9 ms·

EU NGI TALER will bring private and secure online payments to the Eurozone

132 points by pabs3 3y ago

zwnow 3y ago
[flagged]
- notimetorelax 3y ago
  They explicitly mention that it’s not.
  - stevage 3y ago
    > Taler does not require any Blockchain technology, and is also not based on proof-of-work or any other distributed consensus mechanism. Instead, Taler is based on blind signatures. However, it is theoretically possible to combine Taler with peer-to-peer crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. > It would be possible, however, to withdraw coins denominated in Bitcoin into a Taler wallet (with an appropriate exchange), which would give some benefits over plain Bitcoin, such as instant confirmation times. I don't really know what to make of it.
    - Dalewyn 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - mratsim 3y ago
        Can you substantiate what makes this a cryptocurrency? Everytime you authenticate on your bank website you sign a payload, that doesn't make transactions there cryptocurrency.
    - gfdgsdf 3y ago
      > I don't really know what to make of it. It's a federated system/protocol that doesn't have a currency of its own. There should be Exchanges you are supposed to trust, that accept your CURRENCY_NAME and give you anonymous tokens (think of it as electronic cash) in exchange. You spend them in Merchants' shops. The Merchants claim the CURRENCY_NAME back from the Exchanges. No one knows what you bought but the Merchants can be audited by the Government to be taxed. That's their plan as I understand it.
  - synctext 3y ago
    Here are 63 slowly explaining this system: https://eh17.easterhegg.eu/Fahrplan/system/event_attachments/attachments/000/003/166/original/main.pdf https://eh17.easterhegg.eu/Fahrplan/system/event_attachments... Quinte neat. It simply using open source to preserve the existing financial players. Financial intermediaries are not eliminated.
- laserbeam 3y ago
  Thanks. I was suspicious while reading. The language makes it feel like it's an official EU project, but there's no EU branding, links to anything in EU governing bodies. At best they seem to mention they applied for eu horizon funding, which anyone can do. Very much junk indeed.
  - bobo18 3y ago
    Actually, NGI (Next Generation Internet) is an official EU project, and they are involved in this (https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-taler/ https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-taler/)
    - Denvercoder9 3y ago
      It's an EU project in the sense that it has received a grant from the EU research program, not in the sense that what they're doing is EU policy.
- bobo18 3y ago
  This is based on GNU Taler, which definetly isn't your usual crypto bs
- mhitza 3y ago
  GNU Taler is not crypto/"blockchain tech" in the traditional sense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler
- FeepingCreature 3y ago
  "crypto" != "blockchain".
  - 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
    you know how everyone was implementing "blockchain" to monitor how many times do employees poop last year?
- tucnak 3y ago
  Fear, uncertainty and doubt (often shortened to FUD) is a manipulative propaganda tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics, polling and cults. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information, and is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.
- p4bl0 3y ago
  No it's not. GNU Taler doesn't use a blockchain, as a blockchain cannot implement digital cash: in a blockchain, transactions are necessarily centralized — on a distributed ledger, but still account-based —, so they are effectively equivalent to wire transfer, i.e., just accounting entries: they cannot take place between two offline parties like you can do with actual cash. Also, blockchain-based digital "money" (quotes because there is no such thing, "cryptocurrencies" are purely speculative securities and that's it) need to be at the same time the currency, the long-term storage, and the transaction system. On the contrary, GNU Taler is only a transaction system, and uses advanced cryptography and infrastructure that allow it to be bearer-based, i.e., actually decentralized transactions between two offline parties can take place. It can actually do digital cash, with buyers privacy, and all. That said, I'm not saying we need such a technology. Only that it's clearly not cryptobro bullshit.
  - zwnow 3y ago
    Still crypto bs to me
  - Hamuko 3y ago
    >as a blockchain cannot implement digital cash I guess Satoshi would disagree with the notion since the initial promise of Bitcoin was that it was in fact "electronic cash".
    - p4bl0 3y ago
      I guess they would. But my take on it is that the very title of the Bitcoin whitepaper contains two lies. > "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" 1. It's not cash as so many properties of cash are not met. It is technically a simple writing game, just like wire transfer between accounts at a same bank. 2. It is not p2p. The underlying protocol that allows to maintain the distributed ledger is; but transactions, since they're account-based and only a writing game (contrary to actual cash transactions which are bearer-based), are centralized on that distributed p2p-maintained ledger. So the "cash system" (which is not that either) is not p2p.
  - gfdgsdf 3y ago
some-username 3y ago
People should know that 1. it's not based on any kind of blockchain, 2. it's not a currency, it's a payment system which you could use to transfer other currencies (euro, dollar, ...) and 3. unlike most blockchain-based currencies it offers anonymity (only for buyers, not for sellers, though)
- p4bl0 3y ago
