
Stellar - gdb
https://stripe.com/blog/stellar
======
jxf
I was able to successfully sign up and get 5,000 STR, so that worked for me at
least. But then I started looking a little deeper into the blog post.

> Development is led by Jed McCaleb and Dr. David Mazieres in collaboration
> with a small team of others. (The technology is based on the open-source
> Ripple project, originally created by Jed a few years ago.)

So, is Stellar fundamentally the same thing as and/or a fork of Ripple?
They've hired the same guy who started Ripple (Jed McCaleb), and as I recall
there were a lot of concerns around that, as noted in a WSJ article [0] and
other places. Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members
-- and so wields a considerable amount of influence.

If so, then doesn't it have all the same problems and concerns as Ripple?
Centralized authority holding a large chunk of initial funds, questionable
governance decisions, etc., just to name a few of the political problems, not
just the technical ones.

I'd love to see the "IP layer for currency" described by Stripe succeed, but
I'm not sure that this implementation of it represents a good idea. And I'm
also concerned about whether Jed, the cofounder of both MtGox and Ripple, has
the best interests of Stellar at heart.

[0] [http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/22/ripple-
alternative...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/22/ripple-alternative-
digital-currency-plunges-as-mccaleb-liquidates/)

~~~
mrb
_" If so, then doesn't it have all the same problems and concerns as Ripple?"_

Correct. Like Ripple, Stellar requires special (and dangerous) trust in
certain nodes. For example, gateways
([https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-
stellar/#gateways](https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-
stellar/#gateways)) have to be trusted by the Stellar network as they send
messages like "a user deposited 100 USD via a bank wire transfer, so please
accept this digital representation of 100 USD, trust me". This trust is
dangerous as people running an (initially) honest gateway may start acting
maliciously and lie about how much USD or EUR or other currency exist on the
network. By the time the malice is detected, maybe the network could trace all
USD or EUR that was issued by the gateway, and revoke it, suddenly pissing off
a lot of users who owns this currency as it would disappear from their wallet.
Users would then loose trust in Stellar, and the network would collapse...

Stripe would presumably be the first gateway trusted by the Stellar network.
Okay, so what if Stripe decided they could not trust other gateways and wanted
to remain the only gateway? Well Stripe would be the _only_ way to inject USD
or EUR or other currencies in the network, effectively making Stellar a fully
centralized digital currency, with the entire Stellar network being dependent
on Stripe not being hacked, not being abused by a malicious employee, not
shutting down, etc.

This is the complete opposite design principle of Bitcoin which requires
absolutely no trust in any specific authority.

~~~
gdb
Gateways actually don't have to be trusted by the network. Think of them as
similar to stores issuing credit: the gateway just says "the user has a credit
for 100 USD, redeemable at my store". That credit is tradable, but only to
other users who trust credit from that gateway.

This means there needs to emerge a good system for users to decide which
gateways to trust, but a malicious gateway can only directly harm the users
who have decided to trust it.

The beauty of this model is anyone can become a gateway at any time. See for
example the gist linked at the end of the Stellar blog post:
[https://gist.github.com/thejollyrogers/b114b5a98fa11a5a4ad0](https://gist.github.com/thejollyrogers/b114b5a98fa11a5a4ad0)
— becoming a gateway is just two API calls.

~~~
mrb
"The _network_ does not need to trust gateways, but _users_ need to trust
them" -> a subtle difference, but it does not change my point: trusting a
gateway's honesty is required.

So let's say I choose to not trust any gateway and their currencies, and
instead decide to transact in the native stellar currency directly. This is a
strange choice: why have support for alternate currencies if the Stellar
protocol in itself can do nothing to help gateways gain trust? You might as
well have, say, Amazon not even bother becoming a gateway issuing their own
USD_Amazon, but instead Amazon would just accept the stellar currency
directly. In this case I am still required to trust the native stellar
currency. I am required to trust that Stellar --the nonprofit organization--
will correctly follow their mandate
([https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/)):
distributing x% to X, y% to Y, etc, properly thwarting fraud attempts from
people with many fake Facebook accounts, properly thwarting fraud attempts
during voting
([https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_creation](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_creation)),
properly thwarting fraud attempts from people building fake nonprofits to
attempts to gain a share of the 25% of stellars reserved for nonprofits, etc.
And Stellar trusts Facebook, so I am even required to trust that there is no
malicious employee at Facebook that will exploit APIs to attempt to gain
stellars. You plan to distribute stellars through SMS? Heck I now need to
trust telecom carrier employees, etc. Even if you are honest and make no
operational mistake, fighting all these fraud attempts will be a large uphill
battle, and there is way too much trust required, way too many possibilities
for mistakes to happen.

Contrast this with Bitcoin: all Bitcoin requires is trust in three
cryptographic algorithms which fit in a few thousand lines of code (ECDSA
w/secp256k1, SHA-256, and RIPEMD-160).

I appreciate the attempt of building a different payment technology, but
Stellar should not mislead people into believing they are similar to Bitcoin
("Stellar is decentralized [...] owes a lot to Bitcoin"). Stellar threw away
the most fundamental element of Bitcoin: complete decentralization (including
decentralization of the issuance of units of currency.)

~~~
ender7
In practice, however, using BitCoin requires trusting something that is the
equivalent of a gateway (an exchange) with your BitCoins if you want to be
able to freely trade them.

