15 ms·

2018 Stellar roadmap

328 points by manojlds 9y ago

celrenheit 9y ago
tl;dr: Stellar distributed exchange and Ligthning Network coming in 2018
foota 9y ago
Is uh this a parody or not?
brndnmtthws 9y ago
Convenient timing to pump this coin. Seems like Stripe is getting their ducks in a row so they can cash in on their altcoin.
- oliyoung 9y ago
  orrrrr they legitimately see it as a viable transnational currency which could ensure their own growth as a company. I doubt Stripe cashes those coins in, their interest is commercial, not financial
  - brndnmtthws 9y ago
    If they felt that way they'd just contribute to Bitcoin.
    - aoro 9y ago
      One does not just 'contribute' to Bitcoin.
      - brndnmtthws 9y ago
        Anyone can. You and your preconceived notions are the only barriers.
slig 9y ago
From few days ago: "PSA: Check your inbox for email from stellar.org, you may be sitting on $ " - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16109292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16109292
- blhack 9y ago
  Looks like I never verified my email, so I didn't get any of the distribution. Too bad!
- theli0nheart 9y ago
  Wow, thanks!
- tgb 9y ago
  Thanks for this. Now what do I do, though? I'd rather not mess this up. I can log in to launch.stellar.org and can "upgrade" to lumens. Do I do that? My goal is to sell them for USD.
  - asciimo 9y ago
    Yes, I went through that process and it was pretty painless. I recommend going the extra step and getting a secure wallet to store them in. Ledger (https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/ledger-nano-s https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/ledger-nano-s) has an app for Stellar Lumens.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - j_s 9y ago
      A secure wallet is not super helpful if immediately cashing out (to fiat), right? A legitimate, soup-to-nuts "turn one email into $___ in cash" walkthrough (perhaps the beginnings of which is below, though I can't personally vouch for it) would do well! https://medium.com/@marckohlbrugge/you-might-have-204-worth-of-cryptocurrency-you-forgot-about-c9787e788730 https://medium.com/@marckohlbrugge/you-might-have-204-worth-... (Search "2. Stellar" [no quotes] twice; does anyone know how to link directly on Medium? This piece focuses more on breadth than depth, covering multiple cryptocurrencies. The only useful Stellar info there seems to be https://launch.stellar.org/#/login https://launch.stellar.org/#/login)
oh_sigh 9y ago
My coins that I had since 2014 were 'corrupted', and unrecoverable, even though the only thing I have is the exact code that the stellar website and email sent me. Great stuff!
- shepardrtc 9y ago
  Any coins that are unclaimed will be reallocated to the Stellar foundation. An optimistic view may hold that they might attempt to give them away to more people. A pessimistic view may propose that they're now able to sell them without looking like they're trying to make money. So maybe they already reclaimed your coins?
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    Honestly, I don't care what happens to the coins after they were taken from me, just like I don't care if someone steals my car and joy rides with it, or steals my car and drives their grandma to dialysis with it. The fact that they knew there was a technical issue, but didn't try to redistribute the coins at the time they recognized the issue. I realize this is like $1 we are talking about, but hey, that's loss aversion for you.
    - slig 9y ago
      If you lost the 6k coins that they distributed for free back in 2014, you lost way more than $1.
- 323454 9y ago
  I recently recovered a bunch of coins I signed up for in 2014 and had no issues.
  - felipellrocha 9y ago
    Same here
  - zanmat0 9y ago
    How did you manage to do this? I'm in the same boat. I have the username, password and recovery key yet I can't login and the website tells me that recovery has been disabled for my account.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
They're cool because they use 'randos'
bkolobara 9y ago
As many developers visit HN I will use this opportunity to advertise the Stellar Build challenge[1]. I participated in the past and it's great. Especially to build some fun side projects, learn about distributed ledgers and earn a bit of money. [1]: https://www.stellar.org/lumens/build/ https://www.stellar.org/lumens/build/
- Xeoncross 9y ago
  What did you make?
- rememberlenny 9y ago
  You can make well over a few thousand dollars for learning about crypto and working on a interesting side-project. I agree to this. If you are interested in getting involved with building a crypto project, but can't justify the time: check this out. Stellar runs a monthly give away of Stellar coins for submissions by developers. They set out a overall vision of projects, and reward a certain designated amount of coins to the finalists.
