
Introducing Token - samscully
https://blog.tokenbrowser.com/introducing-token-2f2ceeab6d4c
======
pimlottc
I'm not sure "Browser" is a good term for this; I get that they are trying to
convey that it's just a client for the existing independent Etherium network,
but to 99% of people, "browser" == "web browser". It's just going to cause
confusion, especially in non-technical users (which seems to be a user base
they are trying to go for here).

Even as a developer, when I saw "tokenbrowser.com", I was expecting to see a
web browser. Visually, it looks more like a chat client (makes sense since
they are taking inspiration from WeChat).

~~~
omginternets
Hmm, I'm going swim against the current and say I _like_ the fact that it's
called a browser. I like this because it _is_ a browser, albeit not a _web_
browser.

I think this is exactly what's missing from blockchain-derived technologies: a
simple human interface to remote resources. More to the point, calling this
thing a browser anchors it firmly into a well-known context. This should be
useful for explaining it to our parents.

~~~
pimlottc
> More to the point, calling this thing a browser anchors it firmly into a
> well-known context. This should be useful for explaining it to our parents.

I think if I told my mom this was a browser, she would be confused to see
something that looks more like her text message than a web page.

~~~
omginternets
I'm going to gently accuse you of intellectual dishonesty, here ;)

In the phrasing you chose, you imply that it's a web browser -- this is the
source of the hypothetical confusion.

Now try this: "Mom, this is a lot like a web browser (i.e. firefox, chrome,
etc) but it's not for web pages. It's for a different kind of content".

Surely you'll admit this a helpful description...

~~~
majewsky
Not at all. Non-experts will always consider only the outward appearance
rather than the technical structure, since the latter is basically invisible
to them. (Compare for exampl how hackers are depicted on mass media. Same
principle.)

~~~
omginternets
>Non-experts will always consider only the outward appearance rather than the
technical structure

Exactly, and this thing behaves (outwardly) a lot like a web browser. It's
just not browsing _the web_.

The description is useful for hilighting the similarities between both
artefacts, mostly because Token _is_ , stricto-sensu, a browser!

~~~
DKnoll
Not to be patronising, but you should try tech support. You'll quickly
understand why arguments like this are futile.

------
AroundTheBlock_
Because it's not immediately clear, this is a project developed by Coinbase,
but under its own brand. The demo, which is available on the Apple Store and
Google Play store uses TestNet Ether for now.

~~~
lacker
Yeah, I found it confusing that the ownership of the project was nowhere
mentioned on tokenbrowser.com. The code seems to be copyrighted by "Token
Browser, Inc" so I'm curious what sort of entity that is, whether it's just
owned by Coinbase or what.

[https://github.com/tokenbrowser/token-app-
js/blob/master/LIC...](https://github.com/tokenbrowser/token-app-
js/blob/master/LICENCE)

------
STRML
I like the idea, but this is very confusing to end-consumers:

\- Is this just a messaging app? A payments app? A web browser?

\- It's all of those things, except not a web browser, it's an "app browser"
(why not app store, especially considering the whole point of these is that
they are paid?)

\- The starting experience is anything but compelling:
[http://i.imgur.com/U69Gskl.png](http://i.imgur.com/U69Gskl.png)

\- Is this developed by Coinbase? If so, why is there no mention, and the app
is developed by "Bluxome Labs"?

