc).
It's kind of sad that ethereum is mainly seen nowadays as "the cryptocurrency
for ICOs", I wouldn't want to see that for stellar too.

------
erdo
I don't think anyone mentioned this link yet but it has a lot of interesting
bits about the stellar story and why it was forked from ripple:

[http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-
bitcoin/](http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/)

I think their distribution of coins might be a problem for them in future (see
how the Facebook scheme was totally scammed in the article)

------
oh_sigh
My coins that I had since 2014 were 'corrupted', and unrecoverable, even
though the only thing I have is the exact code that the stellar website and
email sent me.

Great stuff!

~~~
323454
I recently recovered a bunch of coins I signed up for in 2014 and had no
issues.

~~~
zanmat0
How did you manage to do this? I'm in the same boat. I have the username,
password and recovery key yet I can't login and the website tells me that
recovery has been disabled for my account.

~~~
twostorytower
Exact same here - please let me know if you figure out the solution.

~~~
slig
See this thread
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellar/comments/7jf9yq/solving_upg...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellar/comments/7jf9yq/solving_upgrade_issues/)

------
wildbunny
Isn't stellar's consensus still the 'consensus' of one node owned by the
company due to the fact that the design is totally broken?

~~~
koheripbal
Yes. It is a centralized decentralized network.

------
quadcore
A few years ago, I think I got something like 5K lumens from stripe in some
sort of public giveaway stellar promotion thing. I have an account name and a
password but cant figure out where those fit anymore. Any idea where that
might be?

~~~
quadcore
Found in the HN search. It was here: launch.stellar.org

------
alasdair_
I signed up for stellar when it was first announced and have about $1000 of
stellar. Despite a whole bunch of emails, I'm still unable to access my
account.

Anyone know who else I could contact?

~~~
sensecall
I contacted support after finding an old email from the ICO a few years ago.
They got me access to my account within a couple of days.

[https://launch.stellar.org/#/login](https://launch.stellar.org/#/login)

------
FLUX-YOU
They're cool because they use 'randos'

------
fiatjaf
Lightning on Stellar? I don't understand why this is desirable.

~~~
jlrubin
High volume, low latency, of privacy focused applications.

There's a difference between Stellar's network being able to support high
throughput and you wanting to do high-throughput on the network.

Base fee is 1e-5 XLM. If you want to do a million transactions, it's still
going to cost you 10 lumens. Why pay 10 XLM when you could pay 1e-5 XLM
instead?

------
homakov
Can I run a full node on laptop right now?

------
foota
Is uh this a parody or not?

------
brndnmtthws
Convenient timing to pump this coin. Seems like Stripe is getting their ducks
in a row so they can cash in on their altcoin.

~~~
oliyoung
orrrrr they legitimately see it as a viable transnational currency which could
ensure their own growth as a company.

I doubt Stripe cashes those coins in, their interest is commercial, not
financial

~~~
brndnmtthws
If they felt that way they'd just contribute to Bitcoin.

~~~
aoro
One does not just 'contribute' to Bitcoin.

~~~
brndnmtthws
Anyone can. You and your preconceived notions are the only barriers.

------
wyldfire
After scouring the website for a bit I can't make head nor tail of this.

Since it sounds like a fork of Ripple, it's very much centralized, right?

~~~
sjs382
It was initially a fork of Ripple but has since been rewritten. Stellar is
more decentralized, because each node decides which others to trust. In the
Ripple network, certain nodes have been blessed as "validating nodes".

There's a Stellar StackExchange question which goes into the differences a bit
more:
[https://stellar.stackexchange.com/a/57/9](https://stellar.stackexchange.com/a/57/9)

~~~
wyldfire
It's a private beta. What's the basis for trusting the peer nodes?

~~~
sjs382
Crap. I'll reproduce the answer here, then:

> Tl;dr: Stellar’s protocol (SCP) uses a decentralized state propagation where
> each node commits to a value if every node it deems trustworthy agrees while
> Ripple uses a supermajority vote (80%) among all validating nodes. Stellar
> achieves better decentralization than Ripple

> A pretty old, but still relevant discussion on the bitcoin stack exchange
> [[https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/29815/what-is-
> th...](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/29815/what-is-the-
> difference-between-ripple-and-stellar/38913#38913)]

> Stellar started out as a fork of Ripple (now completely rewritten) so they
> are pretty similar in implementation and use cases.

> Stellar uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol [[https://medium.com/a-stellar-
> journey/on-worldwide-consensus-...](https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-
> worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949)] (SCP) to achieve decentralization, while
> Ripple uses the XRP Ledger Consensus Process [[https://ripple.com/build/xrp-
> ledger-consensus-process/](https://ripple.com/build/xrp-ledger-consensus-
> process/)]. These are alternatives to Bitcoin's proof of work whose goal is
> to have every participant in the network agree on the current state.

> In SCP, each node decides for itself which other nodes it trusts. When a lot
> of these sets of trusted nodes are overlapping, there is a high probability
> there is agreement on the state of the network. Broadly, a node will only
> accept a message if all of their trustworthy nodes have in turn accepted it.
> This is similar to the way internet certificates and DNS servers are
> working. In principle, there is no central authority appointing trustworthy
> nodes, but de facto, the network will reach an agreement on which nodes are
> trustworthy. This is a great video explaining SCP in detail
> [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmwnhZmEZjc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmwnhZmEZjc)].
> There is also the white paper [[https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-
> consensus-protocol.pd...](https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-
> protocol.pdf)] for more formal mathematical definitions.

> Ripple on the other hand uses a set of special nodes called "validating
> nodes". A new state is transmitted to all validating nodes and whenever 80%
> of them agree on it, the ledger is updated. Anyone can launch a validating
> node, but Ripple recommends they register and disclose their identity
> [[https://ripple.com/dev-blog/validator-registry/](https://ripple.com/dev-
> blog/validator-registry/)]. In principle, this model doesn't make Ripple
> less decentralized than Stellar. However, in practice, the company Ripple
> controls most validating nodes, as there is no incentive for anyone to run
> these nodes (transaction fees are destroyed). You can see a list of
> validating nodes here:
> [https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/validators](https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/validators)

> Another difference is that Ripple is a deflationary currency (a certain
> amount of XRP is destroyed at each transaction to prevent spamming the
> network), while Stellar is inflationary. This doesn't necessarily mean that
> Ripple is a better store of value, since all inflation is returned to
> Stellar users through inflation pools.

> Other than the technology, it is important to mention differences between
> development philosophies that are driving the two projects: XRP is developed
> by a for-profit company (Ripple) while Stellar is developed by the Stellar
> Development Foundation which is a non-profit. Stellar places a greater
> emphasis on serving the underbanked and facilitating payments between
> individuals across borders, while Ripple is mainly focused on financial
> institutions.

~~~
wyldfire
> every node it deems trustworthy

How does it find trustworthy nodes? Is the trust delegated to the node
operator? So web-of-trust?

~~~
sjs382
Yes, trust is delegated by the node operator.