  - fiatjaf 9y ago
    Not true. Have you even read the link?
  - sjs382 9y ago
    The build challenges are quarterly, not monthly.
    - rememberlenny 9y ago
      You are completely right. Thanks for correcting.
readams 9y ago
I read this whole article and I'm still not sure if this is a real thing or a parody.
- bby 9y ago
  Craziest part is that the founders have insane $. All they need to do is start selling into the Stellar strength and cash out like the Litecoin dude.
- robinoh 9y ago
  According to some guesses, the author is cofounder of OkCupid and has a track record of humorous blog posts. His writing even made it to the NYT. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellar/comments/7s7b1l/new_blog_post_from_stellar_about_q1_and_the_state/dt3ikld/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellar/comments/7s7b1l/new_blog_po... for the source.
- guiomie 9y ago
  Same here. Hard to take them seriously.
  - draw_down 9y ago
    Is it important that you take them seriously?
yohann305 9y ago
Two days ago, Stripe announced they were dropping Bitcoin. And now Stellar (A Stripe-seeded company) announces their 2018 plans. Good job on the guy that saw it coming in HN comments! Note: I'm not bashing Stellar, I'm actually a big fan. : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329
- j_s 9y ago
  Not sure which comment you're referring to specifically, perhaps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329#16217304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329#16217304? >swanson: Related to the Coinbase/insider trading noise around BCH a few weeks ago, it seems strange for Stripe to plug other alt-coins (OMG, Stellar, etc) in the post as things they view as "promising" and "imagine enabling support for". I don't think it's illegal nor unethical personally, but it is such a dicey topic that I'm surprised to see someone writing without a mountain of disclaimers on an official Stripe communication channel >>ChristianBundy: FYI, Stripe has been very transparent in the fact that they believe (and have pumped millions of dollars into) Stellar
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  I feel really stupid. Back in 2015, their lead scientist David Mazières explained Stellar consensus protocol inside the Gates computer science building at Stanford to a small group of people back when Lumens were worthless. I was in that group of people and I completely missed the boat.
  - atomical 9y ago
    The Stripe blog post mentions OmiseGo. OmiseGo hasn't even launched their product and Stripe is considering using them. That's a little worrying, but suggests it's still early.
  - jakobegger 9y ago
    And here‘s the problem with cryptocurrencies: They might have all kinds of use cases, but people just see a quick way to get rich.
desireco42 9y ago
I am pretty happy with my Lumens. I got them during the initial airdrop and then later I got more. I followed on and off what is happening and Stellar really looks promising to me. Transactions go very quickly, api is decent and fairly easy to work with. As far as Coinbase, I don't think they are very good in handling things, BitcoinCash didn't go well. It would make sense for them to support Stellar, but who knows what they are planning to do. It would make sense to support a bunch of other as well.
- riku_iki 9y ago
  The biggest problem for me, which prevents me from commiting to stellar is that they have just 2 engineers in Poland on Linkedin. Comparing to Ethereum Foundation it sounds like a joke. Where are those engineers who support infrastructure?
  - desireco42 9y ago
    I see quite a few on slack channel. If this was true, I would be happy to join them and work on stellar platform honestly.
wyldfire 9y ago
After scouring the website for a bit I can't make head nor tail of this. Since it sounds like a fork of Ripple, it's very much centralized, right?
- sjs382 9y ago
  It was initially a fork of Ripple but has since been rewritten. Stellar is more decentralized, because each node decides which others to trust. In the Ripple network, certain nodes have been blessed as "validating nodes". There's a Stellar StackExchange question which goes into the differences a bit more: https://stellar.stackexchange.com/a/57/9 https://stellar.stackexchange.com/a/57/9
  - wyldfire 9y ago
    It's a private beta. What's the basis for trusting the peer nodes?
    - sjs382 9y ago