~~~
m3ta
The more confusing thing is what will happen when the userbase finds out
Ethereum "smart contracts" aren't good for anything except online gambling
which certainly will not be allowed on the TokenBrowser app. Also, I shook my
head when I saw your screenshot, that is certainly not a good first
impression.

~~~
pipermerriam
Isn't the history of technology riddled with inventions that "aren't good for
anything except ..." which turned out to be good for lots of things.

From the top of my head the following examples come to mind.

1\. Early criticism of the tablet was that nobody would use them because they
didn't have a keyboard.

2\. Early criticism of the internet was that nobody would _ever_ purchase
anything over the internet.

3\. Early criticism of dropbox mentioned elsewhere in this thread, "they're
just re-selling S3, why would anyone use that".

Disclaimer that I'm pretty deep in the Ethereum space so my perspective is
anything but objective, but it is informed as I know the space quite well.

Smart contracts are capable of big transformative change to how we do a lot of
things, but they are REALLY new and we're only just starting to learn how to
use them and what we can use them for. Here are some examples.

1\. Look at [ENS]([http://ens.domains/](http://ens.domains/)) as an example of
what DNS might look like if it weren't centralized.

2\. Look at [simple Escrow
examples]([https://dappsforbeginners.wordpress.com/tutorials/two-
party-...](https://dappsforbeginners.wordpress.com/tutorials/two-party-
contracts/)) for how smart contracts can remove middlemen from financial
transactions.

None of these things are likely to blow up into massive mainstream adoption
tomorrow but they are illustrative of what is possible and there are a _lot_
of people working very hard to make these things ready for mainstream
adoption.

~~~
sanswork
>how smart contracts can remove middlemen from financial transactions.

These sorts of things are trivially gamed and have been since they were first
proposed in the bitcoin space. Besides that you don't even remove a middleman
for this example since you still need the courier to act as the middleman.

------
aaron-lebo
I would find your pitch much more interesting if you didn't go from "look at
this very cool technology" to "look how we're changing the world for the
better for these poor people in Africa".

Be realistic. How many Sub-Saharan Africans are using Token or working on it
right now? You're first-world devs working on first-world tech and wrapping it
up in humanitarian terms because it makes you more attractive.

It's kind of exploitative. It's all about money at the end of the day, isn't
it?

I apologize for the rant. Just had a semester of classes on faith and
development and law and development and this stuff is often very complex and a
type of unintentional colonialism often runs through it.

"Hey, check out these people! Check out how much they need our help! Wouldn't
things be so much better if we did X for them?"

In many cases, yes, but in a lot of ways it is impossible for people who
aren't on the ground to properly understand culture, context, and needs. Does
the team have anyone on the ground? Is this informed by research on the topic?
From a less critical perspective, a portion of the site dedicated to such
research (and thus informing the goals) would be really cool and useful.

~~~
Freak_NL
> It's all about money at the end of the day, isn't it?

I'm still having a hard time seeing _any_ cryptocurrency based application as
anything but an attempt to facilitate speculation based on that currency's
value. There seem to be so many perverse incentives inherent to this
technology that I automatically find any idealistic application of it suspect.

Perhaps this is overly cynical, but all cryptocurrencies seem to boil down to
a system that would immensely benefit whoever came up with that particular
currency (by virtue of having mined all the early blocks before going public
or whatever) and whoever invested early if it ever took off.

~~~
jacquesm
> Perhaps this is overly cynical

Probably not, especially not for all the coins started after bitcoin took off.

Bitcoin itself may be an exception but without a reliable genesis story it's
impossible to know for sure.

~~~
nsebban
AFAIK Bitcoin early-mined blocks were mined and are still owned by its
creator. So it's perfectly ok to be cynical about Bitcoin as well.

Edit: Some details here [https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-
deserved-f...](https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-
fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/)

~~~
jacquesm
They are owned _or_ their wallet has long ago been lost.

It's not all that hard to permanently erase some bitcoins.

------
cordite
Aside from the app, and what it can facilitate, I find chat UIs to be a zone
for invention. Here Token partially formalized the UI [1] for menus and the
like. As it is with Telegram for example, you provide a "keyboard" of a grid
of buttons to press, similar to SOFA each button has a value. However Telegram
does not have menus, so general purpose bots need a lot of back and forth to
refine what the user's intention is. With SOFA, it seems to be one payload
with nested options that do not need to be committed in order to explore what
options there are, reducing concerns for connectivity requirements just to
find out what they can do.