  Indeed, GNU Taler doesn't use a blockchain, as a blockchain cannot actually implement digital cash. In a blockchain, transactions are necessarily centralized — on a distributed ledger maintained using a peer-to-peer protocol, but the transactions themselves are still account-based —, so they are effectively equivalent to wire transfers, i.e., just accounting entries: they cannot take place between two offline parties like you can do with actual cash. Also, blockchain-based digital "money" (quotes because there is no such thing, "cryptocurrencies" are purely speculative securities and that's it) need to be at the same time the currency, the long-term storage, and the transaction system. On the contrary, GNU Taler is only a transaction system as you said, and uses advanced cryptography (double blind signatures) and infrastructure that allow it to be bearer-based, i.e., actually decentralized transactions between two offline parties can take place. Taler can actually do digital cash, with buyers privacy, and auditability and taxability of sellers.
  - jgilias 3y ago
    I’m confused. Why do they say in their FAQ that peer-to-peer payments only appear as such, and actually need to go through a payment provider? https://taler.net/en/faq.html https://taler.net/en/faq.html
    - t_mann 3y ago
      My understanding is that a Taler is a "use-once" note - you create it from a payment provider balance, then you can transfer it to someone else, but then that person then has to redeem the coupon, they can't transfer it again (at least not using the cryptographically secure protocol - they could give someone else the private key, but clearly that wouldn't be safe). So transactions in Taler look something like this: 1 convert payment provider balance to Taler note 2 send Taler note to someone else 3 recipient converts receipt back to payment provider balance 4 create a new Taler note (go to 1). The anonymity should derive from the fact that the receipt note can't be traced back to the original spendable note, and the time delay between the creation of the spendable note and the redemption of the receipt note (so arguably the system requires some level of minimum activity to achieve a practical privacy guarantee). So in that sense it is quite different from the account or UTXO logic that most cryptocurrencies use, where balances can be transferred between accounts indefinitely. I think it's interesting to think about what problems it solves - it semi-solves anonymity in a way that might be acceptable for lawmakers and that doesn't require a backdoor (the more typical approach for 'compliant privacy'). The question is whether that is enough utility gain for regular users to justify the overhead - it seems like a simple transaction requires quite a lot of steps, key management is a non-trivial burden (for users who might not even be used to password managers eg),...
oaiey 3y ago
My question is: How does the average Jane and Joe benefits compared to Debit and Credit Cards? Privacy, they do not care. Being anonymous, they do not care. So a dead initiative?
- some-username 3y ago
  My understanding here is that the main objective is to break up the MasterCard/Visa duopoly. I guess breaking up duopolies is always a win for the general public, no?
  - pasc1878 3y ago
    In the UK and I thought in most of the EU you can just use your Bank's app to send money into someone else's bank account. So not replacing MasterCard/Visa especially as that requires a lot to be able to accept payments.
- some-username 3y ago
  ...and, as quoted by sunshine_reggae, lower transaction costs.
  - kybernetyk 3y ago
    as an average joe on the consumer end I don't care about transaction costs. at least here in germany that's the vendor's problem.
    - some-username 3y ago
      Won't the vendors just design their prices in a way that it's economically feasible for them - they just include the transaction costs in the price?
      - kybernetyk 3y ago
        yes, but they're not allowed to charge different prices depending on payment method. so they may factor those costs in - but everyone pays them. doesn't matter if they're paying cash or visa. so as a consumer I don't care about taler's lower transaction costs because I still have to pay the full price. so why should I switch? I'm happy with my visa on my apple watch.
sunshine_reggae 3y ago
> The initial investment into the required infrastructure is low and the payment mechanism operates more cost efficiently than existing payment solutions, with lower transaction fees - a benefit that will be shared by consumers and merchants. > This makes even micro-payments possible, creating an interesting and privacy preserving alternative to subscription- or advertisement-based revenue for newspapers and other publishers.
robin_reala 3y ago
As an aside, the taler (or thaler) is an old German-and-surrounding-regions coin that’s the root etymology for the word “dollar”.
- im3w1l 3y ago
  And the word thaler is a shortened version of Joachimsthaler. Joachimsthal was the place where the silver for the coins was mined. And the second part of that, thal, is cognate with English dale.
  - krolley 3y ago
    Very interesting! Dale is anachronistic in English by now I guess. I've only read it literarily as in "over hill and dale" and otherwise thought of Tal as valley in German.
    - nullnix 3y ago
      It's certainly not anachronistic in England in place names, nor as a name for a type of (water- or glacier-carved) landform.
- alentred 3y ago
  Ha. I thought that "taler" is a wordplay for "teller" (like a bank teller).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
entropyie 3y ago
If I could rig my browser to pay 1 cent for every newspaper article I read, I would happily do so. The biggest issue with paying for news is that you are reduced to a small handful of sources. I would like to read a couple of articles from a hundred sources, not a hundred articles from one source. Not sure this platform solves the problem, but it would be a game changer if it did.