The fact that this weakness does not appear in the BitCoin protocol, but is
rather implied by the human desire for convenience and marketplaces, doesn't
make it less of a flaw. One can sneer at everyone who lost money with MtGox
for "choosing poorly", so to speak, but on the other hand exchanges are the
driving force behind BitCoin's success.

~~~
grubles
Your choice in trading Bitcoin freely is not only via an exchange. There are
other means such as p2p markets like #bitcoin-otc or localbitcoins.

------
techtivist
It seems to me Stellar (the organization) will be "the Central Bank" a la Bank
for International Settlements at the global level or Federal Reserve for
Stellar (the cryptocurrency).

This is what makes me uncomfortable. The biggest point about cryptocurrencies
is that they are not centralized. In that sense Stellar seems a lot worse than
regular currency. With a regular currency, at least the respective Central
Bank or other monetary regulatory authority has credibility and accountability
in the sense that they are indirectly elected by citizens as they are selected
by the elected government. As such they have to have a history of integrity
and monetary experience, and can be removed if they act unethically.

Stellar's board, on the other hand, is self-elected, and with all due respect,
don't need to have the level of accountability or have the credibility of
running such an organization, which even if it owns "just 5%" (+2% of
Stripe's) of the currency can potentially have substantial control over it.
And being a non-profit doesn't add a stamp of either, means little.

~~~
gdb
The Stellar Foundation will actually control relatively little. The creation
of new stellars, for example, will be done in a fully distributed fashion:
[https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_creation](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_creation).

To clarify, of the total 5% reserved for operations, ownership is currently:

\- 2% to Stripe (the majority of which we're going to auction off to other
companies, with net profits being returned to the foundation) \- 2.5% to
employees
([https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensat...](https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensation)),
vesting over four years

As needed, the organization will also hold open auctions to raise funds from
its remaining pool of stellars
([https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_...](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_the_foundation_and_auction)),
which will conveniently distribute the stellars further.

Note also there's a five-year lockup for the founders:
[https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution).

Are there actions you're worried that the organization might be able to take
given this?

~~~
wyager
>The Stellar Foundation will actually control relatively little. The creation
of new stellars, for example, will be done in a fully distributed fashion

It's not fully distributed. All the decision-making nodes are controlled by
Stellar. Just because there is stake-based voting involved does not mean the
underlying system is distributed.

~~~
gdb
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your objection, but you can actually run your own
stellard, which is a first-class member of the network:
[https://github.com/stellar/stellard](https://github.com/stellar/stellard).
The Foundation runs a public stellard for convenience, but you're under no
obligation to use it. The client and wallet powering launch.stellar.org are
similarly open-source, and can be hooked up to your local stellard.

~~~
wyager
Stellar is a fork of Ripple. It is not a decentralized system, in the sense
that, if you want to use any given currency (such as stellars), you must trust
a number of centralized, trusted nodes. This is Ripple's/Stellar's "solution"
to the double-spend problem.

~~~
gdb
Here's a related (though not completely equivalent) thread on Reddit that I
think does a good job of framing this topic:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2c910w/stripe_gets_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2c910w/stripe_gets_more_involved_in_cryptocurrencies/cjdcv9e).

~~~
wyager
Specifically, "Apart from that, block signers synchronize through the
Consensus algorithm which is a semi-trusted model."

Emphasis on "semi-trusted", i.e. "not worth shit from a decentralization
standpoint".

------
pmorici
This kind of looks like a re-branding of Ripple. Ripple had a lot of image
issues after one of the founders quit accusing the company of unethical
behavior. Kind of unfortunate that Stripe would through their weight behind
Ripple in any way.

~~~
pc
Yeah, the image issues were unfortunate -- but the tech is good, and Jed and
David have a lot of promising ideas about how to make it even better. Jed and
Joyce have been scrupulous about being fair and transparent in how the Stellar
Foundation is structured. There's more about this (including governance
documents) at
[https://www.stellar.org/about/](https://www.stellar.org/about/).

~~~
muneeb
I'm actually more excited about David joining this effort (and entering the
cryptocurrency space) than anything else. Stellar, also, looks promising (-:

------
olouv
The password recovery scheme is so poorly designed, that's borderline scary:
You can't use the recovery code sent by email after registration without
validating your email first (but since you have the code, your email is
obviously valid)... which requires you to login (but if you don't have your
password, well, you can't log in)... Great!... one lost account for me.

~~~
muneeb
+1, the recovery code shouldn't go out in plain text email. Also, I picked a
weak password just to quickly make an account and I can't seem to change it,
hmmm.

------
voronoff
Anyone else concerned that there seems to be a permanent confirmation code for
resetting pw sent in plain text over email?

"Keep this code SAFE. Anyone with this code and your username can gain access
to your account"

Where I'm from, that is a password.

~~~
marcell
While I am not too familiar with how Stellar/Ripple work, I assume they are
sending an un-encrypted version of your Stellar private key, or perhaps the
equivalent of a bitcoin master private key [1].

I say un-encrypted based on their claim that the code + username can be used
to gain access; typically sites will encrypt the recovery code with your
password. Based on this, I conjecture that they decided in favor of usability
in the usability-security tradeoff.

[1]
[https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawi...](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki)

------
lnanek2
Pretty strange how Stellar is paying people to sign up with Facebook. Facebook
is very centralized. These modern currencies are very decentralized. I don't
mind myself, but it seems like paying someone to sign up with the enemy...

~~~
gdb
I hear you. It's a temporary measure:
[https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_Why_do_I_need_to_authenticate_...](https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_Why_do_I_need_to_authenticate_with_Facebook_to_receive_my_stellars_).
Basically, it was an easy (but imperfect) way to start. We'd certainly love
suggestions for other channels to distribute stellars.

~~~
spacefight
The signup with FB to get 5000 stellars pushed me off. Why should I give a
totally new non-profit organisation access to my FB profile? I guess most of
the devs here know, what that mean in terms of privacy.

~~~
gdb
Yep, for sure. The goal is to get stellars into the hands of as many people as
possible, and so moving beyond just FB is definitely a priority. (If you want,
I'd be happy to send you a few stellar to play with in the meanwhile.)

~~~
borec
I absolutely hate Facebook but I have a Facebook account which I never use
(mostly used to look up people). I tried to use this account during the
Stellar registration process and I am getting "Facebook account is too new to
qualify". Can you please help?

