19 ms·

Stellar

943 points by gdb 12y ago

kzanul 12y ago
Was wondering what was going to come following the post on Bitcoin as an IP layer. This is great stuff - looking forward to seeing how it evolves.
- oafitupa 12y ago
  I'm sorry but this is not "great stuff", it's just a fork of Ripple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
  - danoprey 12y ago
    Yes, by the creator of Ripple who was forced out. This is the continuation of Ripple towards what it was supposed to be.
StavrosK 12y ago
No mining, instant confirmations, inflation rather than deflation? Interesting.
- wmf 12y ago
  It's not really inflation. Oh, never mind.
Titanous 12y ago
Interesting, this looks like a fork of Ripple (and is by an original creator of Ripple).
- kylebrown 12y ago
  Yup, obviously a fork of Ripple. While at Ripple, Jed acqui-hired his gf Joyce (SimpleHoney). Then MtGox blew up (Jed still had his profit-sharing agreement with MtGox from his sale to Mark Karpeles). Then Jed announced he was going to dump his 9 billion XRPs ("fyi, XRP dump incoming") because he didn't like the direction his co-founder Chris was taking Ripple. Then he launches Stellar, the XRP clone. Didn't even bother to change the total token amount (both XRP and Stellar have a cap of 100 billion tokens).
  - percentcer 12y ago
    This sounds like a stable currency that is well worth my time and interest
    - kylebrown 12y ago
      Well, the one thing Stellar has going for it is that Stripe is on board. Though afaict Stripe is not yet integrated as a Stellar gateway. The only thing keeping Ripple alive is the fact that Bitstamp is a Ripple gateway.
    - oafitupa 12y ago
      Except it's premined and centralized. It's "stable" until its creator decides to dump, like they did with Ripple.
      - otoburb 12y ago
        Dumping Stellar coins should be prevented for at least five years provided the creators adhere to the agreement described in their Mandate page: "In order to provide additional stability to the system, the nonprofit founders and Stripe have voluntarily agreed not sell any of the stellars initially received (either via employee grants in the case of the founders or via repayment of the loan) for at least five years; however, Stripe may auction any of their stellars, provided the recipients also agree not to sell their stellars for five years, and net profits are returned to the Foundation."[1] [1] https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution
  - drewthomas 12y ago
    I have my own documentation of what I would consider to be Jed's dubious history as a trustworthy part of the digital currency world. Having been one of the early miners of BTC when it was under 25 cents and then an eager proponent of Ripple at its inception I feel disgusted and betrayed by the behavior of two particular people: Jed and Mark Karpeles. And yes, they deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. I was one of the lucky ones who did not lose any money, so this isn’t about sour grapes. I trust them about as far as I could throw a heavy safe, and I'm not very strong. Protocols may be game-changing and robust, but I learned the hard way that if the people behind them suck, supporting their schemes will likely make you a sucker. Protocols don’t create trust, people do. I’ll acquire stellars for free, but no more putting USD behind another one of Jed’s self-enriching money-making schemes. He’s very good at profit-taking for himself and is fearless in the art of self-promotion.
opendais 12y ago
This is very exciting if it pans out. An interchange layer for money that isn't controlled by the incumbent organizations could enable all sorts of interesting innovations. <3
ISL 12y ago
The Stellar.org post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8114871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8114871
- pieton 12y ago
  No stripe.com URL boost = you'll have to work the hard way.
  - dang 12y ago
    Whoa. There is absolutely no stripe.com URL boost, or any other kind of URL boost. The stellar.org post set off HN's voting ring detector. Edit: I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed the parent meant that HN itself was boosting certain URLs, as opposed to, say, name-recognition by users. The latter kind of thing is no doubt a factor.
    - droopyEyelids 12y ago
      Do many Strip posts die from the voting ring detector?
      - dang 12y ago
        Many Stripe posts have set off the voting ring detector in the past. This one didn't. The ring detector doesn't kill posts, it just demotes them.
    - napoleond 12y ago
      > There is absolutely no stripe.com URL boost Parent may have just meant an organic boost--I certainly notice submissions from certain domains above others, and from the looks of things it appears that others do, too. Not necessarily a bad thing at all, but it does seem to be an observable effect. > The stellar.org post set off HN's voting ring detector. My understanding of the detector is that (among other things, presumably) it applies a penalty when visitors follow a link directly to the submission from a page other than "new", "news", etc. Is it possible that there is a bug (at least, I think it would be a bug) by which it also penalizes submissions where the visitor has followed a link from elsewhere on HN (eg. parent's link)? I followed the link and upvoted the story, and I assume several others used that path as well.
coppolaemilio 12y ago
Damn, my open source project was named Stellar way before! http://stellar.evelend.com/ http://stellar.evelend.com/
- davidcollantes 12y ago
  Your project doesn't seem to be related to this one.
- awalton 12y ago
  I guess Incubus's song Stellar, Stellar.js, Stellar the band, any number of companies named Stellar, and "Stellar" the adjective describing pertinence to stars should all be upset too. Oh wait, you're just using this as an opportunity to plug your own work... Move along then.
- kawera 12y ago
  And then Jason Kottke's stellar.io [1] http://kottke.org http://kottke.org [2] http://stellar.io http://stellar.io
- jonny_eh 12y ago
  And it was in the dictionary before that.
david_arcos 12y ago
> We are currently using Facebook as a verification method to avoid spam but hope to add other methods soon. We will not post on your Facebook. Mandatory connect to Facebook? No, thanks.
- joyce 12y ago
  I am one of the folks working at Stellar. Yes, FB isn't a login method that will work for everyone. Today is just day 1; we plan on adding more methods soon. Also, anyone can create an account/wallet without even registering your email. FB auth is only for the giveaway.
  - david_arcos 12y ago
    Looking forward to it, thanks for your message. Anyways, I just did the "Set up password recovery", and instead of getting 1.000 stellars it forces me again into FB.
    - kandalf 12y ago
      That makes sense - to get any stellars from the giveaway (either from the initial sign up or from setting up password recovery), you need to confirm your identity. Otherwise, you'd be able to create a bunch of accounts and just get the 1k from password recovery on each.
  - ABS 12y ago
    it says the FB account is too new even though it's several months old?
  - faultywasps 12y ago
    So when other methods are introduced will those of us that signed up on day 1 but don't have facebook accounts still be eligible for the giveaway and for the same amount?
aaron987 12y ago
The fact that this solves some of the problems of cryptocurrency, and the fact that Stripe is behind it, give me a very good feeling about this. To have the clout offered by Stripe while still being open source is very powerful, and I think it is what the cryptocurrency world has needed.
kolev 12y ago
As it seems, the future of Bitcoin is Ripple.
wyager 12y ago
100% pre-mined? No thanks. People complain about the distribution of Bitcoin being imbalanced. This is 100x worse.
- joyce 12y ago
  Hi, I work at Stellar. The FB auth is the first of several methods to receive stellars so we will add more methods soon. Also, mining obviously has many benefits, but it's still limited to people who are highly technical and/or who have money to spend. We wanted to provide much broader access to digital currency, and so stellars will be given away for free at the click of a button. To encourage transparency, anyone can see how many stellars have been given away here: https://www.stellar.org/stats/ https://www.stellar.org/stats/
  - webignition 12y ago
    What other methods are you looking to introduce and when might they be an option? I created a Stellar account but am in the minority of people who don't have a Facebook account and was a little disappointed.
  - kylebrown 12y ago
    Hi Joyce, would you ask your bf Jed where his MtGox profits are? Its known that Jed sold MtGox to Mark Karpeles, and had access to a privileged account which allowed him to audit the total trading volume (and collect his agreed profit share).
  - JoshTriplett 12y ago
    Without the inclusion of mining and the incentives to establish a mining infrastructure, how do you intend to provide safe decentralized verification of transactions?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - vbuterin 12y ago
loupeabody 12y ago
Agh, the Stellar client requires a Facebook login to get a share of the initial batch. :/
- tzaman 12y ago
  Of course it does, otherwise I'd be able to register an unlimited number of accounts to get as much free Stellars as I wanted.
  - loupeabody 12y ago
    I wonder how they'll prevent this with the other authorization options which apparently are on their way
    - pieton 12y ago
      At minimum, N auth options mean an easy N*5000 stellars per unsophisticated user. (I can create a FB-linked account today, and say an SMS-linked account tomorrow, and then merge the two).
  - opendais 12y ago
    You still can if you are willing to contact the people that do the Facebook Ad manipulation. ;)
  - JonnieCache 12y ago
    I wonder if its to make it harder for us to all start selling drugs to each other.
  - floatrock 12y ago
    The barrier to creating an unlimited number of facebook accounts is a half step above creating an unlimited number of gmail or hotmail accounts. No, the whole point of connecting with facebook is to focus on the UX of making electronic payments. Who's going to remember their coffee date's wallet is 1BeX1pVAjD94hNs6C5d2dB3TRnLx53dXg3? QR codes are cute, but haven't quite hit the mainstream. It's a lot easier to say "Ben Bitdiddle" and have Ben's facebook picture pop up. The network effects of scanning your entire social graph (and the data contained within) doesn't hurt either. Works fantastically for Venmo.
jqueryin 12y ago
Feel free to send me 1000 stellar in step 4 of the signup process. Username: corey. Had to be the first to ask :) Thanks in advance!
- ipostonthisacc 12y ago
  ipostonthisacc :) let's keep it going
- tzaman 12y ago
  Only if you send 2000 to Tomaz :) EDIT: got 1000 from 'miha'
  - lukasm 12y ago
    I finally can use my name as login :) send to lukas :)
    - tzaman 12y ago
      sent 1k :)
    - Klipi 12y ago
      sending to lukas! i'm Klipi for paying it forward
      - lukasm 12y ago
        Can't send ;/
- myleshenderson 12y ago
  or to myleshenderson ;)
  - jgmmo 12y ago
    sending! mine is: joenorton
GregorStocks 12y ago
I registered for this and got 5,000.999999 Stellars. Kinda curious about the 0.999999 part...
- Walkman 12y ago
  The values are probably stored in float, which is ridiculous.
  - hackerweb 12y ago
    This confused me as well. Stellars are stored in fixed point, as millionths of a stellar. But there's a tiny anti-spam fee for each payment transaction, so if you've sent money somewhere you may find an extra 0.000010 gone.
  - jonny_eh 12y ago
    A better way to phrase what you just did: Maybe the values are stored as a float? But that would be silly, so there must be a better reason.
    - mingabunga 12y ago
      From FAQs: To prevent spam, each transaction burns 10 microstellars (that is, 0.00001 stellars).
      - theswan 12y ago
        Where do the 10 microstellars go? Are they actually destroyed?
        makomk 12y ago
        If it's the same as Ripple which this is based on, then the 10 microstellars are destroyed, yes.
  - hyperliner 12y ago
rwinn 12y ago
Seems off that they give you 5000 "stellars" to access your Facebook friends list and photos...
- joyce 12y ago
  I work at Stellar. We wanted a method by which we could fund people once (to prevent someone from spinning up a lot of fake accounts to claim) hence the decision to move forward with Facebook. I know it isn't perfect, but we are doing our best to make the giveaway broadly accessible and not game-able. And we are working on other claim methods so yes, totally hear your concerns.
  - rwinn 12y ago
    Good to hear, I'm looking forward to the other claim methods now after reading your mandate
  - PythonicAlpha 12y ago
    Good to hear, I hope you have some ideas, since else, this "facebookers only" feels like discrimination -- as I explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115706
- kordless 12y ago
  I like that because your friends and photos are a lot like a social fingerprint. If there are no photos and no friends, then no Stellar.
mintplant2 12y ago
The "Connect with Facebook" button on Stellar's dashboard appears to be broken, or at least for me, anyway. Clicking it results in a "Loading..." message that never seems to go away.
- slig 12y ago
  See if you're not blocking FB with AdBlock or Disconnect.
  - mintplant2 12y ago
    Ah, Disconnect was the issue. Thank you!
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ernestipark 12y ago
Pretty excited for what comes of this. For devs reading, auth doesn't seem to be persistent - if I refresh I get logged out.
- pc 12y ago
  This is actually for security -- your password is never sent to the server, and so the client needs to decrypt your wallet again.
  - ernestipark 12y ago
    Cool makes sense. Maybe some messaging on the login form would be helpful.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- simpixelated 12y ago
  Looks like it was pre-mined. They are giving away up to 6k if you connect your Facebook and verify your email. "One key difference is that 95% of the currency is being given away for free at the outset, the bulk of it from an initial issuance of 100 billion coins created by the not-for-profit foundation that will run the project. New coins will be later added at no cost to the circulation at a rate of 1% per year." http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/07/31/mt-gox-ripple-founder-unveils-stellar-a-new-digital-currency-project/?mod=e2tw http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/07/31/mt-gox-ripple-foun...
