5 ms·

The Role of Trust in the Stellar Network

31 points by polymathist 12y ago

oafitupa 12y ago
> Stellar is a brand new decentralized protocol Nope, it's just a clone of Ripple by the same author. He just dumped all his XRP, rebranded the whole thing, and started a new pump and dump scheme. He tried really hard to remove all the Ripple references from the code, but the whole concept looked so similar (nothing interesting, just another premined, centralized in practice service) that people caught him in no time.
- mkrecny 12y ago
  He wasn't trying to hide the fact that Stellar is a fork of Ripple.
- dzuc 12y ago
  In the post he actually says: "(In fact, Stellar is a fork of Ripple and retains many similarities for now, while also introducing a few improvements)."
- polymathist 12y ago
  To be fair, I could've used better wording there. I simply meant that Stellar just launched a few weeks ago. I'm not trying to deceive anyone. As others have said, I do mention later on in the post that Stellar is a fork of Ripple, and I even point to some Ripple resources for understanding how the consensus protocol works. Jed McCaleb, the person you are referring to, was open and honest with the Ripple community, and actually donated a good amount of his XRP to charities: https://xrptalk.org/topic/2629-selling-my-xrp/ https://xrptalk.org/topic/2629-selling-my-xrp/. He left due to disagreements with the management team at Ripple, not as part of some "pump and dump" scheme. Most estimates indicate that so far he has not dumped much at all: http://crypt.la/2014/01/18/ripple-price-prediction-xrp/ http://crypt.la/2014/01/18/ripple-price-prediction-xrp/. Compared to Ripple, I like that Stellar is being more honest and fair with their issuance policy https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/ https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/, reserving only 5% for running costs of the Stellar Foundation. I also like that they have created built-in inflation for STR and appreciate how well they are engaging with developers and other participants in the early-stage community.
- ewzimm 12y ago
  Nobody ever tried to hide anything. Stellar was rebranded because it was launched as a forked collaboration with additional people and additional code. Look at the front page of stellar.org: Stellar Development is led by Jed McCaleb (resuming development of the open-source technology he created at Ripple) and Professor David Mazières (head of Stanford’s Secure Computer Systems group, creator of SFS and bcrypt).
  - oafitupa 12y ago
    Yes, yes, they now admit it because they got caught. That doesn't change the way they presented it when it was launched.
    - joyce 12y ago
      Joyce from Stellar here. We have not changed any content from our launch post since it was published for launch. Please feel free to read over our post here. Also adding Stripe's if anyone missed both announcements a month ago. (Side note: Stellar is 1 month old today!) - https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-stellar/ https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-stellar/ - https://stripe.com/blog/stellar https://stripe.com/blog/stellar Thanks!
      - throwaway000002 12y ago
        Hi Joyce, what I'm really interested in are the details you promised in that first blog post: We’ll be releasing a paper soon documenting and exploring a provably-correct version of this algorithm. When should we expect this paper about Stellar's consensus model to be made available? Thanks.
        philrapo 12y ago
        Here is an explanation of Ripple consensus which was forked by Stellar: http://dev.ripple.com/consensus-whitepaper.html http://dev.ripple.com/consensus-whitepaper.html
    - 12y ago
- abritishguy 12y ago
  > He tried really hard to remove all the Ripple references from the code No he didn't - have a look it is littered
mkrecny 12y ago
Here are the 'trust lines' that have been extended to one Gateway based in New Zealand (Coinex) https://www.yett.co/a/gs9HHU3pmkKBuvykhNm6xiK1JKrput9i3K https://www.yett.co/a/gs9HHU3pmkKBuvykhNm6xiK1JKrput9i3K
Siecje 12y ago
How do you create a Stellar node?
- polymathist 12y ago
  I would recommend downloading the code and building from source on your own hardware or an EC2 instance (a medium sized instance should be good enough). Stellard repository: https://github.com/stellar/stellard https://github.com/stellar/stellard You can follow this wiki for build instructions: https://wiki.stellar.org/Building_Stellard https://wiki.stellar.org/Building_Stellard Some people may have had luck with Vagrant or Docker, but since I have not I can't vouch for those methods.
logn 12y ago
How coupled together is the native currency and assets that need trust? Meaning, suppose you wanted to swap in a different crypto coin for the native currency one day, is that a major rewrite or more like a plug in?