~~~
gdb
Oof, that's annoying. We probably can't tell the age on your account. If you
send me your stellar username, I'll send some stellars over.

~~~
0x0
Aren't fb user IDs assigned as increasing numbers? You could probably just
decide on a cut-off user ID and treat all lower numbers as "older".

~~~
ahupp
They are increasing within any one user database, but there are many of these
databases. So useridA < useridB only implies B is newer than A if
dbid(useridA) == dbid(useridB).

------
danielweber
David Mazières wrote one of my favorite papers ever, "Get Me Off Your Fucking
Mailing List"
[http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/](http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/)
July 2005

~~~
giarc
[http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf](http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf)

Figure 1 is particularly helpful.

~~~
JonnieCache
Every time I see figure 1 I completely lose it.

------
eridius
Site seems to have broken. It never finished connecting to Facebook, and now
when I go to the dashboard the steps are missing entirely. When I go to
Settings and try and enable password recovery I get "Server error". In the
Console it says it got a 502 from api.stellar.org.

That's in Chrome. In Safari, I don't even get a response to clicking on a
settings toggle. Merely loading the dashboard gives me a CORS error.

~~~
joyce
Sorry, our web client is currently down under the load. We're on it.

~~~
eridius
Looks like it's working now. Thanks!

Edit: Spoke too soon. My wife can't sign up. Button just says "Sending"
indefinitely.

Edit 2: She just got an email confirmation code, despite the signup eventually
failing outright. But she can't log in, says the username is invalid. So what
is the confirmation code associated with?

Edit 3: It finally worked. Yay!

~~~
joyce
Ha! Thanks for sticking with it and we will keep working on smoothing things
out.

------
loupeabody
Agh, the Stellar client requires a Facebook login to get a share of the
initial batch. :/

~~~
tzaman
Of course it does, otherwise I'd be able to register an unlimited number of
accounts to get as much free Stellars as I wanted.

~~~
floatrock
The barrier to creating an unlimited number of facebook accounts is a half
step above creating an unlimited number of gmail or hotmail accounts.

No, the whole point of connecting with facebook is to focus on the UX of
making electronic payments. Who's going to remember their coffee date's wallet
is 1BeX1pVAjD94hNs6C5d2dB3TRnLx53dXg3? QR codes are cute, but haven't quite
hit the mainstream. It's a lot easier to say "Ben Bitdiddle" and have Ben's
facebook picture pop up.

The network effects of scanning your entire social graph (and the data
contained within) doesn't hurt either. Works fantastically for Venmo.

~~~
Kronopath
Other discussions here are saying that Stellar scans the Facebook account to
check whether it looks like a spam account set up to exploit the giveaway. It
rejects accounts that are newly registered, for instance.

~~~
SimpleXYZ
I'd be surprised if that's true. I signed up with my fake FB account and it
worked just fine. The account is a complete spammy mess so if they are
attempting that, they are not doing a very good job. I would say more likely
no new accounts allowed and that's it...

------
peter_l_downs
Tried signing up but after a minute of waiting I was told my username was
already taken. Then, I received an email saying I successfully signed up (with
that same username), with a broken link to "forums.stellar.org". Managed to
visit "forum.stellar.org" without an issue. I think you may have launched a
little soon...

EDIT: now unable to log in with my username and password combination.

~~~
dmnd
Same problem here. My account seems to be in an inconsistent state. I can't
log in, but my username and email are "already in use".

------
david_arcos
> We are currently using Facebook as a verification method to avoid spam but
> hope to add other methods soon. We will not post on your Facebook.

Mandatory connect to Facebook? No, thanks.

~~~
joyce
I am one of the folks working at Stellar. Yes, FB isn't a login method that
will work for everyone. Today is just day 1; we plan on adding more methods
soon.

Also, anyone can create an account/wallet without even registering your email.
FB auth is only for the giveaway.

~~~
david_arcos
Looking forward to it, thanks for your message.

Anyways, I just did the "Set up password recovery", and instead of getting
1.000 stellars it forces me again into FB.

~~~
kandalf
That makes sense - to get any stellars from the giveaway (either from the
initial sign up or from setting up password recovery), you need to confirm
your identity. Otherwise, you'd be able to create a bunch of accounts and just
get the 1k from password recovery on each.

------
wyager
100% pre-mined? No thanks.

People complain about the distribution of Bitcoin being imbalanced. This is
100x worse.

~~~
oafitupa
It's a fork of Ripple, lol.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272)

~~~
VMG
They forgot to run sed in a few places

[https://github.com/stellar/stellard/tree/master/src](https://github.com/stellar/stellard/tree/master/src)

~~~
jejejajo
Stellar shills are downvoting you, lol.

------
scottmp10
This is a Bitcoin-like, distributed, secure payment system WITH a federated
protocol for gateways/exchanges. A federated exchange network allows anyone to
participate, similar to email servers. But since trust is so much more
important in this case, I think that network effects will result in a
relatively small set of gateways that anyone will actually interact with.

~~~
oafitupa
No this is _not_ Bitcoin-like. It's premined and requires trust. Besides, it's
just a fork of Ripple, which has already failed after being dumped by its
creator.

[http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg)

Oh but it has integration with Facebook, so I guess that changes everything!
/s

~~~
murbard2
Bitcoin also requires trust, specifically the trust that miners will not
collude to double spend.

There is also nothing fundamental about the idea of issuing coins as a reward
for mining. It's just one possibility among many, there's nothing
intrinsically "fair" about it.

~~~
leshow
In Bitcoin, you trust the way the network as defined by the code has been set
up, not the miners specifically.

In this situation you have the code to audit but you also have to trust the
Stellar Foundation... I have to trust they are telling me the truth about how
they are distributing the currency, that they won't sell their shares early,
that these 3 people heading the foundation are going to act in my interests,
etc.

What if the Stellar Foundation dissolves in a month? What happens to the
currency?