samirmenon 12y ago
It says my Facebook account is "too new" to get Stellars.... I've had it for over 3 months. What's the reasoning?
- opendais 12y ago
  I reactivated mine to attempt to get access to the Stellars as well. Its also "too new". Ah well. Still a neat idea, I'll just have no use for it until it matures since I can't use it.
- jschmitz28 12y ago
  Same message and my account is two and a half years old. I have no friends on the account, so maybe "too new" really means "not enough friends". Edit: Because this is generating some discussion, I'll clarify that it is not actually my main account which is why I have no friends or photos, but I don't like giving third parties access to my private main account information. The spam detection seems to have worked well on me, I was just pointing out that account age is not the only filter.
  - omghi2u 12y ago
    Your network isn't valuable enough to datamine, so you get no funny money. That's the message I'm taking away....
  - opendais 12y ago
    Ya, that could be it.
  - josephschmoe 12y ago
    Yeah, see, I would probably find that incredibly suspicious as well. Though, most spam accounts try to get around this by sending out hundreds of friend requests to random people.
  - andrewstellar 12y ago
    Hello, we check various properties of your Facebook account to determine that this was not a spam account created simply to exploit the giveaway. This is our first day out, and we apologize that legitimate users like yourself aren't able to receive the giveaway. Please check back in the coming days as we continue to improve our spam detection algorithms.
neilni 12y ago
I have 'Connecting...' on the main screen, so I cannot send out anything. Possibly a bug? And every time I log out, I have to sign in again.
- kawera 12y ago
  Are you using Ghostery?
- JTon 12y ago
  Experiencing same issue! I haven't tried at home yet
PabloOsinaga 12y ago
Who will sell me their 7,000 stellars for $10 ?
- PabloOsinaga 12y ago
  OK, I will offer more. $20? Nobody interested in selling 7000 stellars for $20?
  - corpselord420 12y ago
    i'm interested, shoot me an email at routemailhere@gmail.com
  - lnanek2 12y ago
    one dead person replied. go to your profile and turn on seeing dead people. assuming i'm not dead too, lol
encoderer 12y ago
Honestly, I'm impressed that Stripe is that well capitalized. It's an awesome service, way to go guys.
omghi2u 12y ago
Your site isn't ready to be launched when you try to hurd people through Facebook auth, after registering my email, and then it doesn't even work....
- kordless 12y ago
  By that logic, any site with any bug in it should never been launched. If it broke, report the bug. It's Open Source: https://github.com/stellar https://github.com/stellar.
  - omghi2u 12y ago
    No. They dropped the ball in my opinion from what should be a really savvy group of people who "get it" when it comes to identity/etc.
    - kordless 12y ago
      No what? You won't report a bug? That's idiotic.
mentaat 12y ago
fb login? no thanks :/
ankurpatel 12y ago
Curious how much do people think one Stellar is worth? Or will be in future?
- bruceboughton 12y ago
  Now, about 1 Stellar. In the future, about 1 Stellar.
  - encoreptl 12y ago
    I mean in terms of USD
- oafitupa 12y ago
  Nothing, it's just a fork of Ripple. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
  - czottmann 12y ago
    You're repeating yourself, please stop.
  - czottmann 12y ago
    You're repeating yourself, please stop.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- 6thSigma 12y ago
  Stripe paid $3,000,000 for 2,000,000,000 stellars FWIW. Edit: They are calling the $3M a loan, so not sure if that is the full payment in stellars or not.
  - spacefight 12y ago
    It is, it said on https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Funding https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Funding that the could use their initial share of 5% to repay the loan.
fragsworth 12y ago
Is trustless validation a thing in this system? How do they do it, I can't find any technical details.
miralabs 12y ago
Can anyone give an insight to why they decided to have the stellars pre mined? Wouldn't that make stellars not valuable...
- joyce 12y ago
  We want to give them away as fairly and to as many people as possible. Stellar doesn't require mining and so there's no need to give them away to the people with the most CPU cycles. Anyone can participate regardless of technical ability or income.
- oafitupa 12y ago
  Yep, just another premined coin to the list, and as it turns out it's a fork of Ripple. Everyone here should read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
  - schrodinger 12y ago
    Please stop posting the same thing over and over.
  - vbuterin 12y ago
    There is absolutely nothing wrong with premining, if it is done honestly and transparently and especially if your coin is using a consensus algorithm that has no need for regular mining in the first place. Let's evaluate the fairness of the distribution model on its merits. This one is quasi-centralized (relying on Facebook accounts), but I predict it will be among the most egalitarian.
    - jejejajo 12y ago
      Says the creator of a premined coin (Ethereum).
      - foobarqux 12y ago
        Why isn't pre-mining viewed like VC-less VC?
ericb 12y ago
I get what bitcoin is. Can someone help me with what stellar is, and why it is better than, or a complement to, bitcoin or the traditional system?
- ianburrell 12y ago
  Stellar (and Ripple) are distributed ledger and exchange. The big difference from Bitcoin is that it records credits from gateways in multiple currencies. It can transfer money in regular currencies and exchange different currencies. The other big difference is that consistency is not maintained by mining but with consensus between trusted servers. This makes theoretically scale to larger volumes and better latency while not being fully distributed. The Bitcoin cryptocurrency people hate it because it uses fiat currencies and is more centralized. Most people will probably prefer Stellar since it can interface with existing bank accounts and monetary systems. It can be complement to Bitcoin as it can act as a distributed exchange.
- oafitupa 12y ago
  Stellar is just a fork of Ripple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
  - ericb 12y ago
    I always had the same questions about Ripple, though.
    - oafitupa 12y ago
      Well it's premined and centralized, so I would say it's just like any pre-Bitcoin coin/exchange.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- pc 12y ago
  Yes; it's because your wallet is decrypted by the client and your password is never sent to the server.
lazyant 12y ago
connected with FB and not sure if I verified my email, I get some "server errors" and logouts and can't change my settings
- toxicFork 12y ago
  Nothing loads for me anymore, looks like their API could not handle the interest :)
tomasien 12y ago
Is anyone else having trouble with the client? My whole team is trying to sign up and are having a myriad of issues, but I can't submit to the forum because my username and password keep not working even when I make new ones.
scottmp10 12y ago
This is a Bitcoin-like, distributed, secure payment system WITH a federated protocol for gateways/exchanges. A federated exchange network allows anyone to participate, similar to email servers. But since trust is so much more important in this case, I think that network effects will result in a relatively small set of gateways that anyone will actually interact with.
- oafitupa 12y ago
  No this is not Bitcoin-like. It's premined and requires trust. Besides, it's just a fork of Ripple, which has already failed after being dumped by its creator. http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg Oh but it has integration with Facebook, so I guess that changes everything! /s
  - murbard2 12y ago
    Bitcoin also requires trust, specifically the trust that miners will not collude to double spend. There is also nothing fundamental about the idea of issuing coins as a reward for mining. It's just one possibility among many, there's nothing intrinsically "fair" about it.
    - leshow 12y ago
      In Bitcoin, you trust the way the network as defined by the code has been set up, not the miners specifically. In this situation you have the code to audit but you also have to trust the Stellar Foundation... I have to trust they are telling me the truth about how they are distributing the currency, that they won't sell their shares early, that these 3 people heading the foundation are going to act in my interests, etc. What if the Stellar Foundation dissolves in a month? What happens to the currency?
      - murbard2 12y ago
        >In Bitcoin, you trust the way the network as defined by the code has been set up, not the miners specifically. Wrong, you trust the miners not to collude and attack the network. I know you've heard the claim over and over that Bitoin is trustless, but that doesn't make it true.
shawndrost 12y ago
Bug report: I was unable to get the 5000 initial coins. (The facebook auth failed twice, so I reloaded the page -- and was then unable to find the "free coins" page.)
- DomKM 12y ago
  I'm experiencing the same issue.
eridius 12y ago
Site seems to have broken. It never finished connecting to Facebook, and now when I go to the dashboard the steps are missing entirely. When I go to Settings and try and enable password recovery I get "Server error". In the Console it says it got a 502 from api.stellar.org. That's in Chrome. In Safari, I don't even get a response to clicking on a settings toggle. Merely loading the dashboard gives me a CORS error.
- joyce 12y ago
  Sorry, our web client is currently down under the load. We're on it.
  - eridius 12y ago
    Looks like it's working now. Thanks! Edit: Spoke too soon. My wife can't sign up. Button just says "Sending" indefinitely. Edit 2: She just got an email confirmation code, despite the signup eventually failing outright. But she can't log in, says the username is invalid. So what is the confirmation code associated with? Edit 3: It finally worked. Yay!
    - joyce 12y ago
      Ha! Thanks for sticking with it and we will keep working on smoothing things out.
  - sachinag 12y ago
    Seems to be responding better but the recovery code process is a little off. Says that the email address I'm trying to use is taken (it's the one I used at registration after the nag message) and that my recovery code is invalid.
ajgrover 12y ago
just FYI - none of the sliders on the settings page work for me. The first one gives me a "Server Error" tooltip and the other 2 just do nothing. Also, I linked my Facebook and didn't get any indication of whether it worked or not. Now when I log in I have 0 stellars and the welcome panel doesn't show up. did this happen to anyone else?
abiekatz 12y ago
What are the key differences between Stellar and Ripple?
- jejejajo 12y ago
  The name. http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg
waitingkuo 12y ago
I'm curious about why my balance becomes 6000.
- giarc 12y ago
  You get 1000 for verifying email.
rxaxm 12y ago
lol refresh logs you out!
peter_l_downs 12y ago
Tried signing up but after a minute of waiting I was told my username was already taken. Then, I received an email saying I successfully signed up (with that same username), with a broken link to "forums.stellar.org". Managed to visit "forum.stellar.org" without an issue. I think you may have launched a little soon... EDIT: now unable to log in with my username and password combination.
- dmnd 12y ago
  Same problem here. My account seems to be in an inconsistent state. I can't log in, but my username and email are "already in use".
- oflannabhra 12y ago
  Same issue for me, I can't even log into the forums to get technical assistance. I got an email confirming my account, but can't log in with my password, and can't re-register with the same username.
- oluckyman 12y ago
  Same issue for me.
- andrewstellar 12y ago
  Hi Peter, we are aware of this issue affecting a minority of users and are actively working to provide a fix. If you signed up with your email, we will also contact you soon with instructions on how to retrieve your account. Thank you for your patience!
fela 12y ago
Something weird seems to be going on: at first I didn't get any compensation for making my first transaction, then I got 1000 STR from StellarFoundation 34 times. Now my account has 39000 STR in it...
- swamp12 12y ago
  Weird. I'm one of the Stellar devs -- could you email your stellar username to jed@stellar.org? Thanks!
  - fela 12y ago
    done
Procrastes 12y ago
"Invalid Recovery Code" when I attempt to use the code sent via email.
danielweber 12y ago
David Mazières wrote one of my favorite papers ever, "Get Me Off Your Fucking Mailing List" http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/ http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/ July 2005
- giarc 12y ago
  http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf Figure 1 is particularly helpful.
  - JonnieCache 12y ago
    Every time I see figure 1 I completely lose it.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- leothekim 12y ago
  That Figure 2 is log-scale is most impressive. I had the opportunity to meet David Mazières at SOSP 2005 in Brighton. Clearly a sharp fellow, and the funkiest dresser at the conference.
michaelmcmillan 12y ago
I just created a subreddit for further discussion: http://www.reddit.com/r/thestellar http://www.reddit.com/r/thestellar
rjsamson 12y ago
I posted this on the support forum as well, but myself and at least one other user have had this problem: I created an account, but it timed out and never took me to the next page, however I received the two confirmation emails (including the pw recovery code). When I try to log in though, I get invalid username or password, and the password recovery code is useless. So it looks like it's possible to create an account which is completely inaccessible. EDIT: Looks like more folks are reporting the same issue.
- oluckyman 12y ago
  Same issue for me.
jxf 12y ago