[1]: [https://www.sofaprotocol.org](https://www.sofaprotocol.org)

~~~
fiatjaf
I don't understand what you say. You think it is something amazing that they
invented a message format? The UX continues to be more-or-less the same,
doesn't it?

~~~
cordite
I think it is a good thing that they are formalizing a chat based UI which may
work well with low connectivity. Connectivity isn't a stated concern, but I do
see it as addressed as round trip communication to discover affordances is
avoided.

------
zimzim
living in Zimbabwe now, there a severe shortage of cash, Im hoping a project
like this one will catch one day. good luck

~~~
aaron-lebo
Is Ether not in short supply around there?

Serious question - is it easier or more likely to fix government issues which
cause that lack of cash, or is it easier to fix those issues in order to get
the technical infrastructure necessary to transplant technology not even
widely used in the US?

The notion that a poor villager would be reliant on the Ethereum network for
anything is slightly terrifying. Where do they go if they're wronged, there's
a bug, or the people running the network decide upon a hard fork?

Is that a reliable money supply?

~~~
zimzim
they stated their aim is to help 2B people in develop countries. it is very
hard to fix the government. there are networks here, poor villagers how use
money have a phone, I think its better to by-pass the government. relying on
private company is terrifying as relying on third world government.
decentralized solution would be the best. also E-money is used here already,
trough the cellular company but they have a monopoly backed by the government
so its just another way of stealing from the people.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Thanks for the response. Hopefully Zimbabwe has a good future ahead.

------
joeblau
I just heard an interesting talk about this on the Bitcoin Podcast[1] a few
days ago. They have some inserting ideas around being able to democratize
startup stage investing.

[1] -
[http://thebitcoinpodcast.com/episode-120/](http://thebitcoinpodcast.com/episode-120/)

------
fabiosussetto
Are they using some implementation of the Ethereum light client protocol? Last
time I checked it wasn't available yet:
[https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-
protocol](https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Light-client-protocol)

If they are using the standard protocol then how do they connect to the
Ethereum network? Do they use their servers as proxy to the network? Because
if it's so, that would defeat the whole point to me.

~~~
AroundTheBlock_
No, they're not using the Light Client yet for that very reason, but easily
could in the future. But in any case, no crypto wallets are light clients. All
Bitcoin wallets, for example, use servers because it's impossible to do
Bitcoin light clients (at least, they haven't found a solution yet).

This app is more about having WeChat with crypto payments and with app
interactions. Light client could come later though.

~~~
wslh
> All Bitcoin wallets, for example, use servers because it's impossible to do
> Bitcoin light clients (at least, they haven't found a solution yet).

No, SPV clients exist to avoid running a node:
[https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4649/what-is-
an-...](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/4649/what-is-an-spv-
client)

~~~
AroundTheBlock_
No true light client exists. SPV is different. See here a Core dev talking
about it.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/53bfj6/will_there_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/53bfj6/will_there_be_official_litespv_wallet_for_users/d7swdyy/)

Even your own links says "A Bitcoin implementation that does not verify
everything, but instead relies on either connecting to a trusted node"

~~~
wslh
It verifies enough information to be secure. It is obvious that at one point
they need to connect to some node because this ia the way blockcgain works.

~~~
AroundTheBlock_
Ok sure, connect to another node. But a light client is its _own_ node.

~~~
wslh
That doesn't exist per definition. You cannot have a light client that its own
node and it is not the node defined in the specific blockchain. The bitcoin
innovation was about using a common ledger for every node and the nodes must
run specific code to check that the blockchain state is the correct one.

If you find a way a node can do less work that what is doing now without
relying on another node you would discover something new at the computer
science level, so this light node will transform into the definition of a
node.

------
argentinaIT
Is this supposed to be a UI for end users of smart contracts? Are smart
contracts widely deployed in production yet? Or just b2bexperiments
experiments ?

~~~
dubrocks
It's a darknet market replacement.