- stevage 3y ago
  Yeah, it's weird that no one ever made that model work. I think it was tried?
  - Hamuko 3y ago
    Flattr was a kind of a version of that (although billed as "donations"), and it recently shut down. https://flattr.com/ https://flattr.com/
    - vaylian 3y ago
      I appreciate the "service no longer exists" page. But is there any official statement why flattr was closed down?
    - littlestymaar 3y ago
      I tried to use flattr a few years back, but the UX was horrible and for something that needs to become ubiquitous to be useful, that's not the kind of mistake you can afford.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    Take the Brave browser, swap their crypto wallet for this.
  - asgeirn 3y ago
    Yeah, I know of one example where idea was actually created and pitched to media outlets. They did not like the idea. They very much more like the idea of owning the customer and keeping the customer paying subscriptions. I also know of a media outlet which incentivizes customer to go from credit card payment to automated bank transfers, since credit cards expire every x years but the bank transfer goes on forever.
superzamp 3y ago
Great news from a project that deserves a close look for those not familiar with it already. Taler is very close in term of mindset to what Ripple was, as originally developped by Ryan Fugger, before helm changed hands and it became the commercial farce known as today's incarnation of Ripple / XRP.
Animats 3y ago
Where is the balance in my wallet stored? Your wallet stores digital coins and thus ultimately your computer holds your balance. The exchange keeps funds matching all unspent coins in a settlement account. What if my wallet is lost? Since the digital coins of value in your wallet are anonymized, the exchange can not assist you in recovering a lost or stolen wallet. Just like with a physical wallet for cash, you are responsible for keeping it safe. The risk of losing a wallet can be mitigated by making backups or keeping the balance reasonably low.[1] Ah. This is Chaum's DigiCash, from 1990.[2] A good idea, too early. It's a system where coins are protected against double-spending by a database back-end. Which is how some centrally issued cryptocurrencies actually work. The half-anonymity is interesting. The recipient is not anonymous, but the sender is. That may make it a politically acceptable substitute for cash. It has the nice property that, unlike debit cards, etc., the recipient can't take more of your money than you give them. [1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html https://taler.net/en/faq.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash
- asgeirn 3y ago
  Ah, DigiCash! I was really optimistic on this concept in my student days - one local bank even had a PoC with digital cash.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  Sounds a bit like Mondex.
- toyg 3y ago
  > That may make it a politically acceptable substitute for cash. I think you misspelled unacceptable. Anonymous donations are a massive source of corruption, which is why they tend to be capped by law (and even then, I'm sure a lot of bad people manage to get around it). Political money needs total transparency. (Unless you meant "more acceptable to the general public for average transactions"; in which case I agree, but I suspect it will be the opposite for governments and law enforcement agencies...)
bheadmaster 3y ago
This is exciting news. GNU Taler has been in development since 2014 (10 years now!). I'm very happy to see European Commision's interest in this privacy-protecting technology. Along with GNU Net and GNU Social (amongst others), it seems like one of those technologies that have a huge potential to make internet a better place for everyone. While many consider GNU projects to be vaporware with development pace of a turtle, it seems that the turtle is slowly starting to lead the race. GNU Hurd has also had significant news lately [0]. I'm feeling really hopeful about this, especially after the somewhat recent RMS lynching campaign that was lead by major corporations. [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2023-q4.html https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2023-q4.html
eigenket 3y ago
My impression (which might be unfair since I haven't used the Taler system) is that this looks like a technically better but practically worse version of payment systems which already exist in parts of Europe like the Polish Blik, Swedish Swish, Norwegian Vipps and the one they have in the Netherlands (I forgot the name of that one). In "the real world" I really don't want to be dealing with a wallet of electronic cash stored on my computer. What I want to be able to do is relatively seamlessly pay for a curry or send my friend some money I owe them or something.
- rambambram 3y ago
  > and the one they have in the Netherlands (I forgot the name of that one). iDeal you mean?
  - eigenket 3y ago
    Maybe, I've never used the Dutch one.
jgilias 3y ago
From looking at the GNU Taler FAQ[1], making “p2p” payments still needs to go through the exchange, and the exchanges need to be independently audited to ensure compliance. Ok. So, privacy? Given that the system ultimately relies on centralized actors, it can only be private for payment amounts below any applicable travel rule amount in the given jurisdiction. [1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html https://taler.net/en/faq.html
some-username 3y ago