I was able to successfully sign up and get 5,000 STR, so that worked for me at least. But then I started looking a little deeper into the blog post. > Development is led by Jed McCaleb and Dr. David Mazieres in collaboration with a small team of others. (The technology is based on the open-source Ripple project, originally created by Jed a few years ago.) So, is Stellar fundamentally the same thing as and/or a fork of Ripple? They've hired the same guy who started Ripple (Jed McCaleb), and as I recall there were a lot of concerns around that, as noted in a WSJ article [0] and other places. Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members -- and so wields a considerable amount of influence. If so, then doesn't it have all the same problems and concerns as Ripple? Centralized authority holding a large chunk of initial funds, questionable governance decisions, etc., just to name a few of the political problems, not just the technical ones. I'd love to see the "IP layer for currency" described by Stripe succeed, but I'm not sure that this implementation of it represents a good idea. And I'm also concerned about whether Jed, the cofounder of both MtGox and Ripple, has the best interests of Stellar at heart. [0] http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/22/ripple-alternative-digital-currency-plunges-as-mccaleb-liquidates/ http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/22/ripple-alternative...
- joyce 12y ago
  Great question - here are the two key items: - Stellar is a nonprofit. No one owns it. The board and advisors represent a diverse group of people in tech, finance, nonprofit and academia to encourage cross-pollination of ideas. The board is also required to expand to 5 members by year-end. - Almost all the stellars will be given away for free (95%) because the goal is to educate and provide access to digital currency/financial services. This is really good for cryptocurrency as a whole because it provides access to a huge segment of the world that would not have access to digital currency otherwise. This should all help the effort be open and transparent.
  - spacefight 12y ago
    And Stripe got their USD 3M loan repaid in 2% of the pre-mined stellars, valuating the whole pre-mined lot at USD 150M. How did they arrive at this number?
pmorici 12y ago
This kind of looks like a re-branding of Ripple. Ripple had a lot of image issues after one of the founders quit accusing the company of unethical behavior. Kind of unfortunate that Stripe would through their weight behind Ripple in any way.
- pc 12y ago
  Yeah, the image issues were unfortunate -- but the tech is good, and Jed and David have a lot of promising ideas about how to make it even better. Jed and Joyce have been scrupulous about being fair and transparent in how the Stellar Foundation is structured. There's more about this (including governance documents) at https://www.stellar.org/about/ https://www.stellar.org/about/.
  - muneeb 12y ago
    I'm actually more excited about David joining this effort (and entering the cryptocurrency space) than anything else. Stellar, also, looks promising (-:
- parad0x1 12y ago
  The founder that quit is the one who founded Stellar. He is also the one who dumped 9 billion XRP after that argument.
  - makomk 12y ago
    To put this in some perspective, 9 billion XRP is from what I can tell slightly more than the total amount in circulation prior to him dumping all his. It was fairly damaging to Ripple overall and anyone holding XRP lost quite a bit from it.
sjg007 12y ago
Great idea. This is going to be huge.
riffraff 12y ago
how and why would stripe value 2% of the stellar at 3M$ ?
Flavius 12y ago
There seems to be a session bug. I have to log in again every time I refresh the page. Of course, the page is updated automatically so the refresh is probably unnecessary, but the session bug is still there. :)
- pc 12y ago
  It's actually not a bug -- it's because the client never sends the password to the server. (It decrypts your wallet locally.)
  - Flavius 12y ago
    It makes sense. It looks like they've just added this message: "If you refresh you will be automatically logged out since it isn't safe to keep your password on disk."
    - spacefight 12y ago
      The funny thing to this is, that keeping the password on disk isn't proclaimed safe but sending each user the recovery code over plain text mail withouth encryption is...
AndrewDucker 12y ago
Ok, so now they're promising me my free stellars "tomorrow". Which is fine in one way - feel free to take your time handing me my free stuff. On the other hand, it doesn't give me much faith they can scale to the mass market...
- wj 12y ago
  I'm sure many successful companies had scaling issues well past their first day. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.
lnanek2 12y ago
Pretty strange how Stellar is paying people to sign up with Facebook. Facebook is very centralized. These modern currencies are very decentralized. I don't mind myself, but it seems like paying someone to sign up with the enemy...
- flowless 12y ago
  +1. I won't use a service that forces me to connect with some 3d party.
  - chockablock 12y ago
    You don't have to connect with FB to create an account.
- jamiequint 12y ago
  Its not strange at all, otherwise it would be too easy to create a bunch of email accounts and "mine" stellar with them. With Facebook they have account history, number of friends, activity, etc as proof of validity. Its not a perfect measure but its much better than just allowing arbitrary email signups.
  - grey-area 12y ago
    I used a fake FB account to sign up and get stellar. This is in fact no protection at all and they should just drop the requirement.
- gdb 12y ago
  I hear you. It's a temporary measure: https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_Why_do_I_need_to_authenticate_with_Facebook_to_receive_my_stellars_ https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_Why_do_I_need_to_authenticate_.... Basically, it was an easy (but imperfect) way to start. We'd certainly love suggestions for other channels to distribute stellars.
  - spacefight 12y ago
tlrobinson 12y ago
"The network has been initialized with a supply of 100 billion stellars. 5% will be used to fund operations of the nonprofit (its spending, including employee compensation, will be public), and the remaining 95% of the stellars will be distributed for free as quickly as we can manage." IIRC Ripple's founders (including Jed) kept about 20% of XRP, and Ripple Labs kept about 25%, so only 5% is a lot better, but it's still a very centralized solution to distribution. I do like that they're distributing 20% of the Stellars to BTC (and XRP) holders, though: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program
- gdb 12y ago
  We hope that it'll end up being considerably more even than Bitcoin distribution. One note is that of the 5%, 2% is currently held by Stripe. We're going to auction off most of our Stellars, and return the proceeds to the Foundation. The Foundation is also being transparent about where the remaining stellars are going, namely: 2.5% to existing employees (https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensation https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensat...), and over time it'll distribute more stellars in order to raise funds (https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_the_foundation_and_auction https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_...). But, yes, solving the distribution question is a hard problem :-).
  - simonebrunozzi 12y ago
    I think it would be wise to let people invest now in order to acquire stellars later on - assuming more funding would be welcome by the foundation.
- danoprey 12y ago
  We wish Stellar all the best and it's certainly a huge improvement on Ripple Labs, but we're also working on a (not directly competitive, but related) project http://hyperledger.com/ http://hyperledger.com/ without any native currency or pre-allocation at all. Hope we can integrate with Stellar as soon as possible.
k2enemy 12y ago
I'm anxious to try it out, but don't have a Facebook account needed to get the seed currency.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jakewalker 12y ago
Not a great sign up experience - I signed up and linked my Facebook account. Then, I went to click on the link to confirm my e-mail address (from the confirmation e-mail) and got logged out. Now, my login isn't working, nor is password recovery. Impossible to figure out whether I mistyped my username or there is some other issue, and no "Forgot My Username"-type feature to be able to make sure.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
thescorer 12y ago
Quick, everyone send me their stellar: troypayne
Ecio78 12y ago
Registered, verified with FB, it says I'm in the queue and I should receive my Stellar tomorrow. On the other hand verifying the email with the code received raises an error saying that I need to login before via FB (and I did it). Maybe it expects to see before the Stellar gained via FB login before releasing the other 1000
IgorPartola 12y ago
So why no two factor auth right off the bat?
desireco42 12y ago
Feel free to send me 1000 stellar in step 4 of the signup process. Username zeljko. Comment so I can give you some good karma. Thank you! (btw credit to corey for coming up with this)
- funkyy 12y ago
  Yeah, send it to username funkyygames as well - anyone wants 1,000 let me know! I cant find anyone to send this to.
fuddle 12y ago
0.625% will be granted to employees for 4 years. Does this mean they won't be paid after 4 years? Also can you elaborate on how the 0.625% will be divided between developers & founders?
GigabyteCoin 12y ago
So after giving them access to my facebook account I was told "Your Facebook account is too new to qualify. Stay tuned for new ways to grab stellars." How unfortunate. And strange seeing as the account is many years old.
- Taek 12y ago
  Do you have enough friends? A common spam prevention measure checks for 100+ friends. It may just assume that if you have less, the account is 'new'
xmodem 12y ago
> Each week, the network will identify the winners. The winners are the 50 top voted for accounts that also received at last 1.5% of the vote. If no account has over 1.5% of the vote, then the top 50 accounts voted for are considered the winners. That week’s new stellars are then distributed pro-rata to the winners. So does this mean that if one account has 5% of the vote and all remaining accounts have under 1.5%, that account will receive all of the inflation-creates Stellars?
- RoboTeddy 12y ago
  As I read it, yes. But other account holders would have an incentive to band together in order to surpass 1.5% (or even 5%). I wonder if it'll be possible to vote for an account that promises to immediately distribute new Stellar back to its voters. If so, newly-created Stellar may always end up being distributed in proportion to the Stellar wealth distribution.
mystik 12y ago
What happens when the limit is reached? 100,000,000,000/7,000 is "just" 15 millions accounts
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
Danieru 12y ago
Yeah... I'm not giving my phone number to Facebook...
AnthonyMouse 12y ago
I have to assume that becoming a gateway requires navigating the Byzantine Hellscape of multinational financial and banking regulations. Have they discovered some non-obvious way to avoid this or are the gateways expected to be run primarily by existing financial institutions?
- wmf 12y ago
  The gateways are expected to be run primarily by Stripe? :-)
- battani 12y ago
  This is something they unfortunately do not address, but it's the biggest problem with such systems and a major part of the reason Ripple hasn't caught on.
- patrickaljord 12y ago
  From what I understand, the bitcoin network could be a gateway so if you want to exchange bitcoin that would not require any regulation hell. If you want to exchange fiat money, that would. But that will always be the case even without stellar.
tomasien 12y ago
Anyone interested in setting up instant funding for Stellar with ACH, let me know. We've started doing it with some Ripple Gateways and would love to work with Stellar. tommy at knoxpayments dot com
voronoff 12y ago
Anyone else concerned that there seems to be a permanent confirmation code for resetting pw sent in plain text over email? "Keep this code SAFE. Anyone with this code and your username can gain access to your account" Where I'm from, that is a password.
- marcell 12y ago
  While I am not too familiar with how Stellar/Ripple work, I assume they are sending an un-encrypted version of your Stellar private key, or perhaps the equivalent of a bitcoin master private key [1]. I say un-encrypted based on their claim that the code + username can be used to gain access; typically sites will encrypt the recovery code with your password. Based on this, I conjecture that they decided in favor of usability in the usability-security tradeoff. [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawi...
- gdb 12y ago
  In your settings, you can turn off recovery for this reason. The plan is to move quickly to two-factor.
- axman6 12y ago
  I'm not worried, I'm the only one with that code and even I can't access my account. What a trainwreck.
philipDS 12y ago
Very interesting. I always thought of Ripple as semi-scam, but I can see Stellar become a thing (be huge, actually), backed by Stripe and hopefully others soon enough. Question.. how is the password used to decrypt the secret key? Which encryption algorithm is used? Can anyone technically explain?
- deckar01 12y ago
  Stellar dev here. Thanks for the encouragement. We use scrypt to derive a key from your username and password. The key is used to encrypt your secret data with 256bit AES in GCM mode. You can check out the implementation here: https://github.com/stellar/stellar-client/blob/master/app/scripts/utilities/wallet.js#L260 https://github.com/stellar/stellar-client/blob/master/app/sc...
  - philipDS 12y ago
    Thanks! Gonna have a look at it now - seems like an interesting authentication scheme :)
- simonebrunozzi 12y ago
  I agree on the fact that Stellar is very promising.
lifeeth_ 12y ago
This just reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala and nothing else.
- gojomo 12y ago
  Yes, but also more generally, highly-liquid IOUs ("bills of exchange") as were widely used before the rise of modern banking: http://jpkoning.blogspot.de/2013/02/ripple-or-bills-of-exchange-20.html http://jpkoning.blogspot.de/2013/02/ripple-or-bills-of-excha...
anuragbiyani 12y ago
https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program How does that work for someone who has bitcoins in an e-wallet, like Coinbase ?
- wmf 12y ago
  Either use a real wallet or pester Coinbase to support signing.
techtivist 12y ago