      Crap. I'll reproduce the answer here, then: > Tl;dr: Stellar’s protocol (SCP) uses a decentralized state propagation where each node commits to a value if every node it deems trustworthy agrees while Ripple uses a supermajority vote (80%) among all validating nodes. Stellar achieves better decentralization than Ripple > A pretty old, but still relevant discussion on the bitcoin stack exchange [https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/29815/what-is-the-difference-between-ripple-and-stellar/38913#38913 https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/29815/what-is-th...] > Stellar started out as a fork of Ripple (now completely rewritten) so they are pretty similar in implementation and use cases. > Stellar uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol [https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949 https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-...] (SCP) to achieve decentralization, while Ripple uses the XRP Ledger Consensus Process [https://ripple.com/build/xrp-ledger-consensus-process/ https://ripple.com/build/xrp-ledger-consensus-process/]. These are alternatives to Bitcoin's proof of work whose goal is to have every participant in the network agree on the current state. > In SCP, each node decides for itself which other nodes it trusts. When a lot of these sets of trusted nodes are overlapping, there is a high probability there is agreement on the state of the network. Broadly, a node will only accept a message if all of their trustworthy nodes have in turn accepted it. This is similar to the way internet certificates and DNS servers are working. In principle, there is no central authority appointing trustworthy nodes, but de facto, the network will reach an agreement on which nodes are trustworthy. This is a great video explaining SCP in detail [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmwnhZmEZjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmwnhZmEZjc]. There is also the white paper [https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pd...] for more formal mathematical definitions. > Ripple on the other hand uses a set of special nodes called "validating nodes". A new state is transmitted to all validating nodes and whenever 80% of them agree on it, the ledger is updated. Anyone can launch a validating node, but Ripple recommends they register and disclose their identity [https://ripple.com/dev-blog/validator-registry/ https://ripple.com/dev-blog/validator-registry/]. In principle, this model doesn't make Ripple less decentralized than Stellar. However, in practice, the company Ripple controls most validating nodes, as there is no incentive for anyone to run these nodes (transaction fees are destroyed). You can see a list of validating nodes here: https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/validators https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/validators > Another difference is that Ripple is a deflationary currency (a certain amount of XRP is destroyed at each transaction to prevent spamming the network), while Stellar is inflationary. This doesn't necessarily mean that Ripple is a better store of value, since all inflation is returned to Stellar users through inflation pools. > Other than the technology, it is important to mention differences between development philosophies that are driving the two projects: XRP is developed by a for-profit company (Ripple) while Stellar is developed by the Stellar Development Foundation which is a non-profit. Stellar places a greater emphasis on serving the underbanked and facilitating payments between individuals across borders, while Ripple is mainly focused on financial institutions.
fiatjaf 9y ago
Lightning on Stellar? I don't understand why this is desirable.
- sjs382 9y ago
  I think it's a matter of quickly setting up and closing an off-chain ledger, rather than supporting more transactions or keeping transaction costs low. Privacy could be a reason to do this, but I'm sure there are other reasons, too.
- jlrubin 9y ago
  High volume, low latency, of privacy focused applications. There's a difference between Stellar's network being able to support high throughput and you wanting to do high-throughput on the network. Base fee is 1e-5 XLM. If you want to do a million transactions, it's still going to cost you 10 lumens. Why pay 10 XLM when you could pay 1e-5 XLM instead?
erdo 9y ago
I don't think anyone mentioned this link yet but it has a lot of interesting bits about the stellar story and why it was forked from ripple: http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/ http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/ I think their distribution of coins might be a problem for them in future (see how the Facebook scheme was totally scammed in the article)
alasdair_ 9y ago
I signed up for stellar when it was first announced and have about $1000 of stellar. Despite a whole bunch of emails, I'm still unable to access my account. Anyone know who else I could contact?
- sensecall 9y ago
  I contacted support after finding an old email from the ICO a few years ago. They got me access to my account within a couple of days. https://launch.stellar.org/#/login https://launch.stellar.org/#/login