I find it kind of cute that they set up this mock-up currency 'kudos' to toy around with it. (https://demo.taler.net/en/ https://demo.taler.net/en/) What makes it (more) cute is that you can use it to reserve entries in their GNS first-come-first-served service. (https://fcfs.gnunet.org/ https://fcfs.gnunet.org/) GNS being the GNU Name System which is a decentralized/p2p equivalent to DNS. (https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html)
- pndy 3y ago
  These examples under Essays feels obnoxiously dystopian; it's just a demo environment of course but I really hope that's not the feature where were heading into, in which every single link/piece of information on the Internet is locked behind payment. Doomsaying aside, here in Poland nearly everything can be paid with BLIK payments system - whether it's something you purchase on the Internet or small groceries at shop around the corner. You can also withdraw/depo money by ATM or do a small transfer to someone's else phone number https://www.blik.com/en https://www.blik.com/en
  - some-username 3y ago
    Why I find it kind of cute is that those buys (GNS fcfs) are basically meaningless - in a p2p system everyone can just host a service like this.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
TruthWillHurt 3y ago
"..funded as pilot under the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative within the European Commission.." pilot + next gen + initiative + european commission . This combination of terms == no action.
- orwin 3y ago
  The last time I participated in a project with all those terms (not 'next gen, it was' future', but the idea is the same), it gave birth to the legislation that forces manufacturers to keep providing spare parts 10 years after product EOL, and to provide plans for independants builders after that. Long winded way of saying 'you're wrong'.
  - mrd3v0 3y ago
    Not to mention the NGI is not a bunch of words, they have been funding many actionable projects including pretty much all the Fediverse.
    - TruthWillHurt 3y ago
      That's a US-led project. When you add "Euro" to these things they behave differently.
  - TruthWillHurt 3y ago
    aha, sure. and other times it gave us Eurocloud. You ARE using Eurocloud, aren't you??? But your win is legislation, apples and oranges, right? so here's a better comparison - "this site contains cookies".
pyrale 3y ago
> This payment system is different from current online payment methods, like credit cards or bank transfers, in that it offers privacy for the buyer: neither merchants nor banks can trace or link the payments. Banks will love a solution that completely prevents them from implementing KYC/AML regulation they are required to follow. Truly baffling that such a project manages, if their claims are true, to get public funding after years of crypto grift scandals.
- superzamp 3y ago
  Tbh, the hit to omniscient funds traceability is not that different from what some financial institutions started to accept with Stablecoins already, i.e. a model where KYC/AML happens at the edges but not within the transaction graph itself. It's pleasantly surprising to see this model getting acceptance in the regulatory spheres.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    > It's pleasantly surprising to see this model getting acceptance in the regulatory spheres. The only way this gains regulatory acceptance is if the KYC/AML regulation is moved to the audited exchange - I.E. less friction for authorities to get transaction informations, not more.
- Aerroon 3y ago
  If you ever want digital cash then that digital cash has to offer the same benefits real cash has: anonymity from the state. Until then you're stuck with credit card companies selling your data.
ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago
This seems to be a chaumian mint. How will the onramp look like? I guess they'll have to do KYC when taking in money? What software can be used to use it?
postepowanieadm 3y ago
Another one? Europe already has multiple private and secure online payments: for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik
- 1116574 3y ago
  Each country's banks/tech firms have invented their own way that is either tied to one app or the banking system/bank account. It is not anonymous for the buyer, and it always requires a central server for every transaction. From what I gather GNU taler solves those problems.
- summm 3y ago
  How is that one private? It is coupled to your bank account so your purchases can be nicely tracked, and to add insult, you also need to use your bank's crappy online banking app
  - eigenket 3y ago
    Blik is explicitly not private in that sense, you have to trust your bank to use it. Not sure what they meant by that. However if your bank has a crappy online banking app and you live in Poland then you should probably change bank. The bank apps I've used as a foreigner living in Poland have all been essentially flawless (even using the English language versions).
  - postepowanieadm 3y ago
    Do you really suppose anyone in the EU will allow you to maka any payments that are completely anonymous/untraceable? I do trust my bank, if I wouldn't trust them I would find another one. I don't see what problem taler is supposed to solve.
    - summm 3y ago
      Money streams would not be completely anonymous. Only the end user would be anonymous. And, the competition are not necessarily only banks, but shady, non-EU middlemen such as Visa, MasterCard, PayPal etc. where it is well-known that they sell your data wherever.
Mutttttioi 3y ago
Funny, first time you will hear about this and last time. I'm curious how those companies have budget for playing around and why they believe they will be relevant enough to have any impact on daily life for anyone at all?
lencastre 3y ago
I just want to know, when will this be live and when can I use it.
rthkljlkrj 3y ago
[dead]