It seems to me Stellar (the organization) will be "the Central Bank" a la Bank for International Settlements at the global level or Federal Reserve for Stellar (the cryptocurrency). This is what makes me uncomfortable. The biggest point about cryptocurrencies is that they are not centralized. In that sense Stellar seems a lot worse than regular currency. With a regular currency, at least the respective Central Bank or other monetary regulatory authority has credibility and accountability in the sense that they are indirectly elected by citizens as they are selected by the elected government. As such they have to have a history of integrity and monetary experience, and can be removed if they act unethically. Stellar's board, on the other hand, is self-elected, and with all due respect, don't need to have the level of accountability or have the credibility of running such an organization, which even if it owns "just 5%" (+2% of Stripe's) of the currency can potentially have substantial control over it. And being a non-profit doesn't add a stamp of either, means little.
- gdb 12y ago
  The Stellar Foundation will actually control relatively little. The creation of new stellars, for example, will be done in a fully distributed fashion: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_creation https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_creation. To clarify, of the total 5% reserved for operations, ownership is currently: - 2% to Stripe (the majority of which we're going to auction off to other companies, with net profits being returned to the foundation) - 2.5% to employees (https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensation https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensat...), vesting over four years As needed, the organization will also hold open auctions to raise funds from its remaining pool of stellars (https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_the_foundation_and_auction https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_...), which will conveniently distribute the stellars further. Note also there's a five-year lockup for the founders: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution. Are there actions you're worried that the organization might be able to take given this?
  - techtivist 12y ago
    Thanks for sharing the details. My core problem isn't with the details, mainly because I haven't gone through it or even what percentage of Stellar is controlled by the organization. My problem is with the basis of having such a self-selected organization which seems to have given itself the de facto control over the flow of the monetary system. As a good example what you mentioned: "As needed, the organization will also hold open auctions to raise funds from its remaining pool of stellars". This is a huge thing! Who decides when "as needed" is? If it's the board, what's the basis of their authority? Just being a non=profit doesn't stop one or more of the board members to act in self-interest.
alagappanr 12y ago
The irony is that the emails from Stellar have been marked as spam. PS: I use live.com
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
jscheel 12y ago
Came here to say, "that looks an awful lot like Ripple." Looks like I am in good company :)
joshAg 12y ago
who is their economist/fiscal policy/monetary policy adviser? I looked on the website and there doesn't seem to be anyone with this background amongst the advisers, board, or employees.
anuragbiyani 12y ago
Ref: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program Will the date for snapshotting the Bitcoin blockchain be publicized in advance ?
workingBen 12y ago
I received 4000+1000=5,000 Stellar. I sent 1,000 to another user. I have 3,999 Stellar remaining. What happened to my extra Stellar?
- gdb 12y ago
  Take a look at https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_What_are_the_fees_for_a_transaction_ https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_What_are_the_fees_for_a_transa.... The short answer is that each transaction burns 10 microstellar, and they haven't smoothed out all of the display issues in the hosted client yet, hence the surprise.
  - simonebrunozzi 12y ago
    The cost of transaction might be an issue if one day 1 stellar > 20 USD or so (it becomes too expensive). Wondering if there is a way to fix it (other than simply merging multiple transactions), without having anything to do with the USD itself.
murbard2 12y ago
Who is running the consensus nodes? Will people choose their consensus node, and if so can you guarantee an overlap? Are the nodes maintaining a state or a full, auditable, ledger?
rdl 12y ago
I'm really excited about this (I talked to Jed a few months ago, before joining CloudFlare). I think there will need to be a strong client wallet, rather than just the web client, but that's obvious, and the web client was an easy place to start. I'd really like to see how one would integrate chaumian blinded tokens into this. I may be an outlier in thinking unlinkability and anonymity are critical for "real currencies" over time, but I think recent events have shown this to be correct. I liked Ripple 1.0; Ripple-of-today not as much, so since this seems to be basically Ripple 1.0 plus some lessons learned, it should be interesting.
waterlesscloud 12y ago
I got an email invite, curious where they harvested my address from.
corford 12y ago
Too early to tell if Stella will work but their intentions appear good and the underlying concept solid. Was very surprised though that there isn't a single advisor to the board who's career has been in finance or banking. Seems to me that stella will only work and achieve broad adoption if the network has solid gateways operated by entities people already know and trust. Who do most people trust with their money? Existing banks and other well known exchange/trading platforms (xe.com / etrade / western union). If you want these institutions to start operating stella gateways, surely it would be a good idea to have an advisor to the board that's from that world, well connected and understands it intimately?
- corford 12y ago
  Not sure why I'm being down voted. My understanding is the system works better (at least for currency X to currency Y transactions) the more trusted local currency gateways exist in the network. So if using stellar on the backend makes it theoretically easier/cheaper/faster for traditional money transfer platforms to transmit/receive funds for their clients and having trusted brands as gateways is good for stellar's adoption; then surely that's a win/win and they should have an insider from the banking/finance/forex world advising their board and helping them get one or two well known finance shops involved in a pilot. Concrete example: I use XE.com trade for making international wires to people (most of the time it's GBP to EUR wires). Using XE is easier and cheaper than using my bank for this but the process is still painful. After locking in an exchange rate for the trade, I then have to wire my funds in GBP to XE.com's GBP bank account (with a reference number for the trade) and they then wire the equivalent EUR amount to the recipient's EUR bank account. I have to provide loads of bank details for the recipient (branch address, IBAN, SWIFT, intermediary bank etc.) and it usually takes 48 hours before the money arrives in their account (sometimes longer if they have a weird bank). It's also often difficult to work out what fees intermediary banks will extract en-route. I'd love it if XE.com had stellar GBP and EUR gateways. I could then dump some funds in their GBP gateway, give them the stellar username I want to send the equivalent EUR amount to and hit send. Instant and easy. Or maybe I've completely misunderstood the purpose of gateways and how they work?
borski 12y ago
This is an awesome idea, and we want to help support it. To that end: how do we disclose a security vulnerability? Is there a PGP key posted, or some other system for us to do that?
- andrewstellar 12y ago
  Thanks! Please contact hello@stellar or one of the admins directly on freenode channel #stellar-dev.
olouv 12y ago
The password recovery scheme is so poorly designed, that's borderline scary: You can't use the recovery code sent by email after registration without validating your email first (but since you have the code, your email is obviously valid)... which requires you to login (but if you don't have your password, well, you can't log in)... Great!... one lost account for me.
- muneeb 12y ago
  +1, the recovery code shouldn't go out in plain text email. Also, I picked a weak password just to quickly make an account and I can't seem to change it, hmmm.
- tribaal 12y ago
  And there is no way to change your password.
0x0 12y ago
Looks like the emails coming from stellar are delivered from an SMTP origin "mailgun.info" which uses an invalid client certificate; I'm getting errors: SSL_accept error from mail-182-5.mailgun.info[23.253.182.5]: 0 warning: TLS library problem: XXX:error:XXX:SSL routines:SSL3_READ_BYTES:sslv3 alert bad certificate:s3_pkt.c:1258:SSL alert number 42: At least they retry without SSL aftwards, and manage to deliver the emails.
- russjones 12y ago
  Hi 0x0, Russell from Mailgun here. Do you have a self signed certificate by any chance? We typically downgrade a connection if we are presented with a self signed certificate. That might be what you are seeing. If you drop us an email at support [at] mailgun.com with your domain I can take a look at the specific issue we are having delivering over TLS to your domain.
abcd21 12y ago
So if I'm understanding correctly, we're meant to trust a network governed by the CEO of Stripe, the VC funding Stripe, and a guy whom Stripe has given 2 Million dollars to? Looks like this is yet another classic developer bait-and-switch. Make things look all independent and open at the start, have a different website, and make a half-declaration about your interests so nobody can accuse you of not being transparent... But keep the keys to the kingdom in your pocket so you can control it and profit once it becomes valuable. Count me out.
deergus 12y ago
Support us engineers and send 1000 stellars to 'git' :).
everettForth 12y ago
Does anyone want to sell their Stellar?
dreamdu5t 12y ago
> Stellar is a decentralized protocol Stellar has a central authority that can mint new stellars. That is not decentralized. Bold-faced lie.
reedlaw 12y ago
I need to connect with Facebook to receive stellars. How is this decentralized again?
- andrewchambers 12y ago
  ill send you some if you don't want to use facebook.
  - reedlaw 12y ago
    Sure, my user name is reedlaw.
    - andrewchambers 12y ago
      for some reason I cant send to you :/. says you arent on the network.
owenversteeg 12y ago
I got this message when signing up with my Facebook account (which I only use for signing in to services, not to connect with people, which may be why I got it): Oops! Our spam detection checks say your Facebook account isn't eligible. If you are a legitimate user, we apologize and are improving our detection algorithms. And we will release new ways to grab stellars soon, so please check back. Is there any way to prove that my account is legitimate? Maybe my Github account, where I manage a somewhat popular open-source project, Min (http://minfwk.com http://minfwk.com) My username both on Github, HN and Stellar is owenversteeg. This seems like an interesting idea, and I'd like to play around with it.
- joyce 12y ago
  Hi Owen - I'll go help you out. Let me know if you have any questions. joyce@stellar
treenyc 12y ago
OMG, this would be perfect for the 501(c)3 non-profit where I'm at. http://newfuturefoundation.org http://newfuturefoundation.org They are currently paying a lot of fees to the bank fund nonprofit projects in Africa. This would really be perfect for them.
jsbos 12y ago
I'm also having issues with FB but would love to have some stellars. Acct name is jsouza, thanks!
tklovett 12y ago
If anyone wants to get a send-to-receive chain going for the learn to send free 1000 STR deal, reply to this with your username. I'll send 1000 STR to anyone who sends me 1000 STR. My username is tklovett on stellar.
- ryanmerket 12y ago
  user: merket
  - tklovett 12y ago
    Sent yours back, thanks!
richcollins 12y ago
The gateways will be targeted for regulation until they are no different than modern banks.
edoceo 12y ago
Still waiting on the email confirmation :( Never got the plaintext recovery code.
here 12y ago
As someone who is paying 5% to deposit a foreign check, and also lost a non-trivial amount when a ripple gateway folded, I can say I am still excited to see another iteration on the idea. 5% as a consumer spread on international transfers is ridiculous, and seemingly only avoided using some sort of forex exchange with high minimums and excessive red tape. Bitcoin exchanges do not offer reliable or timely deposit/withdrawal in most local currencies to consider it an alternative. The trust points are no worse than existing banks / currency exchange / forex models that allow this type of transfer to take place. If we are lucky, we can improve and decentralize those choke points further. Yes, those who control the choke points have the potential to make stupid amounts of money based solely on traffic, much like existing banking models and many startups. Worth reading is the recent blogpost that I'm sure most regulars have seen https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective.
up_and_up 12y ago
So how much is a STR worth right now? Based on the Stripe investment of 3 million for 3,002,289,306.81 Stellars (3% of 100,076,310,227) I am calculating 1 STR = $0.000999237 right now ... is that correct?
runeks 12y ago
Stellar is the "IP layer for credit" while Bitcoin is the "IP layer for money". Stellar doesn't actually transfer funds (like Bitcoin), it only transfers IOUs, the settlement (actual value transfer) occurs outside the Stellar network. Stellar and Bitcoin achieve two different goals.
jacqui_ire 12y ago
I signed up with friends all ok but now dashboard just keeps saying connecting and clicking seems says I have to be online to do this but I am.. Any ideas?
dotts_o 12y ago
dotts_o can you guys send me some Thanks :)
uaygsfdbzf 12y ago
hello friends if any one want to sell your steallar send me here (salman1) after sening email me your username and paypal email 1000 STR = 4$ my email address is (danielsmithcholro@gmail.com)
wowow 12y ago
my name : minister sent me plz , thanks!
cheska27 12y ago
Hi send me 1000str and i will send 1050 back.. here is my username "cheska27" and tell your username to verify! :)
anup69 12y ago
i am in waiting list. anybody have steller? send me if you have on meanup33