~~~
kordless
I'm honestly curious about this _thing_ I see occasionally on HackerNews. The
observation of the _thing_ are mostly negative comments, irrational in nature,
which are presented by a significantly aged account with very low karma and
posting history.

Servicing the underbanked is an important goal. I know people working on
solving underbanked issues and I know it is important to them and support
them.

In this case, your comment is a completely blatant blaming statement. Just
because less than traditional marketplaces share a similarity to this product,
or the other way around, is no indication it's _intended_ use is a darknet
market replacement. In other words, the developers intent here is unlikely to
be what you claim, simply by way of a biased comparison. The outcome of use by
users may be different certainly, but that doesn't make your claim valid, or
rational.

In fact, the only _group_ who would be mostly likely to make this claim would
be a group who seeks to control markets. If such a group sought to control
markets, by manipulation of sentiment and social logic (of which is required
for discussing said post) then a highly rational thing to do would be to
create a lot of accounts over a long period of time and then use those
accounts randomly to post negative sentiment about things that _remove_
control from the group.

Further, I present an observation that _by not knowing_ who it is that is
posting, we (the HackerNews group) are doing ourselves a disservice in letting
these individuals have an equal voice, especially when it is a voice of blame.
That is not to say that entities should be denied posting when new, but
perhaps those entities should be required to engage in positive additions to
the discussion before being able to be blaming, as I am doing here, clearly.
Of course, I have the karma to do so and a long history of comments that can
be inspected to verify identity.

That's a good use-case for cryptocurrencies, and text messaging, if there ever
was one. I'd like to see a project, similar to HN be developed which
implements this using similar techniques to eliminate the increasing inclusion
of irrational arguments into the discussion.

~~~
skybrian
What makes you so sure that cryptocurrency brings anything to the table that
the underbanked would want? Particularly since M-Pesa is changing the world
(in some countries) without it?

I agree it is worth exploring, but we need to treat this as an open question.
Easy conversion to/from other currencies at stable rates may be more important
to most users than the theoretical benefits of decentralization.

I think the most obvious use (hypothetically, not proven) is in countries that
have seriously unstable currencies or controls on foreign exchange that the
user is avoiding. "Darknet" doesn't seem like all that bad a way to refer to
these use cases, so I'd say the gp is unsubtle and perhaps dismissive but not
irrational.

~~~
kordless
> What makes you so sure that cryptocurrency brings anything to the table that
> the underbanked would want?

What makes you ask leading questions which cast my comments into a blaming
statement that I think cryptocurrencies bring anything to improving the
underbanked's situation or experience? This is what is called speaking for
others. I intensely dislike people speaking for me.

As a matter of my own truth on this subject, I actually have no opinion on
whether the application of cryptocurrencies is a good one or not to this
problem, given I'm not underbanked or in a 3rd world country dealing with the
challenges of moving money around in less than trustworthy environments.
Further, I have no second hand knowledge of the problem myself.

What I do know is that there are a LOT of underbanked people, there are people
working on this, some of which I know, and that I support them in their
efforts. Whether or not their efforts are good ones or not, I cannot speak to.

My point of commenting was primarily addressing the fact we can no longer
trust random comments from accounts with little to no posting history, which
insist on making blanket blaming statements that infer all new decentralized
technologies are somehow linked, inexplicably, to crime.

------
camjohnson26
What can you actually do with this, other than chat and send payments? There's
only 2 apps in the recommended section and they're both basic.

~~~
pipermerriam
This is an early release of something intended to be a platform on which
independent developers can build applications. Everything on there is meant to
be illustrative of what you can do. Currently it only operates on the test
network so it's a _toy_ for the time being.

------
wslh
I think the token economy will growth and growth. We can expect good and
really bad news because anyone can participate.

My company is receiving many inquiries oriented to managing funds and trading.
Also, In the context of YC Startup School we are building an API for multiple
cryptocurrencies, tokens, and smart contracts. We are even disassembling smart
contracts to gather more metrics about the blockchain usage. If you are
interested on using it instead of building your own infrastructure please
contact me via my company page.

------
627467
Token's client is a lot faster (and much less buggy) than status.im.

------
alkonaut
This would be a huge thing in places where there isn't a good free bank
account-to-bank account money transfer app. which I assume is why facebook is
also eyeing such things.