YTGRK 9y ago
https://youtu.be/I2l8xkjTUh4 https://youtu.be/I2l8xkjTUh4
homakov 9y ago
Can I run a full node on laptop right now?
DaniFong 9y ago
Kabloom!
oelmekki 9y ago
I get it that it's a major use case for platforms allowing to issue tokens, but I would love not seeing stellar going too far down the ICO road. Buying in ICOs still doesn't provide any kind of clear value (beside selling them) and issuing tokens could be used to do way cooler things (like issuing state branded cryptocurrencies, or temporary currencies for big events, etc). It's kind of sad that ethereum is mainly seen nowadays as "the cryptocurrency for ICOs", I wouldn't want to see that for stellar too.
quadcore 9y ago
A few years ago, I think I got something like 5K lumens from stripe in some sort of public giveaway stellar promotion thing. I have an account name and a password but cant figure out where those fit anymore. Any idea where that might be?
- quadcore 9y ago
  Found in the HN search. It was here: launch.stellar.org
sanefive 9y ago
The roadmap is fairly general, not detailed enough, and not serious enough. It makes Stellar look like another startup, not like a company which wants to be the next paypal or replace bitcoin. I think most of those cryptocurrency companies need to invest in their communication, PR and marketing in general. If they want to attract investors in their coin, they need to have a perfect communication, inspiring confidence. This would always be better than a stupid blogpost full of jokes... But this is a forum of developers so I am not sure how this tribune for marketing is going to echo here ;)
mparr4 9y ago
I recently started looking into Lumens and can't figure out the value proposition of the token. AFAIK the stellar network purports to be a place where you can do peer to peer exchanges of currencies, with Lumens being one of them, but on the stellar website they say things like: > Why does the Stellar network need a native asset? > The Stellar network offers all of the innovative features of a shared public ledger on a distributed database—often referred to as blockchain technology. The Stellar network’s built-in currency, the lumen, serves two purposes: > > First, lumens play a small anti-spam role. > Each transaction has a minor fee—0.00001 lumens—associated with it. This fee prevents users with malicious intentions from flooding the network (otherwise known as a DoS attack). Lumens work as a security token, mitigating DoS attacks that attempt to generate large numbers of transactions or consume large amounts of space in the ledger. > > Similarly, the Stellar network requires all accounts to hold a minimum balance of 20 lumens. This requirement ensures that accounts are authentic, which helps the network maintain a seamless flow of transactions. > > Second, lumens may facilitate multi-currency transactions. > > Lumens sometimes facilitate trades between pairs of currencies between which there is not a large direct market, acting as a bridge. This function is possible when there is a liquid market between the lumen and each currency involved. and > You may choose to purchase lumens as a supporter of the Stellar.org mission. What is the bull case for this cryptocurrency?
- semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  Formatted so it's readable on mobile: > Why does the Stellar network need a native asset? > The Stellar network offers all of the innovative features of a shared public ledger on a distributed database—often referred to as blockchain technology. The Stellar network’s built-in currency, the lumen, serves two purposes: > First, lumens play a small anti-spam role. > Each transaction has a minor fee—0.00001 lumens—associated with it. This fee prevents users with malicious intentions from flooding the network (otherwise known as a DoS attack). Lumens work as a security token, mitigating DoS attacks that attempt to generate large numbers of transactions or consume large amounts of space in the ledger. > Similarly, the Stellar network requires all accounts to hold a minimum balance of 20 lumens. This requirement ensures that accounts are authentic, which helps the network maintain a seamless flow of transactions. > Second, lumens may facilitate multi-currency transactions. > Lumens sometimes facilitate trades between pairs of currencies between which there is not a large direct market, acting as a bridge. This function is possible when there is a liquid market between the lumen and each currency involved. > You may choose to purchase lumens as a supporter of the Stellar.org mission.
wildbunny 9y ago
Isn't stellar's consensus still the 'consensus' of one node owned by the company due to the fact that the design is totally broken?
- koheripbal 9y ago
  Yes. It is a centralized decentralized network.