132 points by pabs3 3y ago

zwnow 3y ago

[flagged]

notimetorelax 3y ago
They explicitly mention that it’s not.
- stevage 3y ago
  > Taler does not require any Blockchain technology, and is also not based on proof-of-work or any other distributed consensus mechanism. Instead, Taler is based on blind signatures. However, it is theoretically possible to combine Taler with peer-to-peer crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. > It would be possible, however, to withdraw coins denominated in Bitcoin into a Taler wallet (with an appropriate exchange), which would give some benefits over plain Bitcoin, such as instant confirmation times. I don't really know what to make of it.
  - Dalewyn 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - mratsim 3y ago
      Can you substantiate what makes this a cryptocurrency? Everytime you authenticate on your bank website you sign a payload, that doesn't make transactions there cryptocurrency.
  - gfdgsdf 3y ago
    > I don't really know what to make of it. It's a federated system/protocol that doesn't have a currency of its own. There should be Exchanges you are supposed to trust, that accept your CURRENCY_NAME and give you anonymous tokens (think of it as electronic cash) in exchange. You spend them in Merchants' shops. The Merchants claim the CURRENCY_NAME back from the Exchanges. No one knows what you bought but the Merchants can be audited by the Government to be taxed. That's their plan as I understand it.
- synctext 3y ago
  Here are 63 slowly explaining this system: https://eh17.easterhegg.eu/Fahrplan/system/event_attachments/attachments/000/003/166/original/main.pdf https://eh17.easterhegg.eu/Fahrplan/system/event_attachments... Quinte neat. It simply using open source to preserve the existing financial players. Financial intermediaries are not eliminated.
laserbeam 3y ago
Thanks. I was suspicious while reading. The language makes it feel like it's an official EU project, but there's no EU branding, links to anything in EU governing bodies. At best they seem to mention they applied for eu horizon funding, which anyone can do. Very much junk indeed.
- bobo18 3y ago
  Actually, NGI (Next Generation Internet) is an official EU project, and they are involved in this (https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-taler/ https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-taler/)
  - Denvercoder9 3y ago
    It's an EU project in the sense that it has received a grant from the EU research program, not in the sense that what they're doing is EU policy.
bobo18 3y ago
This is based on GNU Taler, which definetly isn't your usual crypto bs
mhitza 3y ago
GNU Taler is not crypto/"blockchain tech" in the traditional sense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler
FeepingCreature 3y ago
"crypto" != "blockchain".
- 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
  you know how everyone was implementing "blockchain" to monitor how many times do employees poop last year?
tucnak 3y ago
Fear, uncertainty and doubt (often shortened to FUD) is a manipulative propaganda tactic used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics, polling and cults. FUD is generally a strategy to influence perception by disseminating negative and dubious or false information, and is a manifestation of the appeal to fear.
p4bl0 3y ago
No it's not. GNU Taler doesn't use a blockchain, as a blockchain cannot implement digital cash: in a blockchain, transactions are necessarily centralized — on a distributed ledger, but still account-based —, so they are effectively equivalent to wire transfer, i.e., just accounting entries: they cannot take place between two offline parties like you can do with actual cash. Also, blockchain-based digital "money" (quotes because there is no such thing, "cryptocurrencies" are purely speculative securities and that's it) need to be at the same time the currency, the long-term storage, and the transaction system. On the contrary, GNU Taler is only a transaction system, and uses advanced cryptography and infrastructure that allow it to be bearer-based, i.e., actually decentralized transactions between two offline parties can take place. It can actually do digital cash, with buyers privacy, and all. That said, I'm not saying we need such a technology. Only that it's clearly not cryptobro bullshit.
- zwnow 3y ago
  Still crypto bs to me
- Hamuko 3y ago
  >as a blockchain cannot implement digital cash I guess Satoshi would disagree with the notion since the initial promise of Bitcoin was that it was in fact "electronic cash".
  - p4bl0 3y ago
    I guess they would. But my take on it is that the very title of the Bitcoin whitepaper contains two lies. > "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" 1. It's not cash as so many properties of cash are not met. It is technically a simple writing game, just like wire transfer between accounts at a same bank. 2. It is not p2p. The underlying protocol that allows to maintain the distributed ledger is; but transactions, since they're account-based and only a writing game (contrary to actual cash transactions which are bearer-based), are centralized on that distributed p2p-maintained ledger. So the "cash system" (which is not that either) is not p2p.
- gfdgsdf 3y ago

some-username 3y ago

People should know that 1. it's not based on any kind of blockchain, 2. it's not a currency, it's a payment system which you could use to transfer other currencies (euro, dollar, ...) and 3. unlike most blockchain-based currencies it offers anonymity (only for buyers, not for sellers, though)