~~~
murbard2
>In Bitcoin, you trust the way the network as defined by the code has been set
up, not the miners specifically.

Wrong, you trust the miners not to collude and attack the network.

I know you've heard the claim over and over that Bitoin is trustless, but that
doesn't make it true.

------
Titanous
Interesting, this looks like a fork of Ripple (and is by an original creator
of Ripple).

~~~
kylebrown
Yup, obviously a fork of Ripple. While at Ripple, Jed acqui-hired his gf Joyce
(SimpleHoney). Then MtGox blew up (Jed still had his profit-sharing agreement
with MtGox from his sale to Mark Karpeles). Then Jed announced he was going to
dump his 9 billion XRPs ("fyi, XRP dump incoming") because he didn't like the
direction his co-founder Chris was taking Ripple.

Then he launches Stellar, the XRP clone. Didn't even bother to change the
total token amount (both XRP and Stellar have a cap of 100 billion tokens).

~~~
percentcer
This sounds like a stable currency that is well worth my time and interest

~~~
oafitupa
Except it's premined and centralized. It's "stable" until its creator decides
to dump, like they did with Ripple.

~~~
otoburb
Dumping Stellar coins should be prevented for at least five years provided the
creators adhere to the agreement described in their Mandate page:

"In order to provide additional stability to the system, the nonprofit
founders and Stripe have voluntarily agreed not sell any of the stellars
initially received (either via employee grants in the case of the founders or
via repayment of the loan) for at least five years; however, Stripe may
auction any of their stellars, provided the recipients also agree not to sell
their stellars for five years, and net profits are returned to the
Foundation."[1]

[1]
[https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution)

------
tomasien
Is anyone else having trouble with the client? My whole team is trying to sign
up and are having a myriad of issues, but I can't submit to the forum because
my username and password keep not working even when I make new ones.

------
borski
This is an awesome idea, and we want to help support it.

To that end: how do we disclose a security vulnerability? Is there a PGP key
posted, or some other system for us to do that?

~~~
andrewstellar
Thanks! Please contact hello@stellar or one of the admins directly on freenode
channel #stellar-dev.

------
kzanul
Was wondering what was going to come following the post on Bitcoin as an IP
layer. This is great stuff - looking forward to seeing how it evolves.

~~~
oafitupa
I'm sorry but this is not "great stuff", it's just a fork of Ripple:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272)

~~~
danoprey
Yes, by the creator of Ripple who was forced out. This is the continuation of
Ripple towards what it was supposed to be.

------
ISL
The Stellar.org post is here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8114871](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8114871)

~~~
pieton
No stripe.com URL boost = you'll have to work the hard way.

~~~
dang
Whoa. There is absolutely no stripe.com URL boost, or any other kind of URL
boost.

The stellar.org post set off HN's voting ring detector.

Edit: I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed the parent meant that HN itself was
boosting certain URLs, as opposed to, say, name-recognition by users. The
latter kind of thing is no doubt a factor.

~~~
napoleond
_> There is absolutely no stripe.com URL boost_

Parent may have just meant an organic boost--I certainly notice submissions
from certain domains above others, and from the looks of things it appears
that others do, too. Not necessarily a bad thing at all, but it does seem to
be an observable effect.

 _> The stellar.org post set off HN's voting ring detector._

My understanding of the detector is that (among other things, presumably) it
applies a penalty when visitors follow a link directly to the submission from
a page other than "new", "news", etc. Is it possible that there is a bug (at
least, I think it would be a bug) by which it also penalizes submissions where
the visitor has followed a link from elsewhere _on HN_ (eg. parent's link)? I
followed the link and upvoted the story, and I assume several others used that
path as well.

~~~
dang
> Parent may have just meant an organic boost

Good point. I may have gotten over-sensitive! Will edit accordingly.

------
rjsamson
I posted this on the support forum as well, but myself and at least one other
user have had this problem: I created an account, but it timed out and never
took me to the next page, however I received the two confirmation emails
(including the pw recovery code). When I try to log in though, I get invalid
username or password, and the password recovery code is useless. So it looks
like it's possible to create an account which is completely inaccessible.

EDIT: Looks like more folks are reporting the same issue.

------
AnthonyMouse
I have to assume that becoming a gateway requires navigating the Byzantine
Hellscape of multinational financial and banking regulations. Have they
discovered some non-obvious way to avoid this or are the gateways expected to
be run primarily by existing financial institutions?

~~~
wmf
The gateways are expected to be run primarily by Stripe? :-)

------
GregorStocks
I registered for this and got 5,000.999999 Stellars. Kinda curious about the
0.999999 part...

~~~
Walkman
The values are probably stored in float, which is ridiculous.

~~~
jonny_eh
A better way to phrase what you just did:

    
    
        Maybe the values are stored as a float? But that would be silly, so there must be a better reason.

~~~
mingabunga
From FAQs: To prevent spam, each transaction burns 10 microstellars (that is,
0.00001 stellars).

~~~
theswan
Where do the 10 microstellars go? Are they actually destroyed?

~~~
makomk
If it's the same as Ripple which this is based on, then the 10 microstellars
are destroyed, yes.

------
jakewalker
Not a great sign up experience - I signed up and linked my Facebook account.
Then, I went to click on the link to confirm my e-mail address (from the
confirmation e-mail) and got logged out. Now, my login isn't working, nor is
password recovery. Impossible to figure out whether I mistyped my username or
there is some other issue, and no "Forgot My Username"-type feature to be able
to make sure.

------
k2enemy
I'm anxious to try it out, but don't have a Facebook account needed to get the
seed currency.

------
GigabyteCoin
So after giving them access to my facebook account I was told "Your Facebook
account is too new to qualify. Stay tuned for new ways to grab stellars."

How unfortunate. And strange seeing as the account is many years old.