328 points by manojlds 9y ago

celrenheit 9y ago

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

foota 9y ago

Is uh this a parody or not?

brndnmtthws 9y ago

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

oliyoung 9y ago
orrrrr they legitimately see it as a viable transnational currency which could ensure their own growth as a company. I doubt Stripe cashes those coins in, their interest is commercial, not financial
- brndnmtthws 9y ago
  If they felt that way they'd just contribute to Bitcoin.
  - aoro 9y ago
    One does not just 'contribute' to Bitcoin.
    - brndnmtthws 9y ago
      Anyone can. You and your preconceived notions are the only barriers.

slig 9y ago

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

blhack 9y ago
Looks like I never verified my email, so I didn't get any of the distribution. Too bad!
theli0nheart 9y ago
Wow, thanks!
tgb 9y ago
Thanks for this. Now what do I do, though? I'd rather not mess this up. I can log in to launch.stellar.org and can "upgrade" to lumens. Do I do that? My goal is to sell them for USD.
- asciimo 9y ago
  Yes, I went through that process and it was pretty painless. I recommend going the extra step and getting a secure wallet to store them in. Ledger (https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/ledger-nano-s https://www.ledgerwallet.com/products/ledger-nano-s) has an app for Stellar Lumens.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - j_s 9y ago
    A secure wallet is not super helpful if immediately cashing out (to fiat), right? A legitimate, soup-to-nuts "turn one email into $___ in cash" walkthrough (perhaps the beginnings of which is below, though I can't personally vouch for it) would do well! https://medium.com/@marckohlbrugge/you-might-have-204-worth-of-cryptocurrency-you-forgot-about-c9787e788730 https://medium.com/@marckohlbrugge/you-might-have-204-worth-... (Search "2. Stellar" [no quotes] twice; does anyone know how to link directly on Medium? This piece focuses more on breadth than depth, covering multiple cryptocurrencies. The only useful Stellar info there seems to be https://launch.stellar.org/#/login https://launch.stellar.org/#/login)

oh_sigh 9y ago

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

shepardrtc 9y ago
Any coins that are unclaimed will be reallocated to the Stellar foundation. An optimistic view may hold that they might attempt to give them away to more people. A pessimistic view may propose that they're now able to sell them without looking like they're trying to make money. So maybe they already reclaimed your coins?
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Honestly, I don't care what happens to the coins after they were taken from me, just like I don't care if someone steals my car and joy rides with it, or steals my car and drives their grandma to dialysis with it. The fact that they knew there was a technical issue, but didn't try to redistribute the coins at the time they recognized the issue. I realize this is like $1 we are talking about, but hey, that's loss aversion for you.
  - slig 9y ago
    If you lost the 6k coins that they distributed for free back in 2014, you lost way more than $1.
323454 9y ago
I recently recovered a bunch of coins I signed up for in 2014 and had no issues.
- felipellrocha 9y ago
  Same here
- zanmat0 9y ago
  How did you manage to do this? I'm in the same boat. I have the username, password and recovery key yet I can't login and the website tells me that recovery has been disabled for my account.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