p4bl0 3y ago
Indeed, GNU Taler doesn't use a blockchain, as a blockchain cannot actually implement digital cash. In a blockchain, transactions are necessarily centralized — on a distributed ledger maintained using a peer-to-peer protocol, but the transactions themselves are still account-based —, so they are effectively equivalent to wire transfers, i.e., just accounting entries: they cannot take place between two offline parties like you can do with actual cash. Also, blockchain-based digital "money" (quotes because there is no such thing, "cryptocurrencies" are purely speculative securities and that's it) need to be at the same time the currency, the long-term storage, and the transaction system. On the contrary, GNU Taler is only a transaction system as you said, and uses advanced cryptography (double blind signatures) and infrastructure that allow it to be bearer-based, i.e., actually decentralized transactions between two offline parties can take place. Taler can actually do digital cash, with buyers privacy, and auditability and taxability of sellers.
- jgilias 3y ago
  I’m confused. Why do they say in their FAQ that peer-to-peer payments only appear as such, and actually need to go through a payment provider? https://taler.net/en/faq.html https://taler.net/en/faq.html
  - t_mann 3y ago
    My understanding is that a Taler is a "use-once" note - you create it from a payment provider balance, then you can transfer it to someone else, but then that person then has to redeem the coupon, they can't transfer it again (at least not using the cryptographically secure protocol - they could give someone else the private key, but clearly that wouldn't be safe). So transactions in Taler look something like this: 1 convert payment provider balance to Taler note 2 send Taler note to someone else 3 recipient converts receipt back to payment provider balance 4 create a new Taler note (go to 1). The anonymity should derive from the fact that the receipt note can't be traced back to the original spendable note, and the time delay between the creation of the spendable note and the redemption of the receipt note (so arguably the system requires some level of minimum activity to achieve a practical privacy guarantee). So in that sense it is quite different from the account or UTXO logic that most cryptocurrencies use, where balances can be transferred between accounts indefinitely. I think it's interesting to think about what problems it solves - it semi-solves anonymity in a way that might be acceptable for lawmakers and that doesn't require a backdoor (the more typical approach for 'compliant privacy'). The question is whether that is enough utility gain for regular users to justify the overhead - it seems like a simple transaction requires quite a lot of steps, key management is a non-trivial burden (for users who might not even be used to password managers eg),...

oaiey 3y ago

My question is: How does the average Jane and Joe benefits compared to Debit and Credit Cards? Privacy, they do not care. Being anonymous, they do not care. So a dead initiative?

some-username 3y ago
My understanding here is that the main objective is to break up the MasterCard/Visa duopoly. I guess breaking up duopolies is always a win for the general public, no?
- pasc1878 3y ago
  In the UK and I thought in most of the EU you can just use your Bank's app to send money into someone else's bank account. So not replacing MasterCard/Visa especially as that requires a lot to be able to accept payments.
some-username 3y ago
...and, as quoted by sunshine_reggae, lower transaction costs.
- kybernetyk 3y ago
  as an average joe on the consumer end I don't care about transaction costs. at least here in germany that's the vendor's problem.
  - some-username 3y ago
    Won't the vendors just design their prices in a way that it's economically feasible for them - they just include the transaction costs in the price?
    - kybernetyk 3y ago
      yes, but they're not allowed to charge different prices depending on payment method. so they may factor those costs in - but everyone pays them. doesn't matter if they're paying cash or visa. so as a consumer I don't care about taler's lower transaction costs because I still have to pay the full price. so why should I switch? I'm happy with my visa on my apple watch.

sunshine_reggae 3y ago

> The initial investment into the required infrastructure is low and the payment mechanism operates more cost efficiently than existing payment solutions, with lower transaction fees - a benefit that will be shared by consumers and merchants. > This makes even micro-payments possible, creating an interesting and privacy preserving alternative to subscription- or advertisement-based revenue for newspapers and other publishers.

robin_reala 3y ago

As an aside, the taler (or thaler) is an old German-and-surrounding-regions coin that’s the root etymology for the word “dollar”.

im3w1l 3y ago
And the word thaler is a shortened version of Joachimsthaler. Joachimsthal was the place where the silver for the coins was mined. And the second part of that, thal, is cognate with English dale.
- krolley 3y ago
  Very interesting! Dale is anachronistic in English by now I guess. I've only read it literarily as in "over hill and dale" and otherwise thought of Tal as valley in German.
  - nullnix 3y ago
    It's certainly not anachronistic in England in place names, nor as a name for a type of (water- or glacier-carved) landform.
alentred 3y ago
Ha. I thought that "taler" is a wordplay for "teller" (like a bank teller).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

entropyie 3y ago

If I could rig my browser to pay 1 cent for every newspaper article I read, I would happily do so. The biggest issue with paying for news is that you are reduced to a small handful of sources. I would like to read a couple of articles from a hundred sources, not a hundred articles from one source. Not sure this platform solves the problem, but it would be a game changer if it did.

