

Show HN: Stellar-backed Twitter upvote bot - gdb
https://gdb.svbtle.com/a-twitter-bot-which-issues-its-own-currency

======
jafaku
Why not use coloured coins (Bitcoin) or something like that instead of the
Ripple/Stellar scam?

~~~
ChrisClark
Because pre-mined != scam. Only Bitcoin adopters that are only used to common-
style cryptocoin launches think it is. And for just a bitcoin-clone, it is a
scam. Ripple/Stellar's currency is not the point of the protocol at all, just
a side effect.

~~~
maaku
Ripple/Stellar isn't a scam becaues of the pre-mine. It's a scam because _it
isn 't the decentralized system it claims to be_.

~~~
foobarqux
Can you explain?

~~~
marcell
Suppose I set up a coin called "FunCoin" and issue 1 million FunCoins. I store
the FunCoin ledger in a MySQL database, and provide an API for transfering
FunCoins using private key cryptography. I am the only one in control of the
FunCoins ledger. This system is completely centralized, and so is fragile. The
FBI/NSA/etc. could shut me down easily, or I cloud disappear tomorrow with the
entire database.

The Stellar/Ripple approach to this problem is to replace the single person
with multiple people who vote on the ledger. The hope is that while a single
person can be easily corrupted, it is much more difficult to corrupt multiple
people.

At present, if you pull the code from github.com/stellar/stellard, it will by
default install the following "validators". "validators" correspond to
pub/priv keys, and under the default config, if 3 of 5 of them "approve" a
ledger, then the client considers that ledger valid:

    
    
        # The latest validators can be obtained from
        # https://gostellar.org/stellar.txt
        #
        [validators]
        nakuKsirzNq66iejBfxKxt8Rw4t7kP5ZWSrvWzVKEVSHSkJKYd1 SDF1
        n3gVwaSDBtVi4Xd2XBh7rvcwis4uBabu5aNn7WKtEqazJbLHR9n SDF2
        nfozTPzMytTKuuHBJrPB9DVxPccKeNVh8vsEomUAwNWuWrNxwDB SDF3
        naSBAykwFkmw6JLKqPG7HPFMK1GZqu1rdnwbhtTxyTmVX1b6b8z SDF4
        nf3yCmpieMFvAbv5r5jBhGeXheuhc3boAkdmBbpXb6HC7HDkf13 SDF5
    
        # Ditto.
        [validation_quorum]
        3
    

I'm not sure what "SDF1", "SDF2", etc. are, but I'm guessing they stand for
stellar foundation 1, 2, etc.

~~~
maaku
Correct. To summarize, the stellar foundation basically runs the accounting
ledger and has absolute control over what transaction are and are not
processed.

Of course the standard Ripple/Stellar response is to say "but you can run your
own node and get people to use yours instead!" Which is of course true, except
that the consensus mechanism diverges when the network contains nodes with
disjoint validator lists and there are hostile actors present.

So for the system to work at all, all nodes much share a common subset of
validator nodes in their lists, which in practice ends up being the default
set, which are given de facto control the transaction selection.

Which is to say, Ripple/Stellar is not significantly better than the PayPal
model.