They're cool because they use 'randos'

bkolobara 9y ago

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

Xeoncross 9y ago
What did you make?
rememberlenny 9y ago
You can make well over a few thousand dollars for learning about crypto and working on a interesting side-project. I agree to this. If you are interested in getting involved with building a crypto project, but can't justify the time: check this out. Stellar runs a monthly give away of Stellar coins for submissions by developers. They set out a overall vision of projects, and reward a certain designated amount of coins to the finalists.
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  Not true. Have you even read the link?
- sjs382 9y ago
  The build challenges are quarterly, not monthly.
  - rememberlenny 9y ago
    You are completely right. Thanks for correcting.

readams 9y ago

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

bby 9y ago
Craziest part is that the founders have insane $. All they need to do is start selling into the Stellar strength and cash out like the Litecoin dude.
robinoh 9y ago
According to some guesses, the author is cofounder of OkCupid and has a track record of humorous blog posts. His writing even made it to the NYT. See https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellar/comments/7s7b1l/new_blog_post_from_stellar_about_q1_and_the_state/dt3ikld/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellar/comments/7s7b1l/new_blog_po... for the source.
guiomie 9y ago
Same here. Hard to take them seriously.
- draw_down 9y ago
  Is it important that you take them seriously?

yohann305 9y ago

Two days ago, Stripe announced they were dropping Bitcoin. And now Stellar (A Stripe-seeded company) announces their 2018 plans. Good job on the guy that saw it coming in HN comments! Note: I'm not bashing Stellar, I'm actually a big fan. : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329

j_s 9y ago
Not sure which comment you're referring to specifically, perhaps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329#16217304 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16216329#16217304? >swanson: Related to the Coinbase/insider trading noise around BCH a few weeks ago, it seems strange for Stripe to plug other alt-coins (OMG, Stellar, etc) in the post as things they view as "promising" and "imagine enabling support for". I don't think it's illegal nor unethical personally, but it is such a dicey topic that I'm surprised to see someone writing without a mountain of disclaimers on an official Stripe communication channel >>ChristianBundy: FYI, Stripe has been very transparent in the fact that they believe (and have pumped millions of dollars into) Stellar
tzakrajs 9y ago
I feel really stupid. Back in 2015, their lead scientist David Mazières explained Stellar consensus protocol inside the Gates computer science building at Stanford to a small group of people back when Lumens were worthless. I was in that group of people and I completely missed the boat.
- atomical 9y ago
  The Stripe blog post mentions OmiseGo. OmiseGo hasn't even launched their product and Stripe is considering using them. That's a little worrying, but suggests it's still early.
- jakobegger 9y ago
  And here‘s the problem with cryptocurrencies: They might have all kinds of use cases, but people just see a quick way to get rich.

desireco42 9y ago

I am pretty happy with my Lumens. I got them during the initial airdrop and then later I got more. I followed on and off what is happening and Stellar really looks promising to me. Transactions go very quickly, api is decent and fairly easy to work with. As far as Coinbase, I don't think they are very good in handling things, BitcoinCash didn't go well. It would make sense for them to support Stellar, but who knows what they are planning to do. It would make sense to support a bunch of other as well.

riku_iki 9y ago
The biggest problem for me, which prevents me from commiting to stellar is that they have just 2 engineers in Poland on Linkedin. Comparing to Ethereum Foundation it sounds like a joke. Where are those engineers who support infrastructure?
- desireco42 9y ago
  I see quite a few on slack channel. If this was true, I would be happy to join them and work on stellar platform honestly.

wyldfire 9y ago

After scouring the website for a bit I can't make head nor tail of this. Since it sounds like a fork of Ripple, it's very much centralized, right?