~~~
Taek
Do you have enough friends? A common spam prevention measure checks for 100+
friends. It may just assume that if you have less, the account is 'new'

------
opendais
This is very exciting if it pans out. An interchange layer for money that
isn't controlled by the incumbent organizations could enable all sorts of
interesting innovations. <3

------
StavrosK
No mining, instant confirmations, inflation rather than deflation?
Interesting.

~~~
wmf
It's not really inflation. Oh, never mind.

------
tlrobinson
_" The network has been initialized with a supply of 100 billion stellars. 5%
will be used to fund operations of the nonprofit (its spending, including
employee compensation, will be public), and the remaining 95% of the stellars
will be distributed for free as quickly as we can manage."_

IIRC Ripple's founders (including Jed) kept about 20% of XRP, and Ripple Labs
kept about 25%, so only 5% is a lot better, but it's still a very centralized
solution to distribution.

I do like that they're distributing 20% of the Stellars to BTC (and XRP)
holders, though:
[https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program)

~~~
gdb
We hope that it'll end up being considerably more even than Bitcoin
distribution. One note is that of the 5%, 2% is currently held by Stripe.
We're going to auction off most of our Stellars, and return the proceeds to
the Foundation.

The Foundation is also being transparent about where the remaining stellars
are going, namely: 2.5% to existing employees
([https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensat...](https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensation)),
and over time it'll distribute more stellars in order to raise funds
([https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_...](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_the_foundation_and_auction)).

But, yes, solving the distribution question is a hard problem :-).

~~~
simonebrunozzi
I think it would be wise to let people invest now in order to acquire stellars
later on - assuming more funding would be welcome by the foundation.

------
owenversteeg
I got this message when signing up with my Facebook account (which I only use
for signing in to services, not to connect with people, which may be why I got
it):

Oops! Our spam detection checks say your Facebook account isn't eligible. If
you are a legitimate user, we apologize and are improving our detection
algorithms. And we will release new ways to grab stellars soon, so please
check back.

Is there any way to prove that my account is legitimate? Maybe my Github
account, where I manage a somewhat popular open-source project, Min
([http://minfwk.com](http://minfwk.com)) My username both on Github, HN and
Stellar is owenversteeg. This seems like an interesting idea, and I'd like to
play around with it.

~~~
joyce
Hi Owen - I'll go help you out. Let me know if you have any questions.
joyce@stellar

------
neilni
I have 'Connecting...' on the main screen, so I cannot send out anything.
Possibly a bug? And every time I log out, I have to sign in again.

~~~
JTon
Experiencing same issue! I haven't tried at home yet

------
samirmenon
It says my Facebook account is "too new" to get Stellars.... I've had it for
over 3 months. What's the reasoning?

~~~
jschmitz28
Same message and my account is two and a half years old. I have no friends on
the account, so maybe "too new" really means "not enough friends".

Edit: Because this is generating some discussion, I'll clarify that it is not
actually my main account which is why I have no friends or photos, but I don't
like giving third parties access to my private main account information. The
spam detection seems to have worked well on me, I was just pointing out that
account age is not the only filter.

~~~
andrewstellar
Hello, we check various properties of your Facebook account to determine that
this was not a spam account created simply to exploit the giveaway. This is
our first day out, and we apologize that legitimate users like yourself aren't
able to receive the giveaway. Please check back in the coming days as we
continue to improve our spam detection algorithms.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
And what is with people, that don't have a Facebook account (yet)?

I guess, anybody that creates a new Facebook account now, because he wants to
also get the Stellars will fall into the spam category.

tl;dr: Isn't it a legitimate interest, to get something that others get? Or is
it just a giveaway for Facebook users? When so, would you please say so in the
first place (, that your system is only for them). It does not foster my trust
in this new system, when I am locked out, just because I am not inside some
"special club" (I don't remember, that Facebook membership is now essential to
interact in the internet -- .... I am at the verge to feel discriminated.).

I find it good, to have an alternate payment method to get out of the trap of
traditional payment systems, that are dominated by a few big corporations ....
and then, what happens, I have to bow to one even bigger monopolist. --> Does
not foster my trust into a system that claims to be free and open.

------
anuragbiyani
Ref:
[https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program)

Will the date for snapshotting the Bitcoin blockchain be publicized in advance
?

------
rdl
I'm really excited about this (I talked to Jed a few months ago, before
joining CloudFlare).

I think there will need to be a strong client wallet, rather than just the web
client, but that's obvious, and the web client was an easy place to start.

I'd really like to see how one would integrate chaumian blinded tokens into
this. I may be an outlier in thinking unlinkability and anonymity are critical
for "real currencies" over time, but I think recent events have shown this to
be correct.

I liked Ripple 1.0; Ripple-of-today not as much, so since this seems to be
basically Ripple 1.0 plus some lessons learned, it should be interesting.

------
fela
Something weird seems to be going on: at first I didn't get any compensation
for making my first transaction, then I got 1000 STR from StellarFoundation 34
times. Now my account has 39000 STR in it...

~~~
swamp12
Weird. I'm one of the Stellar devs -- could you email your stellar username to
jed@stellar.org? Thanks!

~~~
fela
done

------
shawndrost
Bug report: I was unable to get the 5000 initial coins. (The facebook auth
failed twice, so I reloaded the page -- and was then unable to find the "free
coins" page.)

~~~
DomKM
I'm experiencing the same issue.

------
0x0
Looks like the emails coming from stellar are delivered from an SMTP origin
"mailgun.info" which uses an invalid client certificate; I'm getting errors:

SSL_accept error from mail-182-5.mailgun.info[23.253.182.5]: 0 warning: TLS
library problem: XXX:error:XXX:SSL routines:SSL3_READ_BYTES:sslv3 alert bad
certificate:s3_pkt.c:1258:SSL alert number 42:

At least they retry without SSL aftwards, and manage to deliver the emails.

~~~
russjones
Hi 0x0, Russell from Mailgun here. Do you have a self signed certificate by
any chance? We typically downgrade a connection if we are presented with a
self signed certificate. That might be what you are seeing.

If you drop us an email at support [at] mailgun.com with your domain I can
take a look at the specific issue we are having delivering over TLS to your
domain.

------
abiekatz
What are the key differences between Stellar and Ripple?