stevage 3y ago
Yeah, it's weird that no one ever made that model work. I think it was tried?
- Hamuko 3y ago
  Flattr was a kind of a version of that (although billed as "donations"), and it recently shut down. https://flattr.com/ https://flattr.com/
  - vaylian 3y ago
    I appreciate the "service no longer exists" page. But is there any official statement why flattr was closed down?
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    I tried to use flattr a few years back, but the UX was horrible and for something that needs to become ubiquitous to be useful, that's not the kind of mistake you can afford.
- rglullis 3y ago
  Take the Brave browser, swap their crypto wallet for this.
- asgeirn 3y ago
  Yeah, I know of one example where idea was actually created and pitched to media outlets. They did not like the idea. They very much more like the idea of owning the customer and keeping the customer paying subscriptions. I also know of a media outlet which incentivizes customer to go from credit card payment to automated bank transfers, since credit cards expire every x years but the bank transfer goes on forever.

superzamp 3y ago

Great news from a project that deserves a close look for those not familiar with it already. Taler is very close in term of mindset to what Ripple was, as originally developped by Ryan Fugger, before helm changed hands and it became the commercial farce known as today's incarnation of Ripple / XRP.

Animats 3y ago

Where is the balance in my wallet stored? Your wallet stores digital coins and thus ultimately your computer holds your balance. The exchange keeps funds matching all unspent coins in a settlement account. What if my wallet is lost? Since the digital coins of value in your wallet are anonymized, the exchange can not assist you in recovering a lost or stolen wallet. Just like with a physical wallet for cash, you are responsible for keeping it safe. The risk of losing a wallet can be mitigated by making backups or keeping the balance reasonably low.[1] Ah. This is Chaum's DigiCash, from 1990.[2] A good idea, too early. It's a system where coins are protected against double-spending by a database back-end. Which is how some centrally issued cryptocurrencies actually work. The half-anonymity is interesting. The recipient is not anonymous, but the sender is. That may make it a politically acceptable substitute for cash. It has the nice property that, unlike debit cards, etc., the recipient can't take more of your money than you give them. [1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html https://taler.net/en/faq.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCash

asgeirn 3y ago
Ah, DigiCash! I was really optimistic on this concept in my student days - one local bank even had a PoC with digital cash.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
kwhitefoot 3y ago
Sounds a bit like Mondex.
toyg 3y ago
> That may make it a politically acceptable substitute for cash. I think you misspelled unacceptable. Anonymous donations are a massive source of corruption, which is why they tend to be capped by law (and even then, I'm sure a lot of bad people manage to get around it). Political money needs total transparency. (Unless you meant "more acceptable to the general public for average transactions"; in which case I agree, but I suspect it will be the opposite for governments and law enforcement agencies...)

bheadmaster 3y ago

This is exciting news. GNU Taler has been in development since 2014 (10 years now!). I'm very happy to see European Commision's interest in this privacy-protecting technology. Along with GNU Net and GNU Social (amongst others), it seems like one of those technologies that have a huge potential to make internet a better place for everyone. While many consider GNU projects to be vaporware with development pace of a turtle, it seems that the turtle is slowly starting to lead the race. GNU Hurd has also had significant news lately [0]. I'm feeling really hopeful about this, especially after the somewhat recent RMS lynching campaign that was lead by major corporations. [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2023-q4.html https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/news/2023-q4.html

eigenket 3y ago

My impression (which might be unfair since I haven't used the Taler system) is that this looks like a technically better but practically worse version of payment systems which already exist in parts of Europe like the Polish Blik, Swedish Swish, Norwegian Vipps and the one they have in the Netherlands (I forgot the name of that one). In "the real world" I really don't want to be dealing with a wallet of electronic cash stored on my computer. What I want to be able to do is relatively seamlessly pay for a curry or send my friend some money I owe them or something.

rambambram 3y ago
> and the one they have in the Netherlands (I forgot the name of that one). iDeal you mean?
- eigenket 3y ago
  Maybe, I've never used the Dutch one.