sjs382 9y ago
It was initially a fork of Ripple but has since been rewritten. Stellar is more decentralized, because each node decides which others to trust. In the Ripple network, certain nodes have been blessed as "validating nodes". There's a Stellar StackExchange question which goes into the differences a bit more: https://stellar.stackexchange.com/a/57/9 https://stellar.stackexchange.com/a/57/9
- wyldfire 9y ago
  It's a private beta. What's the basis for trusting the peer nodes?
  - sjs382 9y ago
    Crap. I'll reproduce the answer here, then: > Tl;dr: Stellar’s protocol (SCP) uses a decentralized state propagation where each node commits to a value if every node it deems trustworthy agrees while Ripple uses a supermajority vote (80%) among all validating nodes. Stellar achieves better decentralization than Ripple > A pretty old, but still relevant discussion on the bitcoin stack exchange [https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/29815/what-is-the-difference-between-ripple-and-stellar/38913#38913 https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/29815/what-is-th...] > Stellar started out as a fork of Ripple (now completely rewritten) so they are pretty similar in implementation and use cases. > Stellar uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol [https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949 https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-...] (SCP) to achieve decentralization, while Ripple uses the XRP Ledger Consensus Process [https://ripple.com/build/xrp-ledger-consensus-process/ https://ripple.com/build/xrp-ledger-consensus-process/]. These are alternatives to Bitcoin's proof of work whose goal is to have every participant in the network agree on the current state. > In SCP, each node decides for itself which other nodes it trusts. When a lot of these sets of trusted nodes are overlapping, there is a high probability there is agreement on the state of the network. Broadly, a node will only accept a message if all of their trustworthy nodes have in turn accepted it. This is similar to the way internet certificates and DNS servers are working. In principle, there is no central authority appointing trustworthy nodes, but de facto, the network will reach an agreement on which nodes are trustworthy. This is a great video explaining SCP in detail [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmwnhZmEZjc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmwnhZmEZjc]. There is also the white paper [https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pd...] for more formal mathematical definitions. > Ripple on the other hand uses a set of special nodes called "validating nodes". A new state is transmitted to all validating nodes and whenever 80% of them agree on it, the ledger is updated. Anyone can launch a validating node, but Ripple recommends they register and disclose their identity [https://ripple.com/dev-blog/validator-registry/ https://ripple.com/dev-blog/validator-registry/]. In principle, this model doesn't make Ripple less decentralized than Stellar. However, in practice, the company Ripple controls most validating nodes, as there is no incentive for anyone to run these nodes (transaction fees are destroyed). You can see a list of validating nodes here: https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/validators https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/validators > Another difference is that Ripple is a deflationary currency (a certain amount of XRP is destroyed at each transaction to prevent spamming the network), while Stellar is inflationary. This doesn't necessarily mean that Ripple is a better store of value, since all inflation is returned to Stellar users through inflation pools. > Other than the technology, it is important to mention differences between development philosophies that are driving the two projects: XRP is developed by a for-profit company (Ripple) while Stellar is developed by the Stellar Development Foundation which is a non-profit. Stellar places a greater emphasis on serving the underbanked and facilitating payments between individuals across borders, while Ripple is mainly focused on financial institutions.

fiatjaf 9y ago

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

sjs382 9y ago
I think it's a matter of quickly setting up and closing an off-chain ledger, rather than supporting more transactions or keeping transaction costs low. Privacy could be a reason to do this, but I'm sure there are other reasons, too.
jlrubin 9y ago
High volume, low latency, of privacy focused applications. There's a difference between Stellar's network being able to support high throughput and you wanting to do high-throughput on the network. Base fee is 1e-5 XLM. If you want to do a million transactions, it's still going to cost you 10 lumens. Why pay 10 XLM when you could pay 1e-5 XLM instead?

erdo 9y ago

I don't think anyone mentioned this link yet but it has a lot of interesting bits about the stellar story and why it was forked from ripple: http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/ http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/ I think their distribution of coins might be a problem for them in future (see how the Facebook scheme was totally scammed in the article)

alasdair_ 9y ago

I signed up for stellar when it was first announced and have about $1000 of stellar. Despite a whole bunch of emails, I'm still unable to access my account. Anyone know who else I could contact?

sensecall 9y ago
I contacted support after finding an old email from the ICO a few years ago. They got me access to my account within a couple of days. https://launch.stellar.org/#/login https://launch.stellar.org/#/login

YTGRK 9y ago

https://youtu.be/I2l8xkjTUh4 https://youtu.be/I2l8xkjTUh4

homakov 9y ago

Can I run a full node on laptop right now?