~~~
jejejajo
The name.

[http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg)

------
here
As someone who is paying 5% to deposit a foreign check, and also lost a non-
trivial amount when a ripple gateway folded, I can say I am still excited to
see another iteration on the idea.

5% as a consumer spread on international transfers is ridiculous, and
seemingly only avoided using some sort of forex exchange with high minimums
and excessive red tape.

Bitcoin exchanges do not offer reliable or timely deposit/withdrawal in most
local currencies to consider it an alternative.

The trust points are no worse than existing banks / currency exchange / forex
models that allow this type of transfer to take place. If we are lucky, we can
improve and decentralize those choke points further.

Yes, those who control the choke points have the potential to make stupid
amounts of money based solely on traffic, much like existing banking models
and many startups.

Worth reading is the recent blogpost that I'm sure most regulars have seen
[https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-
perspective](https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective).

------
miralabs
Can anyone give an insight to why they decided to have the stellars pre mined?
Wouldn't that make stellars not valuable...

~~~
oafitupa
Yep, just another premined coin to the list, and as it turns out it's a fork
of Ripple. Everyone here should read this comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272)

~~~
vbuterin
There is absolutely nothing wrong with premining, if it is done honestly and
transparently and especially if your coin is using a consensus algorithm that
has no need for regular mining in the first place. Let's evaluate the fairness
of the distribution model on its merits. This one is quasi-centralized
(relying on Facebook accounts), but I predict it will be among the most
egalitarian.

~~~
jejejajo
Says the creator of a premined coin (Ethereum).

~~~
foobarqux
Why isn't pre-mining viewed like VC-less VC?

~~~
wmf
People who complain about pre-mining probably also think VC is evil because
their Radeon card isn't sufficient to participate in seed rounds.

------
encoderer
Honestly, I'm impressed that Stripe is that well capitalized. It's an awesome
service, way to go guys.

------
mystik
What happens when the limit is reached? 100,000,000,000/7,000 is "just" 15
millions accounts

------
aaron987
The fact that this solves some of the problems of cryptocurrency, and the fact
that Stripe is behind it, give me a very good feeling about this. To have the
clout offered by Stripe while still being open source is very powerful, and I
think it is what the cryptocurrency world has needed.

------
richcollins
The gateways will be targeted for regulation until they are no different than
modern banks.

------
mintplant2
The "Connect with Facebook" button on Stellar's dashboard appears to be
broken, or at least for me, anyway. Clicking it results in a "Loading..."
message that never seems to go away.

~~~
slig
See if you're not blocking FB with AdBlock or Disconnect.

~~~
mintplant2
Ah, Disconnect was the issue. Thank you!

------
ankurpatel
Curious how much do people think one Stellar is worth? Or will be in future?

~~~
oafitupa
Nothing, it's just a fork of Ripple.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272)

~~~
czottmann
You're repeating yourself, please stop.

------
joshAg
who is their economist/fiscal policy/monetary policy adviser? I looked on the
website and there doesn't seem to be anyone with this background amongst the
advisers, board, or employees.

------
fuddle
0.625% will be granted to employees for 4 years. Does this mean they won't be
paid after 4 years? Also can you elaborate on how the 0.625% will be divided
between developers & founders?

------
tomasien
Anyone interested in setting up instant funding for Stellar with ACH, let me
know. We've started doing it with some Ripple Gateways and would love to work
with Stellar.

tommy at knoxpayments dot com

------
xmodem
> Each week, the network will identify the winners. The winners are the 50 top
> voted for accounts that also received at last 1.5% of the vote. If no
> account has over 1.5% of the vote, then the top 50 accounts voted for are
> considered the winners. That week’s new stellars are then distributed pro-
> rata to the winners.

So does this mean that if one account has 5% of the vote and all remaining
accounts have under 1.5%, that account will receive all of the inflation-
creates Stellars?

~~~
RoboTeddy
As I read it, yes. But other account holders would have an incentive to band
together in order to surpass 1.5% (or even 5%).

I wonder if it'll be possible to vote for an account that promises to
immediately distribute new Stellar back to its voters. If so, newly-created
Stellar may always end up being distributed in proportion to the Stellar
wealth distribution.

------
lifeeth_
This just reminds me of
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala) and
nothing else.

~~~
gojomo
Yes, but also more generally, highly-liquid IOUs ("bills of exchange") as were
widely used before the rise of modern banking:

[http://jpkoning.blogspot.de/2013/02/ripple-or-bills-of-
excha...](http://jpkoning.blogspot.de/2013/02/ripple-or-bills-of-
exchange-20.html)

------
coppolaemilio
Damn, my open source project was named Stellar way before!
[http://stellar.evelend.com/](http://stellar.evelend.com/)

~~~
kawera
And then Jason Kottke's stellar.io

[1] [http://kottke.org](http://kottke.org) [2]
[http://stellar.io](http://stellar.io)

------
ericb
I get what bitcoin is.