jgilias 3y ago

From looking at the GNU Taler FAQ[1], making “p2p” payments still needs to go through the exchange, and the exchanges need to be independently audited to ensure compliance. Ok. So, privacy? Given that the system ultimately relies on centralized actors, it can only be private for payment amounts below any applicable travel rule amount in the given jurisdiction. [1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html https://taler.net/en/faq.html

some-username 3y ago

I find it kind of cute that they set up this mock-up currency 'kudos' to toy around with it. (https://demo.taler.net/en/ https://demo.taler.net/en/) What makes it (more) cute is that you can use it to reserve entries in their GNS first-come-first-served service. (https://fcfs.gnunet.org/ https://fcfs.gnunet.org/) GNS being the GNU Name System which is a decentralized/p2p equivalent to DNS. (https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html)

pndy 3y ago
These examples under Essays feels obnoxiously dystopian; it's just a demo environment of course but I really hope that's not the feature where were heading into, in which every single link/piece of information on the Internet is locked behind payment. Doomsaying aside, here in Poland nearly everything can be paid with BLIK payments system - whether it's something you purchase on the Internet or small groceries at shop around the corner. You can also withdraw/depo money by ATM or do a small transfer to someone's else phone number https://www.blik.com/en https://www.blik.com/en
- some-username 3y ago
  Why I find it kind of cute is that those buys (GNS fcfs) are basically meaningless - in a p2p system everyone can just host a service like this.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

TruthWillHurt 3y ago

"..funded as pilot under the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative within the European Commission.." pilot + next gen + initiative + european commission . This combination of terms == no action.

orwin 3y ago
The last time I participated in a project with all those terms (not 'next gen, it was' future', but the idea is the same), it gave birth to the legislation that forces manufacturers to keep providing spare parts 10 years after product EOL, and to provide plans for independants builders after that. Long winded way of saying 'you're wrong'.
- mrd3v0 3y ago
  Not to mention the NGI is not a bunch of words, they have been funding many actionable projects including pretty much all the Fediverse.
  - TruthWillHurt 3y ago
    That's a US-led project. When you add "Euro" to these things they behave differently.
- TruthWillHurt 3y ago
  aha, sure. and other times it gave us Eurocloud. You ARE using Eurocloud, aren't you??? But your win is legislation, apples and oranges, right? so here's a better comparison - "this site contains cookies".

pyrale 3y ago

> This payment system is different from current online payment methods, like credit cards or bank transfers, in that it offers privacy for the buyer: neither merchants nor banks can trace or link the payments. Banks will love a solution that completely prevents them from implementing KYC/AML regulation they are required to follow. Truly baffling that such a project manages, if their claims are true, to get public funding after years of crypto grift scandals.

superzamp 3y ago
Tbh, the hit to omniscient funds traceability is not that different from what some financial institutions started to accept with Stablecoins already, i.e. a model where KYC/AML happens at the edges but not within the transaction graph itself. It's pleasantly surprising to see this model getting acceptance in the regulatory spheres.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > It's pleasantly surprising to see this model getting acceptance in the regulatory spheres. The only way this gains regulatory acceptance is if the KYC/AML regulation is moved to the audited exchange - I.E. less friction for authorities to get transaction informations, not more.
Aerroon 3y ago
If you ever want digital cash then that digital cash has to offer the same benefits real cash has: anonymity from the state. Until then you're stuck with credit card companies selling your data.

ArtTimeInvestor 3y ago

This seems to be a chaumian mint. How will the onramp look like? I guess they'll have to do KYC when taking in money? What software can be used to use it?

postepowanieadm 3y ago

Another one? Europe already has multiple private and secure online payments: for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blik

1116574 3y ago
Each country's banks/tech firms have invented their own way that is either tied to one app or the banking system/bank account. It is not anonymous for the buyer, and it always requires a central server for every transaction. From what I gather GNU taler solves those problems.
summm 3y ago
How is that one private? It is coupled to your bank account so your purchases can be nicely tracked, and to add insult, you also need to use your bank's crappy online banking app
- eigenket 3y ago
  Blik is explicitly not private in that sense, you have to trust your bank to use it. Not sure what they meant by that. However if your bank has a crappy online banking app and you live in Poland then you should probably change bank. The bank apps I've used as a foreigner living in Poland have all been essentially flawless (even using the English language versions).
- postepowanieadm 3y ago
  Do you really suppose anyone in the EU will allow you to maka any payments that are completely anonymous/untraceable? I do trust my bank, if I wouldn't trust them I would find another one. I don't see what problem taler is supposed to solve.
  - summm 3y ago
    Money streams would not be completely anonymous. Only the end user would be anonymous. And, the competition are not necessarily only banks, but shady, non-EU middlemen such as Visa, MasterCard, PayPal etc. where it is well-known that they sell your data wherever.

Mutttttioi 3y ago

Funny, first time you will hear about this and last time. I'm curious how those companies have budget for playing around and why they believe they will be relevant enough to have any impact on daily life for anyone at all?

lencastre 3y ago

I just want to know, when will this be live and when can I use it.

rthkljlkrj 3y ago

[dead]