~~~
spideytingles
Only if they have easy access to Ethereum tokens, which is doubtful. Bitcoin
is a lot easier to obtain than Ethereum is, usually people have to buy Bitcoin
to buy Ethereum, that's a lot of effort just to use an app.

~~~
benjaminmbrown
No you don't 'have' to buy bitcoin to buy eth. Coinbase, which is known as the
largest fiat-> btc/eth platform allows fiat -> eth directly. But yes, I agree
that easy access to eth or btc is not available at the moment for those
outside the US or outside the neckbeard community

------
_pdp_
Maybe I am not getting it but ethereum is way to complex to make it successful
- and because it is decentralised it looks deeply fragmented. As I said, I am
probably not getting it.

~~~
terhechte
It is indeed looking very complex, but that's because (as others have pointed
out) it is still rather young. Ethereum itself is being implemented with a
phased roadmap: Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, Serenity. We're still in the
Homestead phase, and Metropolis (the next phase) will, for example include "a
relatively full-featured user interface for non-technical users" [1]. But even
this is probably still years away from simple usability for an average user.

Also, remember that understanding happens in layers. The web with all its
components also once looked very alien to all of us (DNS, REST, Server,
Client, Browser, FTP, Gopher, P2P, HTML, Javascript, the list goes on). We
just take it all for granted because we grew up while layers were piled on
top. But if you can't even tell a client from a server, then understanding how
a modern web app works will also take a long time and will look way too
complex.

This is not to say that ethereum will be as revolutionary as the web, just
that simplicity can easier grow out of complexity than complexity can grow out
of simplicity

[1] [https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/03/03/ethereum-launch-
process...](https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/03/03/ethereum-launch-process/)

~~~
aaron-lebo
Not to be dense, but don't understand your argument.

You just listed how Ethereum is a sizable tech stack and still growing and
then suggest that it will eventually get simpler - after it has more users,
after there is technical lock-in.

That seems contradictory to many working projects. Perhaps it is complex? It's
a reinvention of almost the entire web stack.

~~~
terhechte
Sorry, I could have been more elaborate. Let me try to give some examples of
what I mean:

\- A computer is quite complicated: It requires electricity, gates,
transistors, boolean logic, a CPU, machine code, a machine code low level boot
loader, an operating system, a windowing server, an application framework. And
finally, within the application framework we can build something like Notepad
that is really trivial and simple to understand for the average user. A
calculator is much simpler (given the whole tech stack), but trying to enter
text there (like in notepad) would be much more difficult (if it had a stack,
you could enter the hex value of each char, making up words). In this case,
the beautiful simplicity that defines modern computing can only work because
we first had to build and invent all the layers below it.

\- A web browser / server is also, again, really complicated. The end result
is that users go to google.com, enter a search term, and receive the results.
Without the additional complexity of MapReduce, millions of servers, AI, etc,
Google search wouldn't be so simple.

Ethereum is still in the phase where complex technology is added so that
finally simple layers can be put on top. Raiden [1] is an example of that: As
a user, I want to pay something immediately. Looking at a block explorer after
payment with a transaction ID to see when there're enough blockchain
confirmations is very complex. At some point this will be the technology under
the hood as transactions will happen in near-realtime. Then, no user has to
even understand the transaction, transaction time and confirmations.

Ethereum is indeed re-inventing much of the current web stack, but this
happens, of course, in the context of decentralised, trustless, open
computing.