943 points by gdb 12y ago

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

oafitupa 12y ago
I'm sorry but this is not "great stuff", it's just a fork of Ripple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
- danoprey 12y ago
  Yes, by the creator of Ripple who was forced out. This is the continuation of Ripple towards what it was supposed to be.

StavrosK 12y ago

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

wmf 12y ago
It's not really inflation. Oh, never mind.

Titanous 12y ago

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

kylebrown 12y ago
Yup, obviously a fork of Ripple. While at Ripple, Jed acqui-hired his gf Joyce (SimpleHoney). Then MtGox blew up (Jed still had his profit-sharing agreement with MtGox from his sale to Mark Karpeles). Then Jed announced he was going to dump his 9 billion XRPs ("fyi, XRP dump incoming") because he didn't like the direction his co-founder Chris was taking Ripple. Then he launches Stellar, the XRP clone. Didn't even bother to change the total token amount (both XRP and Stellar have a cap of 100 billion tokens).
- percentcer 12y ago
  This sounds like a stable currency that is well worth my time and interest
  - kylebrown 12y ago
    Well, the one thing Stellar has going for it is that Stripe is on board. Though afaict Stripe is not yet integrated as a Stellar gateway. The only thing keeping Ripple alive is the fact that Bitstamp is a Ripple gateway.
  - oafitupa 12y ago
    Except it's premined and centralized. It's "stable" until its creator decides to dump, like they did with Ripple.
    - otoburb 12y ago
      Dumping Stellar coins should be prevented for at least five years provided the creators adhere to the agreement described in their Mandate page: "In order to provide additional stability to the system, the nonprofit founders and Stripe have voluntarily agreed not sell any of the stellars initially received (either via employee grants in the case of the founders or via repayment of the loan) for at least five years; however, Stripe may auction any of their stellars, provided the recipients also agree not to sell their stellars for five years, and net profits are returned to the Foundation."[1] [1] https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution
- drewthomas 12y ago
  I have my own documentation of what I would consider to be Jed's dubious history as a trustworthy part of the digital currency world. Having been one of the early miners of BTC when it was under 25 cents and then an eager proponent of Ripple at its inception I feel disgusted and betrayed by the behavior of two particular people: Jed and Mark Karpeles. And yes, they deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. I was one of the lucky ones who did not lose any money, so this isn’t about sour grapes. I trust them about as far as I could throw a heavy safe, and I'm not very strong. Protocols may be game-changing and robust, but I learned the hard way that if the people behind them suck, supporting their schemes will likely make you a sucker. Protocols don’t create trust, people do. I’ll acquire stellars for free, but no more putting USD behind another one of Jed’s self-enriching money-making schemes. He’s very good at profit-taking for himself and is fearless in the art of self-promotion.

opendais 12y ago

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

ISL 12y ago

The Stellar.org post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8114871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8114871

pieton 12y ago
No stripe.com URL boost = you'll have to work the hard way.
- dang 12y ago
  Whoa. There is absolutely no stripe.com URL boost, or any other kind of URL boost. The stellar.org post set off HN's voting ring detector. Edit: I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed the parent meant that HN itself was boosting certain URLs, as opposed to, say, name-recognition by users. The latter kind of thing is no doubt a factor.
  - droopyEyelids 12y ago
    Do many Strip posts die from the voting ring detector?
    - dang 12y ago
      Many Stripe posts have set off the voting ring detector in the past. This one didn't. The ring detector doesn't kill posts, it just demotes them.
  - napoleond 12y ago
    > There is absolutely no stripe.com URL boost Parent may have just meant an organic boost--I certainly notice submissions from certain domains above others, and from the looks of things it appears that others do, too. Not necessarily a bad thing at all, but it does seem to be an observable effect. > The stellar.org post set off HN's voting ring detector. My understanding of the detector is that (among other things, presumably) it applies a penalty when visitors follow a link directly to the submission from a page other than "new", "news", etc. Is it possible that there is a bug (at least, I think it would be a bug) by which it also penalizes submissions where the visitor has followed a link from elsewhere on HN (eg. parent's link)? I followed the link and upvoted the story, and I assume several others used that path as well.

coppolaemilio 12y ago

Damn, my open source project was named Stellar way before! http://stellar.evelend.com/ http://stellar.evelend.com/

davidcollantes 12y ago
Your project doesn't seem to be related to this one.
awalton 12y ago
I guess Incubus's song Stellar, Stellar.js, Stellar the band, any number of companies named Stellar, and "Stellar" the adjective describing pertinence to stars should all be upset too. Oh wait, you're just using this as an opportunity to plug your own work... Move along then.
kawera 12y ago
And then Jason Kottke's stellar.io [1] http://kottke.org http://kottke.org [2] http://stellar.io http://stellar.io
jonny_eh 12y ago
And it was in the dictionary before that.

david_arcos 12y ago

> We are currently using Facebook as a verification method to avoid spam but hope to add other methods soon. We will not post on your Facebook. Mandatory connect to Facebook? No, thanks.

joyce 12y ago
I am one of the folks working at Stellar. Yes, FB isn't a login method that will work for everyone. Today is just day 1; we plan on adding more methods soon. Also, anyone can create an account/wallet without even registering your email. FB auth is only for the giveaway.
- david_arcos 12y ago
  Looking forward to it, thanks for your message. Anyways, I just did the "Set up password recovery", and instead of getting 1.000 stellars it forces me again into FB.
  - kandalf 12y ago
    That makes sense - to get any stellars from the giveaway (either from the initial sign up or from setting up password recovery), you need to confirm your identity. Otherwise, you'd be able to create a bunch of accounts and just get the 1k from password recovery on each.
- ABS 12y ago
  it says the FB account is too new even though it's several months old?
- faultywasps 12y ago
  So when other methods are introduced will those of us that signed up on day 1 but don't have facebook accounts still be eligible for the giveaway and for the same amount?

aaron987 12y ago

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

kolev 12y ago

As it seems, the future of Bitcoin is Ripple.

wyager 12y ago

100% pre-mined? No thanks. People complain about the distribution of Bitcoin being imbalanced. This is 100x worse.

joyce 12y ago
Hi, I work at Stellar. The FB auth is the first of several methods to receive stellars so we will add more methods soon. Also, mining obviously has many benefits, but it's still limited to people who are highly technical and/or who have money to spend. We wanted to provide much broader access to digital currency, and so stellars will be given away for free at the click of a button. To encourage transparency, anyone can see how many stellars have been given away here: https://www.stellar.org/stats/ https://www.stellar.org/stats/
- webignition 12y ago
  What other methods are you looking to introduce and when might they be an option? I created a Stellar account but am in the minority of people who don't have a Facebook account and was a little disappointed.
- kylebrown 12y ago
  Hi Joyce, would you ask your bf Jed where his MtGox profits are? Its known that Jed sold MtGox to Mark Karpeles, and had access to a privileged account which allowed him to audit the total trading volume (and collect his agreed profit share).
- JoshTriplett 12y ago
  Without the inclusion of mining and the incentives to establish a mining infrastructure, how do you intend to provide safe decentralized verification of transactions?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - vbuterin 12y ago

loupeabody 12y ago

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

tzaman 12y ago
Of course it does, otherwise I'd be able to register an unlimited number of accounts to get as much free Stellars as I wanted.
- loupeabody 12y ago
  I wonder how they'll prevent this with the other authorization options which apparently are on their way
  - pieton 12y ago
    At minimum, N auth options mean an easy N*5000 stellars per unsophisticated user. (I can create a FB-linked account today, and say an SMS-linked account tomorrow, and then merge the two).
- opendais 12y ago
  You still can if you are willing to contact the people that do the Facebook Ad manipulation. ;)
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  I wonder if its to make it harder for us to all start selling drugs to each other.
- floatrock 12y ago
  The barrier to creating an unlimited number of facebook accounts is a half step above creating an unlimited number of gmail or hotmail accounts. No, the whole point of connecting with facebook is to focus on the UX of making electronic payments. Who's going to remember their coffee date's wallet is 1BeX1pVAjD94hNs6C5d2dB3TRnLx53dXg3? QR codes are cute, but haven't quite hit the mainstream. It's a lot easier to say "Ben Bitdiddle" and have Ben's facebook picture pop up. The network effects of scanning your entire social graph (and the data contained within) doesn't hurt either. Works fantastically for Venmo.

