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I, for one, am happy Keybase user, excited about their new features and can see it already becoming a much better (but not ideal) alternative to Signal for priv

I, for one, am happy Keybase user, excited about their new features and can see it already becoming a much better (but not ideal) alternative to Signal for private IM (proper encryption, every device is first-class, usable CLI, no phone-number bullshit, good team chats, etc). But I do see that the same reason I am optimistic is the same reason many users are disappointed and they're right - Keybase seems to have pivoted and they are headed in a completely different direction than they were when we joined. Keys.pub looks to fulfill precisely the promise of "what Keybase was supposed to be". And crucially, I think; looks to be fully open source (server-side included, no sketchy opaque metadata spider-web by a US corporate). I do see these two projects as fully complementary. It would be interesting if this could, optionally, import pubkeys from Keybase as well. I think these could be complementary.

0xEFF 6y ago
Keybase jumped the shark with their crypto coin offering.
- everfree 6y ago
  I keep hearing people say this, but I don't understand it. It was a fun little giveaway experiment funded by someone else, in the spirit of the company's focus on cryptography. I don't visit the cryptocurrency tab anymore, and it's not like it gets in the way or anything.
  - Leace 6y ago
    > It was a fun little giveaway experiment funded by someone else, in the spirit of the company's focus on cryptography. It was not "someone else". Keybase is directly funded by Stellar (source: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar) and the crypto offering was just a PR/marketing move to increase adoption for crypto of Stellar not something "in the spirit of the company's focus on cryptography".
  - yarrel 6y ago
    It was a trainwreck that damaged the project's reputation and harmed its users. If you know crypto, it had several problems. There are worse coins to airdrop on your users but not many. The user experience resembled that used by scammers on Telegram and the project's overall behaviour looked like a de-anonymization attack (I mean that seems to be Keybase's business model but this looked exactly like one). All of this led to crypto chats on Keybase being targeted by social engineering attacks, and Keybase's famously bad moderation tools made that much harder to deal with than it could have been. If you don't know crypto it made Keybase look like a crazy crypto project, which isn't an easy sell. In either case you could be forgiven for wondering when Keybase got their money transmitter license. So this did get in the way, and the sooner Keybase remove the tab the sooner it will be clear that they are past the denial stage. This was a bad enough fuck-up that I removed my social proofs and now recommend that people not use Keybase. But if they fixed a few things (remove the Crypto tab, fix moderation, fix name changes) I'd pay them a subscription in a heartbeat.
    - Legogris 6y ago
      > This was a bad enough fuck-up that I removed my social proofs and now recommend that people not use Keybase What do you recommend people use instead?
    - ME70 6y ago
      In all honesty I believe the crypto offerings were a smart idea that didn’t undermine Keybases reputation , it attempted to highlight a user friendly exchange of Stellar and any further crypto to come along . What did undermine the reputation was allowing a system that could be scammed which called for the closing of the offering . Clearly not thought out enough .
  - slumos 6y ago
    I for one didn’t appreciate being spammed by them in the app I only keep running for secure private messages.
- anoraca 6y ago
  They added a wallet feature that was compatible with an existing crypto coin, there was no offering.
- LeoPanthera 6y ago
  This is very misleading, they didn't "offer" any coin, and they don't have their own coin. They added a wallet for a coin that already existed. A pretty good wallet, too.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    It seems this has literally nothing to do with the main functionality of keybase though.
edraferi 6y ago
Agree. This could be a useful way to expand the ecosystem that Keybase kick-started. We really need a modern alternative to the PGP ecosystem, and Keybase has been clear that they only want to do a subset of that. Of course I also really like the client-facing stuff that Keybase has done. Roll out hasn't been perfect, but they provide a lot of useful, secure collaboration tools.
brobinson 6y ago
>proper encryption Keybase does not have PFS, unfortunately...

0xEFF 6y ago

Keybase jumped the shark with their crypto coin offering.

everfree 6y ago
I keep hearing people say this, but I don't understand it. It was a fun little giveaway experiment funded by someone else, in the spirit of the company's focus on cryptography. I don't visit the cryptocurrency tab anymore, and it's not like it gets in the way or anything.
- Leace 6y ago
  > It was a fun little giveaway experiment funded by someone else, in the spirit of the company's focus on cryptography. It was not "someone else". Keybase is directly funded by Stellar (source: https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar https://keybase.io/blog/keybase-stellar) and the crypto offering was just a PR/marketing move to increase adoption for crypto of Stellar not something "in the spirit of the company's focus on cryptography".
- yarrel 6y ago
  It was a trainwreck that damaged the project's reputation and harmed its users. If you know crypto, it had several problems. There are worse coins to airdrop on your users but not many. The user experience resembled that used by scammers on Telegram and the project's overall behaviour looked like a de-anonymization attack (I mean that seems to be Keybase's business model but this looked exactly like one). All of this led to crypto chats on Keybase being targeted by social engineering attacks, and Keybase's famously bad moderation tools made that much harder to deal with than it could have been. If you don't know crypto it made Keybase look like a crazy crypto project, which isn't an easy sell. In either case you could be forgiven for wondering when Keybase got their money transmitter license. So this did get in the way, and the sooner Keybase remove the tab the sooner it will be clear that they are past the denial stage. This was a bad enough fuck-up that I removed my social proofs and now recommend that people not use Keybase. But if they fixed a few things (remove the Crypto tab, fix moderation, fix name changes) I'd pay them a subscription in a heartbeat.
  - Legogris 6y ago
    > This was a bad enough fuck-up that I removed my social proofs and now recommend that people not use Keybase What do you recommend people use instead?
  - ME70 6y ago
    In all honesty I believe the crypto offerings were a smart idea that didn’t undermine Keybases reputation , it attempted to highlight a user friendly exchange of Stellar and any further crypto to come along . What did undermine the reputation was allowing a system that could be scammed which called for the closing of the offering . Clearly not thought out enough .
- slumos 6y ago
  I for one didn’t appreciate being spammed by them in the app I only keep running for secure private messages.
anoraca 6y ago
They added a wallet feature that was compatible with an existing crypto coin, there was no offering.
LeoPanthera 6y ago
This is very misleading, they didn't "offer" any coin, and they don't have their own coin. They added a wallet for a coin that already existed. A pretty good wallet, too.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  It seems this has literally nothing to do with the main functionality of keybase though.

edraferi 6y ago

Agree. This could be a useful way to expand the ecosystem that Keybase kick-started. We really need a modern alternative to the PGP ecosystem, and Keybase has been clear that they only want to do a subset of that. Of course I also really like the client-facing stuff that Keybase has done. Roll out hasn't been perfect, but they provide a lot of useful, secure collaboration tools.

brobinson 6y ago

>proper encryption Keybase does not have PFS, unfortunately...