
Keybase and Stellar is live for everyone - malgorithms
https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar-launch
======
andrewstuart
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 qualify that I've always seen and continue to see keybase.io as
being a really reputable and stable company and not shonky. I guess I was a
bit jaded by being flooded with crypto ads on every social media platform 12
months ago or so.

~~~
feanaro
> 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.

~~~
gumby
> 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 patent
issues for hash chains. And while the engineers are enthusiastic to do a coin
nobody can explain why someone else would want to buy one, except in the hope
that someone someday would pay more for it.

I've seen a few vaguely interesting applications cor crypto currencies, but
they are all been at best 'vitamins'. I've yet to see an 'aspirin'.

~~~
astrolince
Of course you don't understand, because you don't need them, you can't
understand freedom of expression if you never had anything to say, you can't
understand privacy if you never had anything to hide, if you were living in a
country like mine, Argentina, you would understand immediately the incredibly
useful thing that Bitcoin is.

I have a Swiss bank in my pocket, in a country that steals all your savings
every ten years and the central bank destroys you with inflation.

I have an international payment system, I can send and receive money in
minutes to whomever I want, without asking permission from anyone, without the
government or the bank stealing it from me. From a place where it is sinful to
take your money out of the country.

It's the difference between existing or not in the world, and you have no idea
how incredible it is to be able to pass an Argentine crisis without your
family suffering hunger, no centralized system could give me something similar
at such a low cost.

~~~
phyzome
It sounds like Stellar would be a bad fit for your use-case, then, even while
Bitcoin is useful.

~~~
rickycook
why is that? you can still interact with the stellar network with just
xlm->xlm; you don’t have to pass it through and anchor to pay in some fiat-
backed token

~~~
phyzome
Ah, OK. I've had a pretty hard time understanding Stellar's model. It seems
pretty complicated.

------
drexlspivey
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 asset XLM.

It uses the Stellar consensus protocol (not proof of work) with a new ledger
being closed every 3-5 seconds. SCP favors safety over liveness (no progress
until consensus is reached)

Stellar has a decentralized exchange built-in in the protocol layer. That
means that market orders are p2p messages and are part of consensus for each
new ledger.

~~~
seibelj
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 become a block producer - you just need to acquire enough
stake.

~~~
drexlspivey
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.

------
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](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...](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."

~~~
thanatos_dem
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.

~~~
ricardobeat
So you're angry that the virtual money you got as a handout, from a system in
early development, was lost four years later after you failed to act on an
upgrade announced months in advance. Sounds fair.

~~~
Aeolun
I don’t know about you, but the bank cannot arbitrarily decide that my money
is gone because I didn’t deign to respond to them within a certain time
period.

The moment the bank starts doing that it’s not a bank any more, it’s a scam.

~~~
mmcclure
Brushing aside the "giveaway" aspect of the parent comment, banks decide that
money is gone (or inaccessible) because actors didn't respond within
"reasonable timeframes" pretty frequently. For example:

\- Banks are not legally obligated to honor checks older than 6 months

\- Dormant accounts where the bank is unable to contact the account owner have
their balances transferred to the state (State Seizure)

The latter probably makes a little more sense in this case since you could
(depending on the issuer) just request another check from the source.

------
filleokus
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!

~~~
thefreeman
Have you tried their white paper? [https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-
consensus-protocol.pd...](https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-
protocol.pdf)

------
elamje
Keybase is a really cool application regardless of Stellar, so don’t be
deterred by the comments!

Free, encrypted git repos and file storage as well as ID assertion and chat.

------
sealthedeal
I <3 Keybase. I have been beta testing this for a year or so. It came out
during the last crypto boom, it is a great feature.

------
andyburke
As a relatively long-time Keybase user, I went in and set up my Stellar wallet
on my phone. There does not appear to be any way to fund this wallet, though.
Reading the comments here, I guess I'd have to buy Stellar on some other
exchange and ... transfer it to my wallet? (So I'd have a wallet on an
exchange, and a wallet on Keybase?)

This is not good UX.

~~~
StavrosK
It's like any other currency. If you wanted to buy GBP, you'd have to go to an
exchange and transfer them to your bank, which had to support GBP for your
account.

Sure, it would be better UX if they could charge you some USD and give you
Lumens, but I don't think it's worse than obtaining any other currency.

------
giancarlostoro
I like Keybase, I just find the name a little odd to push as a cool IM to
normal people. I'm also still waiting to see them release their own email
service, maybe something that can cleanly interface with ProtonMail?

------
byproxy
I wonder how the Lumen value is being derived. I assume whatever current worth
is on Coinbase Pro at the time the amount is sent, considering they namedrop
Coinbase Pro as a place to buy Lumens.

~~~
malgorithms
CoinMarketCap's paid API. We're open to considering other data sources.

~~~
modeless
I would suggest OpenMarketCap instead. CoinMarketCap is known to include
exchanges that fake their volume and I wouldn't be surprised if their price
data is somewhat manipulated too.

[https://openmarketcap.com/exchanges/faq](https://openmarketcap.com/exchanges/faq)

~~~
electic
Correct. The price especially is wrong on CMC when there is high volume
events.

I also invite the OP to check out Blockmodo's API. We deliver this data to
developers and institutional investors.

[https://blockmodo.com/docs/api](https://blockmodo.com/docs/api)

We stream everything which includes the price, trades, news, social media and
community posts, and code checkins.

On the price side, we have two channels. We have a stream channel and a ticker
channel. The stream channel derives the price of tokens by looking at raw
trades from a select set of exchanges which have been vettted.

We are based in SF and happy to help at no charge! Drop us a note.

------
yarrel
Keybase is now a wire transmitter.

Just without KYC/AML.

Yet.

~~~
capybaraz
It's a non-custodial wallet. Per recent FinCEN guidance, non-custodial wallets
are not regulated as money transmitters.

------
zeroxfe
For folks that want to learn more about stellar:
[https://github.com/0xfe/hacking-stellar](https://github.com/0xfe/hacking-
stellar)

------
intpbro
Stellar was one of the only cryptos I actually spent some money on, and it
seems like one of the few that are still trying to progress

------
alexnewman
Is interstellar still around? I love the tech, but I believe keybase affixed
horse to wrong cart.

------
coldacid
When will open proof be available for everyone?

~~~
songgao
You mean this?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19639297](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19639297)

~~~
coldacid
I mean how they say all that but refuse to add fediverse sites and others that
don't share the political views of the founders of Keybase or the mainstream
Mastodon crowd.

------
xof711
Exciting news! Can't wait to start using it!

------
giacaglia
This is super cool! Making it easier to send or receive crypto is a worthy
cause! :-)