jqueryin 12y ago

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

ipostonthisacc 12y ago
ipostonthisacc :) let's keep it going
tzaman 12y ago
Only if you send 2000 to Tomaz :) EDIT: got 1000 from 'miha'
- lukasm 12y ago
  I finally can use my name as login :) send to lukas :)
  - tzaman 12y ago
    sent 1k :)
  - Klipi 12y ago
    sending to lukas! i'm Klipi for paying it forward
    - lukasm 12y ago
      Can't send ;/
myleshenderson 12y ago
or to myleshenderson ;)
- jgmmo 12y ago
  sending! mine is: joenorton

GregorStocks 12y ago

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

Walkman 12y ago
The values are probably stored in float, which is ridiculous.
- hackerweb 12y ago
  This confused me as well. Stellars are stored in fixed point, as millionths of a stellar. But there's a tiny anti-spam fee for each payment transaction, so if you've sent money somewhere you may find an extra 0.000010 gone.
- jonny_eh 12y ago
  A better way to phrase what you just did: Maybe the values are stored as a float? But that would be silly, so there must be a better reason.
  - mingabunga 12y ago
    From FAQs: To prevent spam, each transaction burns 10 microstellars (that is, 0.00001 stellars).
    - theswan 12y ago
      Where do the 10 microstellars go? Are they actually destroyed?
      - makomk 12y ago
        If it's the same as Ripple which this is based on, then the 10 microstellars are destroyed, yes.
- hyperliner 12y ago

rwinn 12y ago

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

joyce 12y ago
I work at Stellar. We wanted a method by which we could fund people once (to prevent someone from spinning up a lot of fake accounts to claim) hence the decision to move forward with Facebook. I know it isn't perfect, but we are doing our best to make the giveaway broadly accessible and not game-able. And we are working on other claim methods so yes, totally hear your concerns.
- rwinn 12y ago
  Good to hear, I'm looking forward to the other claim methods now after reading your mandate
- PythonicAlpha 12y ago
  Good to hear, I hope you have some ideas, since else, this "facebookers only" feels like discrimination -- as I explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115706
kordless 12y ago
I like that because your friends and photos are a lot like a social fingerprint. If there are no photos and no friends, then no Stellar.

mintplant2 12y ago

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

slig 12y ago
See if you're not blocking FB with AdBlock or Disconnect.
- mintplant2 12y ago
  Ah, Disconnect was the issue. Thank you!

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ernestipark 12y ago

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

pc 12y ago
This is actually for security -- your password is never sent to the server, and so the client needs to decrypt your wallet again.
- ernestipark 12y ago
  Cool makes sense. Maybe some messaging on the login form would be helpful.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

simpixelated 12y ago
Looks like it was pre-mined. They are giving away up to 6k if you connect your Facebook and verify your email. "One key difference is that 95% of the currency is being given away for free at the outset, the bulk of it from an initial issuance of 100 billion coins created by the not-for-profit foundation that will run the project. New coins will be later added at no cost to the circulation at a rate of 1% per year." http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/07/31/mt-gox-ripple-founder-unveils-stellar-a-new-digital-currency-project/?mod=e2tw http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/07/31/mt-gox-ripple-foun...

samirmenon 12y ago

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

opendais 12y ago
I reactivated mine to attempt to get access to the Stellars as well. Its also "too new". Ah well. Still a neat idea, I'll just have no use for it until it matures since I can't use it.
jschmitz28 12y ago
Same message and my account is two and a half years old. I have no friends on the account, so maybe "too new" really means "not enough friends". Edit: Because this is generating some discussion, I'll clarify that it is not actually my main account which is why I have no friends or photos, but I don't like giving third parties access to my private main account information. The spam detection seems to have worked well on me, I was just pointing out that account age is not the only filter.
- omghi2u 12y ago
  Your network isn't valuable enough to datamine, so you get no funny money. That's the message I'm taking away....
- opendais 12y ago
  Ya, that could be it.
- josephschmoe 12y ago
  Yeah, see, I would probably find that incredibly suspicious as well. Though, most spam accounts try to get around this by sending out hundreds of friend requests to random people.
- andrewstellar 12y ago
  Hello, we check various properties of your Facebook account to determine that this was not a spam account created simply to exploit the giveaway. This is our first day out, and we apologize that legitimate users like yourself aren't able to receive the giveaway. Please check back in the coming days as we continue to improve our spam detection algorithms.

neilni 12y ago

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

kawera 12y ago
Are you using Ghostery?
JTon 12y ago
Experiencing same issue! I haven't tried at home yet

PabloOsinaga 12y ago

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

PabloOsinaga 12y ago
OK, I will offer more. $20? Nobody interested in selling 7000 stellars for $20?
- corpselord420 12y ago
  i'm interested, shoot me an email at routemailhere@gmail.com
- lnanek2 12y ago
  one dead person replied. go to your profile and turn on seeing dead people. assuming i'm not dead too, lol

encoderer 12y ago

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

omghi2u 12y ago

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

kordless 12y ago
By that logic, any site with any bug in it should never been launched. If it broke, report the bug. It's Open Source: https://github.com/stellar https://github.com/stellar.
- omghi2u 12y ago
  No. They dropped the ball in my opinion from what should be a really savvy group of people who "get it" when it comes to identity/etc.
  - kordless 12y ago
    No what? You won't report a bug? That's idiotic.

mentaat 12y ago

fb login? no thanks :/

ankurpatel 12y ago

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

bruceboughton 12y ago
Now, about 1 Stellar. In the future, about 1 Stellar.
- encoreptl 12y ago
  I mean in terms of USD
oafitupa 12y ago
Nothing, it's just a fork of Ripple. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
- czottmann 12y ago
  You're repeating yourself, please stop.
- czottmann 12y ago
  You're repeating yourself, please stop.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
6thSigma 12y ago
Stripe paid $3,000,000 for 2,000,000,000 stellars FWIW. Edit: They are calling the $3M a loan, so not sure if that is the full payment in stellars or not.
- spacefight 12y ago
  It is, it said on https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Funding https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Funding that the could use their initial share of 5% to repay the loan.

fragsworth 12y ago

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

miralabs 12y ago

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

joyce 12y ago
We want to give them away as fairly and to as many people as possible. Stellar doesn't require mining and so there's no need to give them away to the people with the most CPU cycles. Anyone can participate regardless of technical ability or income.
oafitupa 12y ago
Yep, just another premined coin to the list, and as it turns out it's a fork of Ripple. Everyone here should read this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
- schrodinger 12y ago
  Please stop posting the same thing over and over.
- vbuterin 12y ago
  There is absolutely nothing wrong with premining, if it is done honestly and transparently and especially if your coin is using a consensus algorithm that has no need for regular mining in the first place. Let's evaluate the fairness of the distribution model on its merits. This one is quasi-centralized (relying on Facebook accounts), but I predict it will be among the most egalitarian.
  - jejejajo 12y ago
    Says the creator of a premined coin (Ethereum).
    - foobarqux 12y ago
      Why isn't pre-mining viewed like VC-less VC?

ericb 12y ago

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

ianburrell 12y ago
Stellar (and Ripple) are distributed ledger and exchange. The big difference from Bitcoin is that it records credits from gateways in multiple currencies. It can transfer money in regular currencies and exchange different currencies. The other big difference is that consistency is not maintained by mining but with consensus between trusted servers. This makes theoretically scale to larger volumes and better latency while not being fully distributed. The Bitcoin cryptocurrency people hate it because it uses fiat currencies and is more centralized. Most people will probably prefer Stellar since it can interface with existing bank accounts and monetary systems. It can be complement to Bitcoin as it can act as a distributed exchange.
oafitupa 12y ago
Stellar is just a fork of Ripple: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
- ericb 12y ago
  I always had the same questions about Ripple, though.
  - oafitupa 12y ago
    Well it's premined and centralized, so I would say it's just like any pre-Bitcoin coin/exchange.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

pc 12y ago
Yes; it's because your wallet is decrypted by the client and your password is never sent to the server.

lazyant 12y ago

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

toxicFork 12y ago
Nothing loads for me anymore, looks like their API could not handle the interest :)

tomasien 12y ago

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

scottmp10 12y ago

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

oafitupa 12y ago
No this is not Bitcoin-like. It's premined and requires trust. Besides, it's just a fork of Ripple, which has already failed after being dumped by its creator. http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg Oh but it has integration with Facebook, so I guess that changes everything! /s
- murbard2 12y ago
  Bitcoin also requires trust, specifically the trust that miners will not collude to double spend. There is also nothing fundamental about the idea of issuing coins as a reward for mining. It's just one possibility among many, there's nothing intrinsically "fair" about it.
  - leshow 12y ago
    In Bitcoin, you trust the way the network as defined by the code has been set up, not the miners specifically. In this situation you have the code to audit but you also have to trust the Stellar Foundation... I have to trust they are telling me the truth about how they are distributing the currency, that they won't sell their shares early, that these 3 people heading the foundation are going to act in my interests, etc. What if the Stellar Foundation dissolves in a month? What happens to the currency?
    - murbard2 12y ago
      >In Bitcoin, you trust the way the network as defined by the code has been set up, not the miners specifically. Wrong, you trust the miners not to collude and attack the network. I know you've heard the claim over and over that Bitoin is trustless, but that doesn't make it true.

shawndrost 12y ago

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

DomKM 12y ago
I'm experiencing the same issue.

eridius 12y ago

Site seems to have broken. It never finished connecting to Facebook, and now when I go to the dashboard the steps are missing entirely. When I go to Settings and try and enable password recovery I get "Server error". In the Console it says it got a 502 from api.stellar.org. That's in Chrome. In Safari, I don't even get a response to clicking on a settings toggle. Merely loading the dashboard gives me a CORS error.

joyce 12y ago
Sorry, our web client is currently down under the load. We're on it.
- eridius 12y ago
  Looks like it's working now. Thanks! Edit: Spoke too soon. My wife can't sign up. Button just says "Sending" indefinitely. Edit 2: She just got an email confirmation code, despite the signup eventually failing outright. But she can't log in, says the username is invalid. So what is the confirmation code associated with? Edit 3: It finally worked. Yay!
  - joyce 12y ago
    Ha! Thanks for sticking with it and we will keep working on smoothing things out.
- sachinag 12y ago
  Seems to be responding better but the recovery code process is a little off. Says that the email address I'm trying to use is taken (it's the one I used at registration after the nag message) and that my recovery code is invalid.