Can someone help me with what stellar is, and why it is better than, or a
complement to, bitcoin or the traditional system?

~~~
oafitupa
Stellar is just a fork of Ripple:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272)

~~~
ericb
I always had the same questions about Ripple, though.

~~~
oafitupa
Well it's premined and centralized, so I would say it's just like any pre-
Bitcoin coin/exchange.

------
ajgrover
just FYI - none of the sliders on the settings page work for me. The first one
gives me a "Server Error" tooltip and the other 2 just do nothing.

Also, I linked my Facebook and didn't get any indication of whether it worked
or not. Now when I log in I have 0 stellars and the welcome panel doesn't show
up. did this happen to anyone else?

------
Ecio78
Registered, verified with FB, it says I'm in the queue and I should receive my
Stellar tomorrow. On the other hand verifying the email with the code received
raises an error saying that I need to login before via FB (and I did it).
Maybe it expects to see before the Stellar gained via FB login before
releasing the other 1000

------
fragsworth
Is trustless validation a thing in this system? How do they do it, I can't
find any technical details.

------
philipDS
Very interesting. I always thought of Ripple as semi-scam, but I can see
Stellar become a thing (be huge, actually), backed by Stripe and hopefully
others soon enough.

Question.. how is the password used to decrypt the secret key? Which
encryption algorithm is used? Can anyone technically explain?

~~~
deckar01
Stellar dev here. Thanks for the encouragement.

We use scrypt to derive a key from your username and password. The key is used
to encrypt your secret data with 256bit AES in GCM mode.

You can check out the implementation here:
[https://github.com/stellar/stellar-
client/blob/master/app/sc...](https://github.com/stellar/stellar-
client/blob/master/app/scripts/utilities/wallet.js#L260)

~~~
philipDS
Thanks! Gonna have a look at it now - seems like an interesting authentication
scheme :)

------
runeks
Stellar is the "IP layer for credit" while Bitcoin is the "IP layer for
money".

Stellar doesn't actually transfer funds (like Bitcoin), it only transfers
IOUs, the settlement (actual value transfer) occurs outside the Stellar
network.

Stellar and Bitcoin achieve two different goals.

------
treenyc
OMG, this would be perfect for the 501(c)3 non-profit where I'm at.

[http://newfuturefoundation.org](http://newfuturefoundation.org)

They are currently paying a lot of fees to the bank fund nonprofit projects in
Africa.

This would really be perfect for them.

------
AndrewDucker
Ok, so now they're promising me my free stellars "tomorrow".

Which is fine in one way - feel free to take your time handing me my free
stuff. On the other hand, it doesn't give me much faith they can scale to the
mass market...

~~~
wj
I'm sure many successful companies had scaling issues well past their first
day.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

------
anuragbiyani
[https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program](https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program)

How does that work for someone who has bitcoins in an e-wallet, like Coinbase
?

~~~
wmf
Either use a real wallet or pester Coinbase to support signing.

------
tklovett
If anyone wants to get a send-to-receive chain going for the learn to send
free 1000 STR deal, reply to this with your username. I'll send 1000 STR to
anyone who sends me 1000 STR. My username is tklovett on stellar.

~~~
ryanmerket
user: merket

~~~
tklovett
Sent yours back, thanks!

------
Procrastes
"Invalid Recovery Code" when I attempt to use the code sent via email.

------
Flavius
There seems to be a session bug. I have to log in again every time I refresh
the page. Of course, the page is updated automatically so the refresh is
probably unnecessary, but the session bug is still there. :)

~~~
pc
It's actually not a bug -- it's because the client never sends the password to
the server. (It decrypts your wallet locally.)

~~~
Flavius
It makes sense. It looks like they've just added this message: "If you refresh
you will be automatically logged out since it isn't safe to keep your password
on disk."

~~~
spacefight
The funny thing to this is, that keeping the password on disk isn't proclaimed
safe but sending each user the recovery code over plain text mail withouth
encryption is...

------
corford
Too early to tell if Stella will work but their intentions appear good and the
underlying concept solid. Was very surprised though that there isn't a single
advisor to the board who's career has been in finance or banking.

Seems to me that stella will only work and achieve broad adoption if the
network has solid gateways operated by entities people already know and trust.
Who do most people trust with their money? Existing banks and other well known
exchange/trading platforms (xe.com / etrade / western union). If you want
these institutions to start operating stella gateways, surely it would be a
good idea to have an advisor to the board that's from that world, well
connected and understands it intimately?

~~~
corford
Not sure why I'm being down voted. My understanding is the system works better
(at least for currency X to currency Y transactions) the more trusted local
currency gateways exist in the network. So if using stellar on the backend
makes it theoretically easier/cheaper/faster for traditional money transfer
platforms to transmit/receive funds for their clients and having trusted
brands as gateways is good for stellar's adoption; then surely that's a
win/win and they should have an insider from the banking/finance/forex world
advising their board and helping them get one or two well known finance shops
involved in a pilot.

Concrete example:

I use XE.com trade for making international wires to people (most of the time
it's GBP to EUR wires). Using XE is easier and cheaper than using my bank for
this but the process is still painful. After locking in an exchange rate for
the trade, I then have to wire my funds in GBP to XE.com's GBP bank account
(with a reference number for the trade) and they then wire the equivalent EUR
amount to the recipient's EUR bank account. I have to provide loads of bank
details for the recipient (branch address, IBAN, SWIFT, intermediary bank
etc.) and it usually takes 48 hours before the money arrives in their account
(sometimes longer if they have a weird bank). It's also often difficult to
work out what fees intermediary banks will extract en-route.

I'd love it if XE.com had stellar GBP and EUR gateways. I could then dump some
funds in their GBP gateway, give them the stellar username I want to send the
equivalent EUR amount to and hit send. Instant and easy.

Or maybe I've completely misunderstood the purpose of gateways and how they
work?

------
up_and_up
So how much is a STR worth right now?

Based on the Stripe investment of 3 million for 3,002,289,306.81 Stellars (3%
of 100,076,310,227) I am calculating 1 STR = $0.000999237 right now ... is
that correct?

------
murbard2
Who is running the consensus nodes? Will people choose their consensus node,
and if so can you guarantee an overlap? Are the nodes maintaining a state or a
full, auditable, ledger?

------
jacqui_ire
I signed up with friends all ok but now dashboard just keeps saying connecting
and clicking seems says I have to be online to do this but I am.. Any ideas?

------
lazyant
connected with FB and not sure if I verified my email, I get some "server
errors" and logouts and can't change my settings