DaniFong 9y ago

Kabloom!

oelmekki 9y ago

I get it that it's a major use case for platforms allowing to issue tokens, but I would love not seeing stellar going too far down the ICO road. Buying in ICOs still doesn't provide any kind of clear value (beside selling them) and issuing tokens could be used to do way cooler things (like issuing state branded cryptocurrencies, or temporary currencies for big events, etc). It's kind of sad that ethereum is mainly seen nowadays as "the cryptocurrency for ICOs", I wouldn't want to see that for stellar too.

quadcore 9y ago

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

quadcore 9y ago
Found in the HN search. It was here: launch.stellar.org

sanefive 9y ago

The roadmap is fairly general, not detailed enough, and not serious enough. It makes Stellar look like another startup, not like a company which wants to be the next paypal or replace bitcoin. I think most of those cryptocurrency companies need to invest in their communication, PR and marketing in general. If they want to attract investors in their coin, they need to have a perfect communication, inspiring confidence. This would always be better than a stupid blogpost full of jokes... But this is a forum of developers so I am not sure how this tribune for marketing is going to echo here ;)

mparr4 9y ago

I recently started looking into Lumens and can't figure out the value proposition of the token. AFAIK the stellar network purports to be a place where you can do peer to peer exchanges of currencies, with Lumens being one of them, but on the stellar website they say things like: > Why does the Stellar network need a native asset? > The Stellar network offers all of the innovative features of a shared public ledger on a distributed database—often referred to as blockchain technology. The Stellar network’s built-in currency, the lumen, serves two purposes: > > First, lumens play a small anti-spam role. > Each transaction has a minor fee—0.00001 lumens—associated with it. This fee prevents users with malicious intentions from flooding the network (otherwise known as a DoS attack). Lumens work as a security token, mitigating DoS attacks that attempt to generate large numbers of transactions or consume large amounts of space in the ledger. > > Similarly, the Stellar network requires all accounts to hold a minimum balance of 20 lumens. This requirement ensures that accounts are authentic, which helps the network maintain a seamless flow of transactions. > > Second, lumens may facilitate multi-currency transactions. > > Lumens sometimes facilitate trades between pairs of currencies between which there is not a large direct market, acting as a bridge. This function is possible when there is a liquid market between the lumen and each currency involved. and > You may choose to purchase lumens as a supporter of the Stellar.org mission. What is the bull case for this cryptocurrency?

semi-extrinsic 9y ago
Formatted so it's readable on mobile: > Why does the Stellar network need a native asset? > The Stellar network offers all of the innovative features of a shared public ledger on a distributed database—often referred to as blockchain technology. The Stellar network’s built-in currency, the lumen, serves two purposes: > First, lumens play a small anti-spam role. > Each transaction has a minor fee—0.00001 lumens—associated with it. This fee prevents users with malicious intentions from flooding the network (otherwise known as a DoS attack). Lumens work as a security token, mitigating DoS attacks that attempt to generate large numbers of transactions or consume large amounts of space in the ledger. > Similarly, the Stellar network requires all accounts to hold a minimum balance of 20 lumens. This requirement ensures that accounts are authentic, which helps the network maintain a seamless flow of transactions. > Second, lumens may facilitate multi-currency transactions. > Lumens sometimes facilitate trades between pairs of currencies between which there is not a large direct market, acting as a bridge. This function is possible when there is a liquid market between the lumen and each currency involved. > You may choose to purchase lumens as a supporter of the Stellar.org mission.

wildbunny 9y ago

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

koheripbal 9y ago
Yes. It is a centralized decentralized network.