[1] [https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/lightning-fast-
raiden-n...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/lightning-fast-raiden-
network-coming-to-ethereum-blockchains-1471030245/)

------
fiatjaf
See also Status, which is very very similar and open-source:
[https://status.im/](https://status.im/)

------
ksahin
This is huge ! So many new Ethereum project out there : Token, Status.im,
Augur, Golem, Aragon ... It's amazing to see such an ecosystem growing so
fast.

------
Perignon
I'll bite. Why do I need this?

~~~
drcode
You know how twitter killed off all those nice third-party twitter clients a
while ago? With this tool, even the creators of the app can't stop people from
creating alternate UIs for chat/payments/etc.

You know how AWS went down a while ago and github (and a zillion other sites)
stopped working? With this tool, you could log into a repo manager (several
are in the works) and there is no single point of failure that can take it
offline.

You know how you wanted to send money from Taiwan to the US and the bank wire
was declined despite repeated attempts and without any clear explanation and
your money was trapped in a bank account in Taiwan? (might not have happened
to you, but is happening to me at the moment) with this tool the exact rules
for how a particular currency can move around is specified ahead of time in
clear turing-complete computer code.

~~~
cookiecaper
>You know how twitter killed off all those nice third-party twitter clients a
while ago? With this tool, even the creators of the app can't stop people from
creating alternate UIs for chat/payments/etc.

The only reason Twitter can stop that now is because the force of law stands
behind their admonitions. How would Ethereum stop Twitter from suing a big
alternate app vendor? The barriers that exist to prevent this are already non-
technical.

>You know how AWS went down a while ago and github (and a zillion other sites)
stopped working? With this tool, you could log into a repo manager (several
are in the works) and there is no single point of failure that can take it
offline.

Ethereum is an append-only system such that data inserted cannot be revoked? I
know how btc works but have only glanced at Ethereum. I know programs are
registered as parts of the blockchain, but all data and assets? If not, how do
you ensure there is no point of failure for an interface like GitHub, or do
you just mean the code to run it will always be available since it will be in
the chain?

>You know how you wanted to send money from Taiwan to the US and the bank wire
was declined despite repeated attempts and without any clear explanation and
your money was trapped in a bank account in Taiwan?

Again, this is not a technical limitation. The banking system has every
ability to move those numbers around. They are declining to do so without
disclosing the reason. In this case, Ethereum/Bitcoin are not functionally
different than using any other non-seized liquid asset. Someone could refuse
to honor your ETH/BTC transfer just as easily as they could refuse to accept
your USD transfer.

------
ankitgupta191
I tried using it. It works like a charm. May be I felt good because I have
been following the Ethereum ecosystem. I am fine if someone would have felt
otherwise.

------
j_s
I asked the first time this was mentioned on the Status thread:

Is this an end run around Apple's 30% of IAP?

------
jerf
Is reputation a single number associated with an identity, or is there a
network element to it?

------
valarauca1
Yo can I get a copy of the Apps source code?

Open Whisper Systems source is GPLv3.

~~~
leshow
How is whatsapp using it then?

~~~
r3bl
By running its own network, based on Signal's protocol. Same thing goes with
"private conversations" in Facebook's Messenger, or whatever it's called.

It's all the same protocol, but three different networks running that
protocol. You can't communicate between these networks, and you'll need three
accounts in order to communicate to people using these networks.

In fact, Whisper Systems has actively killed every third party app that tried
plugging into Signal's network. While there's nothing stopping you from making
a client, expect a lot of hostility from them if you decide to do so.

------
computerwizard
Did anyone else register a bunch of 'leet' usernames?

I wonder if they will reset the usernames when it gets put on livenet because
it kind of seems unfair.

------
bhouston
Who sends tips like that? Hopefully there are better use cases.

~~~
brickmort
Watching how WeChat is used in China was very eye-opening:
[https://youtu.be/leFuF-zoVzA?t=546](https://youtu.be/leFuF-zoVzA?t=546)

------
bflesch
I applaud the effort the coinbase team has put into this project. Yet I'm
sceptical if this will be the breakthrough for cryptocurrencies.