~~~
toxicFork
Nothing loads for me anymore, looks like their API could not handle the
interest :)

------
workingBen
I received 4000+1000=5,000 Stellar. I sent 1,000 to another user. I have 3,999
Stellar remaining. What happened to my extra Stellar?

~~~
gdb
Take a look at
[https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_What_are_the_fees_for_a_transa...](https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_What_are_the_fees_for_a_transaction_).
The short answer is that each transaction burns 10 microstellar, and they
haven't smoothed out all of the display issues in the hosted client yet, hence
the surprise.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
The cost of transaction might be an issue if one day 1 stellar > 20 USD or so
(it becomes too expensive). Wondering if there is a way to fix it (other than
simply merging multiple transactions), without having anything to do with the
USD itself.

------
ernestipark
Pretty excited for what comes of this. For devs reading, auth doesn't seem to
be persistent - if I refresh I get logged out.

~~~
pc
This is actually for security -- your password is never sent to the server,
and so the client needs to decrypt your wallet again.

~~~
ernestipark
Cool makes sense. Maybe some messaging on the login form would be helpful.

------
kolev
As it seems, the future of Bitcoin is Ripple.

------
IgorPartola
So why no two factor auth right off the bat?

------
rwinn
Seems off that they give you 5000 "stellars" to access your Facebook friends
list and photos...

~~~
joyce
I work at Stellar. We wanted a method by which we could fund people once (to
prevent someone from spinning up a lot of fake accounts to claim) hence the
decision to move forward with Facebook. I know it isn't perfect, but we are
doing our best to make the giveaway broadly accessible and not game-able. And
we are working on other claim methods so yes, totally hear your concerns.

~~~
PythonicAlpha
Good to hear, I hope you have some ideas, since else, this "facebookers only"
feels like discrimination -- as I explained here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115706](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115706)

------
jsbos
I'm also having issues with FB but would love to have some stellars. Acct name
is jsouza, thanks!

------
jscheel
Came here to say, "that looks an awful lot like Ripple." Looks like I am in
good company :)

------
alagappanr
The irony is that the emails from Stellar have been marked as spam. PS: I use
live.com

------
reedlaw
I need to connect with Facebook to receive stellars. How is this decentralized
again?

~~~
andrewchambers
ill send you some if you don't want to use facebook.

~~~
reedlaw
Sure, my user name is reedlaw.

~~~
andrewchambers
for some reason I cant send to you :/. says you arent on the network.

------
waterlesscloud
I got an email invite, curious where they harvested my address from.

------
edoceo
Still waiting on the email confirmation :(

Never got the plaintext recovery code.

------
Danieru
Yeah... I'm not giving my phone number to Facebook...

------
riffraff
how and why would stripe value 2% of the stellar at 3M$ ?

------
waitingkuo
I'm curious about why my balance becomes 6000.

~~~
giarc
You get 1000 for verifying email.

------
desireco42
Feel free to send me 1000 stellar in step 4 of the signup process. Username
zeljko. Comment so I can give you some good karma. Thank you! (btw credit to
corey for coming up with this)

~~~
funkyy
Yeah, send it to username funkyygames as well - anyone wants 1,000 let me
know! I cant find anyone to send this to.

------
PabloOsinaga
Who will sell me their 7,000 stellars for $10 ?

~~~
PabloOsinaga
OK, I will offer more. $20? Nobody interested in selling 7000 stellars for
$20?

~~~
lnanek2
one dead person replied. go to your profile and turn on seeing dead people.
assuming i'm not dead too, lol

------
michaelmcmillan
I just created a subreddit for further discussion:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/thestellar](http://www.reddit.com/r/thestellar)

------
everettForth
Does anyone want to sell their Stellar?

------
sjg007
Great idea. This is going to be huge.

------
cheska27
Hi send me 1000str and i will send 1050 back.. here is my username "cheska27"

and tell your username to verify! :)

------
anup69
i am in waiting list. anybody have steller? send me if you have on meanup33

------
deergus
Support us engineers and send 1000 stellars to 'git' :).

------
dotts_o
dotts_o can you guys send me some Thanks :)

------
wowow
my name : minister sent me plz , thanks!

------
thescorer
Quick, everyone send me their stellar: troypayne

------
rxaxm
lol refresh logs you out!

------
dreamdu5t
> Stellar is a decentralized protocol

Stellar has a central authority that can mint new stellars. _That is not
decentralized._ Bold-faced lie.

------
jqueryin
Feel free to send me 1000 stellar in step 4 of the signup process. Username:
_corey_. Had to be the first to ask :) Thanks in advance!

~~~
Ecco
I just sent you 1000 stellars :-) We could set up a chain where we each give
to the previous user so all of us get +1000 :-) My username is "lck"

~~~
jqueryin
+1 for the chain idea.

~~~
Ecco
I got +1000 from "myleshenderson". I guess he's next in the chain :-)

~~~
desireco42
sent to jedd, mine is zeljko

~~~
JonnieCache
sent to zeljko, mine is jonnie

damn this is like getting a gmail account.

~~~
thedangler
thedangler is on board.

~~~
arturhoo
sent you 1000. I'm arturhoo on Stellar

~~~
hpguy
Sent you 1000. My user name: benly

~~~
leshow
sent you 1000, my username is leshow

------
omghi2u
Your site isn't ready to be launched when you try to hurd people through
Facebook auth, after registering my email, and then it doesn't even work....

~~~
kordless
By that logic, any site with any bug in it should never been launched. If it
broke, report the bug. It's Open Source:
[https://github.com/stellar](https://github.com/stellar).

~~~
omghi2u
No. They dropped the ball in my opinion from what should be a really savvy
group of people who "get it" when it comes to identity/etc.

~~~
kordless
No what? You won't report a bug? That's idiotic.