ajgrover 12y ago

just FYI - none of the sliders on the settings page work for me. The first one gives me a "Server Error" tooltip and the other 2 just do nothing. Also, I linked my Facebook and didn't get any indication of whether it worked or not. Now when I log in I have 0 stellars and the welcome panel doesn't show up. did this happen to anyone else?

abiekatz 12y ago

What are the key differences between Stellar and Ripple?

jejejajo 12y ago
The name. http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg http://i.imgur.com/DvyNzY3.jpg

waitingkuo 12y ago

I'm curious about why my balance becomes 6000.

giarc 12y ago
You get 1000 for verifying email.

rxaxm 12y ago

lol refresh logs you out!

peter_l_downs 12y ago

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

dmnd 12y ago
Same problem here. My account seems to be in an inconsistent state. I can't log in, but my username and email are "already in use".
oflannabhra 12y ago
Same issue for me, I can't even log into the forums to get technical assistance. I got an email confirming my account, but can't log in with my password, and can't re-register with the same username.
oluckyman 12y ago
Same issue for me.
andrewstellar 12y ago
Hi Peter, we are aware of this issue affecting a minority of users and are actively working to provide a fix. If you signed up with your email, we will also contact you soon with instructions on how to retrieve your account. Thank you for your patience!

fela 12y ago

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

swamp12 12y ago
Weird. I'm one of the Stellar devs -- could you email your stellar username to jed@stellar.org? Thanks!
- fela 12y ago
  done

Procrastes 12y ago

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

danielweber 12y ago

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

giarc 12y ago
http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf Figure 1 is particularly helpful.
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  Every time I see figure 1 I completely lose it.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
leothekim 12y ago
That Figure 2 is log-scale is most impressive. I had the opportunity to meet David Mazières at SOSP 2005 in Brighton. Clearly a sharp fellow, and the funkiest dresser at the conference.

michaelmcmillan 12y ago

I just created a subreddit for further discussion: http://www.reddit.com/r/thestellar http://www.reddit.com/r/thestellar

rjsamson 12y ago

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

oluckyman 12y ago
Same issue for me.

jxf 12y ago

I was able to successfully sign up and get 5,000 STR, so that worked for me at least. But then I started looking a little deeper into the blog post. > Development is led by Jed McCaleb and Dr. David Mazieres in collaboration with a small team of others. (The technology is based on the open-source Ripple project, originally created by Jed a few years ago.) So, is Stellar fundamentally the same thing as and/or a fork of Ripple? They've hired the same guy who started Ripple (Jed McCaleb), and as I recall there were a lot of concerns around that, as noted in a WSJ article [0] and other places. Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members -- and so wields a considerable amount of influence. If so, then doesn't it have all the same problems and concerns as Ripple? Centralized authority holding a large chunk of initial funds, questionable governance decisions, etc., just to name a few of the political problems, not just the technical ones. I'd love to see the "IP layer for currency" described by Stripe succeed, but I'm not sure that this implementation of it represents a good idea. And I'm also concerned about whether Jed, the cofounder of both MtGox and Ripple, has the best interests of Stellar at heart. [0] http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/22/ripple-alternative-digital-currency-plunges-as-mccaleb-liquidates/ http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/22/ripple-alternative...

joyce 12y ago
Great question - here are the two key items: - Stellar is a nonprofit. No one owns it. The board and advisors represent a diverse group of people in tech, finance, nonprofit and academia to encourage cross-pollination of ideas. The board is also required to expand to 5 members by year-end. - Almost all the stellars will be given away for free (95%) because the goal is to educate and provide access to digital currency/financial services. This is really good for cryptocurrency as a whole because it provides access to a huge segment of the world that would not have access to digital currency otherwise. This should all help the effort be open and transparent.
- spacefight 12y ago
  And Stripe got their USD 3M loan repaid in 2% of the pre-mined stellars, valuating the whole pre-mined lot at USD 150M. How did they arrive at this number?

pmorici 12y ago

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

pc 12y ago
Yeah, the image issues were unfortunate -- but the tech is good, and Jed and David have a lot of promising ideas about how to make it even better. Jed and Joyce have been scrupulous about being fair and transparent in how the Stellar Foundation is structured. There's more about this (including governance documents) at https://www.stellar.org/about/ https://www.stellar.org/about/.
- muneeb 12y ago
  I'm actually more excited about David joining this effort (and entering the cryptocurrency space) than anything else. Stellar, also, looks promising (-:
parad0x1 12y ago
The founder that quit is the one who founded Stellar. He is also the one who dumped 9 billion XRP after that argument.
- makomk 12y ago
  To put this in some perspective, 9 billion XRP is from what I can tell slightly more than the total amount in circulation prior to him dumping all his. It was fairly damaging to Ripple overall and anyone holding XRP lost quite a bit from it.

sjg007 12y ago

Great idea. This is going to be huge.

riffraff 12y ago

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

Flavius 12y ago

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

pc 12y ago
It's actually not a bug -- it's because the client never sends the password to the server. (It decrypts your wallet locally.)
- Flavius 12y ago
  It makes sense. It looks like they've just added this message: "If you refresh you will be automatically logged out since it isn't safe to keep your password on disk."
  - spacefight 12y ago
    The funny thing to this is, that keeping the password on disk isn't proclaimed safe but sending each user the recovery code over plain text mail withouth encryption is...

AndrewDucker 12y ago

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

wj 12y ago
I'm sure many successful companies had scaling issues well past their first day. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

lnanek2 12y ago

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

flowless 12y ago
+1. I won't use a service that forces me to connect with some 3d party.
- chockablock 12y ago
  You don't have to connect with FB to create an account.
jamiequint 12y ago
Its not strange at all, otherwise it would be too easy to create a bunch of email accounts and "mine" stellar with them. With Facebook they have account history, number of friends, activity, etc as proof of validity. Its not a perfect measure but its much better than just allowing arbitrary email signups.
- grey-area 12y ago
  I used a fake FB account to sign up and get stellar. This is in fact no protection at all and they should just drop the requirement.
gdb 12y ago
I hear you. It's a temporary measure: https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_Why_do_I_need_to_authenticate_with_Facebook_to_receive_my_stellars_ https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_Why_do_I_need_to_authenticate_.... Basically, it was an easy (but imperfect) way to start. We'd certainly love suggestions for other channels to distribute stellars.
- spacefight 12y ago

tlrobinson 12y ago

"The network has been initialized with a supply of 100 billion stellars. 5% will be used to fund operations of the nonprofit (its spending, including employee compensation, will be public), and the remaining 95% of the stellars will be distributed for free as quickly as we can manage." IIRC Ripple's founders (including Jed) kept about 20% of XRP, and Ripple Labs kept about 25%, so only 5% is a lot better, but it's still a very centralized solution to distribution. I do like that they're distributing 20% of the Stellars to BTC (and XRP) holders, though: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program

gdb 12y ago
We hope that it'll end up being considerably more even than Bitcoin distribution. One note is that of the 5%, 2% is currently held by Stripe. We're going to auction off most of our Stellars, and return the proceeds to the Foundation. The Foundation is also being transparent about where the remaining stellars are going, namely: 2.5% to existing employees (https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensation https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensat...), and over time it'll distribute more stellars in order to raise funds (https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_the_foundation_and_auction https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_...). But, yes, solving the distribution question is a hard problem :-).
- simonebrunozzi 12y ago
  I think it would be wise to let people invest now in order to acquire stellars later on - assuming more funding would be welcome by the foundation.
danoprey 12y ago
We wish Stellar all the best and it's certainly a huge improvement on Ripple Labs, but we're also working on a (not directly competitive, but related) project http://hyperledger.com/ http://hyperledger.com/ without any native currency or pre-allocation at all. Hope we can integrate with Stellar as soon as possible.

k2enemy 12y ago

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

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jakewalker 12y ago

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

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

thescorer 12y ago

Quick, everyone send me their stellar: troypayne

Ecio78 12y ago

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

IgorPartola 12y ago

So why no two factor auth right off the bat?

desireco42 12y ago

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

funkyy 12y ago
Yeah, send it to username funkyygames as well - anyone wants 1,000 let me know! I cant find anyone to send this to.

fuddle 12y ago

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

GigabyteCoin 12y ago

So after giving them access to my facebook account I was told "Your Facebook account is too new to qualify. Stay tuned for new ways to grab stellars." How unfortunate. And strange seeing as the account is many years old.

Taek 12y ago
Do you have enough friends? A common spam prevention measure checks for 100+ friends. It may just assume that if you have less, the account is 'new'

xmodem 12y ago

> Each week, the network will identify the winners. The winners are the 50 top voted for accounts that also received at last 1.5% of the vote. If no account has over 1.5% of the vote, then the top 50 accounts voted for are considered the winners. That week’s new stellars are then distributed pro-rata to the winners. So does this mean that if one account has 5% of the vote and all remaining accounts have under 1.5%, that account will receive all of the inflation-creates Stellars?

RoboTeddy 12y ago
As I read it, yes. But other account holders would have an incentive to band together in order to surpass 1.5% (or even 5%). I wonder if it'll be possible to vote for an account that promises to immediately distribute new Stellar back to its voters. If so, newly-created Stellar may always end up being distributed in proportion to the Stellar wealth distribution.

mystik 12y ago

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

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

Danieru 12y ago

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

AnthonyMouse 12y ago

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

wmf 12y ago
The gateways are expected to be run primarily by Stripe? :-)
battani 12y ago
This is something they unfortunately do not address, but it's the biggest problem with such systems and a major part of the reason Ripple hasn't caught on.
patrickaljord 12y ago
From what I understand, the bitcoin network could be a gateway so if you want to exchange bitcoin that would not require any regulation hell. If you want to exchange fiat money, that would. But that will always be the case even without stellar.

tomasien 12y ago

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

voronoff 12y ago

Anyone else concerned that there seems to be a permanent confirmation code for resetting pw sent in plain text over email? "Keep this code SAFE. Anyone with this code and your username can gain access to your account" Where I'm from, that is a password.

marcell 12y ago
While I am not too familiar with how Stellar/Ripple work, I assume they are sending an un-encrypted version of your Stellar private key, or perhaps the equivalent of a bitcoin master private key [1]. I say un-encrypted based on their claim that the code + username can be used to gain access; typically sites will encrypt the recovery code with your password. Based on this, I conjecture that they decided in favor of usability in the usability-security tradeoff. [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawi...
gdb 12y ago
In your settings, you can turn off recovery for this reason. The plan is to move quickly to two-factor.
axman6 12y ago
I'm not worried, I'm the only one with that code and even I can't access my account. What a trainwreck.

philipDS 12y ago

Very interesting. I always thought of Ripple as semi-scam, but I can see Stellar become a thing (be huge, actually), backed by Stripe and hopefully others soon enough. Question.. how is the password used to decrypt the secret key? Which encryption algorithm is used? Can anyone technically explain?

deckar01 12y ago
Stellar dev here. Thanks for the encouragement. We use scrypt to derive a key from your username and password. The key is used to encrypt your secret data with 256bit AES in GCM mode. You can check out the implementation here: https://github.com/stellar/stellar-client/blob/master/app/scripts/utilities/wallet.js#L260 https://github.com/stellar/stellar-client/blob/master/app/sc...
- philipDS 12y ago
  Thanks! Gonna have a look at it now - seems like an interesting authentication scheme :)
simonebrunozzi 12y ago
I agree on the fact that Stellar is very promising.