31 points by polymathist 12y ago

> Stellar is a brand new decentralized protocol Nope, it's just a clone of Ripple by the same author. He just dumped all his XRP, rebranded the whole thing, and started a new pump and dump scheme. He tried really hard to remove all the Ripple references from the code, but the whole concept looked so similar (nothing interesting, just another premined, centralized in practice service) that people caught him in no time.

mkrecny 12y ago
He wasn't trying to hide the fact that Stellar is a fork of Ripple.
dzuc 12y ago
In the post he actually says: "(In fact, Stellar is a fork of Ripple and retains many similarities for now, while also introducing a few improvements)."
polymathist 12y ago
To be fair, I could've used better wording there. I simply meant that Stellar just launched a few weeks ago. I'm not trying to deceive anyone. As others have said, I do mention later on in the post that Stellar is a fork of Ripple, and I even point to some Ripple resources for understanding how the consensus protocol works. Jed McCaleb, the person you are referring to, was open and honest with the Ripple community, and actually donated a good amount of his XRP to charities: https://xrptalk.org/topic/2629-selling-my-xrp/ https://xrptalk.org/topic/2629-selling-my-xrp/. He left due to disagreements with the management team at Ripple, not as part of some "pump and dump" scheme. Most estimates indicate that so far he has not dumped much at all: http://crypt.la/2014/01/18/ripple-price-prediction-xrp/ http://crypt.la/2014/01/18/ripple-price-prediction-xrp/. Compared to Ripple, I like that Stellar is being more honest and fair with their issuance policy https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/ https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/, reserving only 5% for running costs of the Stellar Foundation. I also like that they have created built-in inflation for STR and appreciate how well they are engaging with developers and other participants in the early-stage community.
ewzimm 12y ago
Nobody ever tried to hide anything. Stellar was rebranded because it was launched as a forked collaboration with additional people and additional code. Look at the front page of stellar.org: Stellar Development is led by Jed McCaleb (resuming development of the open-source technology he created at Ripple) and Professor David Mazières (head of Stanford’s Secure Computer Systems group, creator of SFS and bcrypt).
- oafitupa 12y ago
  Yes, yes, they now admit it because they got caught. That doesn't change the way they presented it when it was launched.
  - joyce 12y ago
    Joyce from Stellar here. We have not changed any content from our launch post since it was published for launch. Please feel free to read over our post here. Also adding Stripe's if anyone missed both announcements a month ago. (Side note: Stellar is 1 month old today!) - https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-stellar/ https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-stellar/ - https://stripe.com/blog/stellar https://stripe.com/blog/stellar Thanks!
    - throwaway000002 12y ago
      Hi Joyce, what I'm really interested in are the details you promised in that first blog post: We’ll be releasing a paper soon documenting and exploring a provably-correct version of this algorithm. When should we expect this paper about Stellar's consensus model to be made available? Thanks.
      - philrapo 12y ago
        Here is an explanation of Ripple consensus which was forked by Stellar: http://dev.ripple.com/consensus-whitepaper.html http://dev.ripple.com/consensus-whitepaper.html
  - 12y ago
abritishguy 12y ago
> He tried really hard to remove all the Ripple references from the code No he didn't - have a look it is littered

mkrecny 12y ago

Here are the 'trust lines' that have been extended to one Gateway based in New Zealand (Coinex) https://www.yett.co/a/gs9HHU3pmkKBuvykhNm6xiK1JKrput9i3K https://www.yett.co/a/gs9HHU3pmkKBuvykhNm6xiK1JKrput9i3K

Siecje 12y ago

How do you create a Stellar node?

polymathist 12y ago
I would recommend downloading the code and building from source on your own hardware or an EC2 instance (a medium sized instance should be good enough). Stellard repository: https://github.com/stellar/stellard https://github.com/stellar/stellard You can follow this wiki for build instructions: https://wiki.stellar.org/Building_Stellard https://wiki.stellar.org/Building_Stellard Some people may have had luck with Vagrant or Docker, but since I have not I can't vouch for those methods.

logn 12y ago

How coupled together is the native currency and assets that need trust? Meaning, suppose you wanted to swap in a different crypto coin for the native currency one day, is that a major rewrite or more like a plug in?