lifeeth_ 12y ago

This just reminds me of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala and nothing else.

gojomo 12y ago
Yes, but also more generally, highly-liquid IOUs ("bills of exchange") as were widely used before the rise of modern banking: http://jpkoning.blogspot.de/2013/02/ripple-or-bills-of-exchange-20.html http://jpkoning.blogspot.de/2013/02/ripple-or-bills-of-excha...

anuragbiyani 12y ago

https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program How does that work for someone who has bitcoins in an e-wallet, like Coinbase ?

wmf 12y ago
Either use a real wallet or pester Coinbase to support signing.

techtivist 12y ago

It seems to me Stellar (the organization) will be "the Central Bank" a la Bank for International Settlements at the global level or Federal Reserve for Stellar (the cryptocurrency). This is what makes me uncomfortable. The biggest point about cryptocurrencies is that they are not centralized. In that sense Stellar seems a lot worse than regular currency. With a regular currency, at least the respective Central Bank or other monetary regulatory authority has credibility and accountability in the sense that they are indirectly elected by citizens as they are selected by the elected government. As such they have to have a history of integrity and monetary experience, and can be removed if they act unethically. Stellar's board, on the other hand, is self-elected, and with all due respect, don't need to have the level of accountability or have the credibility of running such an organization, which even if it owns "just 5%" (+2% of Stripe's) of the currency can potentially have substantial control over it. And being a non-profit doesn't add a stamp of either, means little.

gdb 12y ago
The Stellar Foundation will actually control relatively little. The creation of new stellars, for example, will be done in a fully distributed fashion: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_creation https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_creation. To clarify, of the total 5% reserved for operations, ownership is currently: - 2% to Stripe (the majority of which we're going to auction off to other companies, with net profits being returned to the foundation) - 2.5% to employees (https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensation https://www.stellar.org/about/governance/#Employee_Compensat...), vesting over four years As needed, the organization will also hold open auctions to raise funds from its remaining pool of stellars (https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_the_foundation_and_auction https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Continued_funding_of_...), which will conveniently distribute the stellars further. Note also there's a five-year lockup for the founders: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Stellar_distribution. Are there actions you're worried that the organization might be able to take given this?
- techtivist 12y ago
  Thanks for sharing the details. My core problem isn't with the details, mainly because I haven't gone through it or even what percentage of Stellar is controlled by the organization. My problem is with the basis of having such a self-selected organization which seems to have given itself the de facto control over the flow of the monetary system. As a good example what you mentioned: "As needed, the organization will also hold open auctions to raise funds from its remaining pool of stellars". This is a huge thing! Who decides when "as needed" is? If it's the board, what's the basis of their authority? Just being a non=profit doesn't stop one or more of the board members to act in self-interest.

alagappanr 12y ago

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

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

jscheel 12y ago

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

joshAg 12y ago

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

anuragbiyani 12y ago

Ref: https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/#Bitcoin_program Will the date for snapshotting the Bitcoin blockchain be publicized in advance ?

workingBen 12y ago

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

gdb 12y ago
Take a look at https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_What_are_the_fees_for_a_transaction_ https://www.stellar.org/faq/#_What_are_the_fees_for_a_transa.... The short answer is that each transaction burns 10 microstellar, and they haven't smoothed out all of the display issues in the hosted client yet, hence the surprise.
- simonebrunozzi 12y ago
  The cost of transaction might be an issue if one day 1 stellar > 20 USD or so (it becomes too expensive). Wondering if there is a way to fix it (other than simply merging multiple transactions), without having anything to do with the USD itself.

murbard2 12y ago

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

rdl 12y ago

I'm really excited about this (I talked to Jed a few months ago, before joining CloudFlare). I think there will need to be a strong client wallet, rather than just the web client, but that's obvious, and the web client was an easy place to start. I'd really like to see how one would integrate chaumian blinded tokens into this. I may be an outlier in thinking unlinkability and anonymity are critical for "real currencies" over time, but I think recent events have shown this to be correct. I liked Ripple 1.0; Ripple-of-today not as much, so since this seems to be basically Ripple 1.0 plus some lessons learned, it should be interesting.

waterlesscloud 12y ago

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

corford 12y ago

Too early to tell if Stella will work but their intentions appear good and the underlying concept solid. Was very surprised though that there isn't a single advisor to the board who's career has been in finance or banking. Seems to me that stella will only work and achieve broad adoption if the network has solid gateways operated by entities people already know and trust. Who do most people trust with their money? Existing banks and other well known exchange/trading platforms (xe.com / etrade / western union). If you want these institutions to start operating stella gateways, surely it would be a good idea to have an advisor to the board that's from that world, well connected and understands it intimately?

corford 12y ago
Not sure why I'm being down voted. My understanding is the system works better (at least for currency X to currency Y transactions) the more trusted local currency gateways exist in the network. So if using stellar on the backend makes it theoretically easier/cheaper/faster for traditional money transfer platforms to transmit/receive funds for their clients and having trusted brands as gateways is good for stellar's adoption; then surely that's a win/win and they should have an insider from the banking/finance/forex world advising their board and helping them get one or two well known finance shops involved in a pilot. Concrete example: I use XE.com trade for making international wires to people (most of the time it's GBP to EUR wires). Using XE is easier and cheaper than using my bank for this but the process is still painful. After locking in an exchange rate for the trade, I then have to wire my funds in GBP to XE.com's GBP bank account (with a reference number for the trade) and they then wire the equivalent EUR amount to the recipient's EUR bank account. I have to provide loads of bank details for the recipient (branch address, IBAN, SWIFT, intermediary bank etc.) and it usually takes 48 hours before the money arrives in their account (sometimes longer if they have a weird bank). It's also often difficult to work out what fees intermediary banks will extract en-route. I'd love it if XE.com had stellar GBP and EUR gateways. I could then dump some funds in their GBP gateway, give them the stellar username I want to send the equivalent EUR amount to and hit send. Instant and easy. Or maybe I've completely misunderstood the purpose of gateways and how they work?

borski 12y ago

This is an awesome idea, and we want to help support it. To that end: how do we disclose a security vulnerability? Is there a PGP key posted, or some other system for us to do that?

andrewstellar 12y ago
Thanks! Please contact hello@stellar or one of the admins directly on freenode channel #stellar-dev.

olouv 12y ago

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

muneeb 12y ago
+1, the recovery code shouldn't go out in plain text email. Also, I picked a weak password just to quickly make an account and I can't seem to change it, hmmm.
tribaal 12y ago
And there is no way to change your password.

0x0 12y ago

Looks like the emails coming from stellar are delivered from an SMTP origin "mailgun.info" which uses an invalid client certificate; I'm getting errors: SSL_accept error from mail-182-5.mailgun.info[23.253.182.5]: 0 warning: TLS library problem: XXX:error:XXX:SSL routines:SSL3_READ_BYTES:sslv3 alert bad certificate:s3_pkt.c:1258:SSL alert number 42: At least they retry without SSL aftwards, and manage to deliver the emails.

russjones 12y ago
Hi 0x0, Russell from Mailgun here. Do you have a self signed certificate by any chance? We typically downgrade a connection if we are presented with a self signed certificate. That might be what you are seeing. If you drop us an email at support [at] mailgun.com with your domain I can take a look at the specific issue we are having delivering over TLS to your domain.

abcd21 12y ago

So if I'm understanding correctly, we're meant to trust a network governed by the CEO of Stripe, the VC funding Stripe, and a guy whom Stripe has given 2 Million dollars to? Looks like this is yet another classic developer bait-and-switch. Make things look all independent and open at the start, have a different website, and make a half-declaration about your interests so nobody can accuse you of not being transparent... But keep the keys to the kingdom in your pocket so you can control it and profit once it becomes valuable. Count me out.

deergus 12y ago

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

everettForth 12y ago

Does anyone want to sell their Stellar?

dreamdu5t 12y ago

> Stellar is a decentralized protocol Stellar has a central authority that can mint new stellars. That is not decentralized. Bold-faced lie.

reedlaw 12y ago

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

andrewchambers 12y ago
ill send you some if you don't want to use facebook.
- reedlaw 12y ago
  Sure, my user name is reedlaw.
  - andrewchambers 12y ago
    for some reason I cant send to you :/. says you arent on the network.

owenversteeg 12y ago

I got this message when signing up with my Facebook account (which I only use for signing in to services, not to connect with people, which may be why I got it): Oops! Our spam detection checks say your Facebook account isn't eligible. If you are a legitimate user, we apologize and are improving our detection algorithms. And we will release new ways to grab stellars soon, so please check back. Is there any way to prove that my account is legitimate? Maybe my Github account, where I manage a somewhat popular open-source project, Min (http://minfwk.com http://minfwk.com) My username both on Github, HN and Stellar is owenversteeg. This seems like an interesting idea, and I'd like to play around with it.

joyce 12y ago
Hi Owen - I'll go help you out. Let me know if you have any questions. joyce@stellar

treenyc 12y ago

OMG, this would be perfect for the 501(c)3 non-profit where I'm at. http://newfuturefoundation.org http://newfuturefoundation.org They are currently paying a lot of fees to the bank fund nonprofit projects in Africa. This would really be perfect for them.

jsbos 12y ago

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

tklovett 12y ago

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

ryanmerket 12y ago
user: merket
- tklovett 12y ago
  Sent yours back, thanks!

richcollins 12y ago

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

edoceo 12y ago

Still waiting on the email confirmation :( Never got the plaintext recovery code.

here 12y ago

As someone who is paying 5% to deposit a foreign check, and also lost a non-trivial amount when a ripple gateway folded, I can say I am still excited to see another iteration on the idea. 5% as a consumer spread on international transfers is ridiculous, and seemingly only avoided using some sort of forex exchange with high minimums and excessive red tape. Bitcoin exchanges do not offer reliable or timely deposit/withdrawal in most local currencies to consider it an alternative. The trust points are no worse than existing banks / currency exchange / forex models that allow this type of transfer to take place. If we are lucky, we can improve and decentralize those choke points further. Yes, those who control the choke points have the potential to make stupid amounts of money based solely on traffic, much like existing banking models and many startups. Worth reading is the recent blogpost that I'm sure most regulars have seen https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective https://stripe.com/blog/bitcoin-the-stripe-perspective.

up_and_up 12y ago

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

runeks 12y ago

Stellar is the "IP layer for credit" while Bitcoin is the "IP layer for money". Stellar doesn't actually transfer funds (like Bitcoin), it only transfers IOUs, the settlement (actual value transfer) occurs outside the Stellar network. Stellar and Bitcoin achieve two different goals.

jacqui_ire 12y ago

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

dotts_o 12y ago

dotts_o can you guys send me some Thanks :)

uaygsfdbzf 12y ago

hello friends if any one want to sell your steallar send me here (salman1) after sening email me your username and paypal email 1000 STR = 4$ my email address is (danielsmithcholro@gmail.com)

wowow 12y ago

my name : minister sent me plz , thanks!

cheska27 12y ago

Hi send me 1000str and i will send 1050 back.. here is my username "cheska27" and tell your username to verify! :)

anup69 12y ago

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