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
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.
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.
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.
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).
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]
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
Without the inclusion of mining and the incentives to establish a mining infrastructure, how do you intend to provide safe decentralized verification of transactions?
Which isn't all that decentralized. The only nodes that participate in the consensus are a handful of "trusted" nodes run by - well, in this case I don't think we know yet, but the Stellar foundation gets to pick who can run them. Those nodes get to decide which transactions are accepted, what fees are charged, the money creation policies, etc.
The system currently uses the same consensus algorithm as Ripple. However, one thing David Mazières is currently spearheading is development of a provably-correct version of consensus.
(I think it's very important that whatever primitives you're building on have solid theoretical foundations, and I'm pretty excited to see the infrastructure improvements Stellar is going to introduce there.)
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.
Other discussions here are saying that Stellar scans the Facebook account to check whether it looks like a spam account set up to exploit the giveaway. It rejects accounts that are newly registered, for instance.
I'd be surprised if that's true. I signed up with my fake FB account and it worked just fine. The account is a complete spammy mess so if they are attempting that, they are not doing a very good job. I would say more likely no new accounts allowed and that's it...
Why of course? Since when has the existence/linking of an FB account to some other service been the only way to get more free Stellars? And who said, a Stellar has a real value other than being pre-mined bits and bytes?
Bummer. I just signed up but got to there and can't go any further since I don't have an account. I wonder if there will be other identify-provers in the future? I wouldn't mind hooking up LinkedIn or Twitter, or a phone number or something like that. (Or my Stripe account!)
The reason I gave you 1000 was so that I got the one time 1000 bonus from Stellar, then you paid it back. The assumption was you had already given 1000, gained the 1000 from Stellar and then got it back again.
Now, someone would give me 1000, I'll pay it back and the chain goes on :)
As it's clear you weren't quite sure how that worked, I'll pay yours back :)
Would be interested in trying this, but can't obtain any yet due to (intentional) lack of Facebook account. Happy to pay it forward in the inevitable HN article when they launch non-Facebook mechanisms.
Well, an interesting effect down below: tens of messages (as of this writing) of people sharing their username and sending money to each other. Sounds like fun.
It also helps with HN's karma, which I'm sure was not intentional.
However, I am curious about something else: these people below left a clear trace from their HN username to their Stellar username. What's Stellar's stance on privacy, and on anonymity?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
And what is with people, that don't have a Facebook account (yet)?
I guess, anybody that creates a new Facebook account now, because he wants to also get the Stellars will fall into the spam category.
tl;dr: Isn't it a legitimate interest, to get something that others get? Or is it just a giveaway for Facebook users? When so, would you please say so in the first place (, that your system is only for them). It does not foster my trust in this new system, when I am locked out, just because I am not inside some "special club" (I don't remember, that Facebook membership is now essential to interact in the internet -- .... I am at the verge to feel discriminated.).
I find it good, to have an alternate payment method to get out of the trap of traditional payment systems, that are dominated by a few big corporations .... and then, what happens, I have to bow to one even bigger monopolist. --> Does not foster my trust into a system that claims to be free and open.
Hello, Andrew from Stellar here. We're using Facebook as our identity verification mechanism for our giveaway, and we've added additional spam prevention checks to ensure lots of Facebook accounts aren't created just to claim the giveaway reward. We will be tweaking these checks in the coming days to ensure legitimate users like yourself will be let in. Please check back soon!
Hi, I'm excited about Stellar, but disappointed in the initial offering scheme. People with lots of real-looking Facebook accounts can grab some extra funny money and the rest of us get shafted. I'll check back later!
Hi, Andrew, please realize you are depending on the desire of people on HN not to be assholes to acquire imaginary currency.
A part of me was sorely tempted, out of annoyance, to simply acquire enough facebook accounts that would bypass your check just to point out how little value it has. I've long since quashed the urge but not everyone will.
485 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 321 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8114871
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.
The ring detector doesn't kill posts, it just demotes them.
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.
Good point. I may have gotten over-sensitive! Will edit accordingly.
(and thank antiprocrast for my throwaway..)
You can always email us for a noprocrast indulgence. :)
Oh wait, you're just using this as an opportunity to plug your own work... Move along then.
[1] http://kottke.org [2] http://stellar.io
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
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).
The only thing keeping Ripple alive is the fact that Bitstamp is a Ripple gateway.
"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
Mandatory connect to Facebook? No, thanks.
Also, anyone can create an account/wallet without even registering your email. FB auth is only for the giveaway.
Anyways, I just did the "Set up password recovery", and instead of getting 1.000 stellars it forces me again into FB.
People complain about the distribution of Bitcoin being imbalanced. This is 100x worse.
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/
I created a Stellar account but am in the minority of people who don't have a Facebook account and was a little disappointed.
(I think it's very important that whatever primitives you're building on have solid theoretical foundations, and I'm pretty excited to see the infrastructure improvements Stellar is going to introduce there.)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
https://github.com/stellar/stellard/tree/master/src
(I can create a FB-linked account today, and say an SMS-linked account tomorrow, and then merge the two).
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.
I don't have a facebook account so that's an automatic rejection for me :-/
I'll revisit this once they add some other alternatives.
For example I could offer an ebook coughshameless plugcough:
https://leanpub.com/ideas_are_a_dime_a_dozen
And then have people send me Stellars to user id '007' rather than pay through the website.
The book is free to download but you get the idea.
I also don't have a Facebook account but providing something of value is my strategy.
EDIT: got 1000 from 'miha'
mine is: joenorton
edit: just got 1k each from "joeboy" and "darrhiggs".
edit2: got 1k more from "brimtown".
damn this is like getting a gmail account.
edit: rcvd from '*' someone hook 'em up! Removed my name.
edit: fin.
Let's get a proper chain going on reddit: http://reddit.com/r/thestellar
Now, someone would give me 1000, I'll pay it back and the chain goes on :)
As it's clear you weren't quite sure how that worked, I'll pay yours back :)
My name: alec.heif
username: fela
edit: didn't get the 1000 bonus yet though, does that only work if I send exactly 1000?
edit 2: I got the bonus now. 34 times. I've 39000 STR total now :O
Username: JoshTriplett
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2100490/floating-point-in...
(which would be silly, so there must be another reason! :-)
> To prevent spam, each transaction burns 10 microstellars (that is, 0.00001 stellars).
They must have been transferring +1 Stellar to cover the transaction fee. An 5k balance looks better than 4999.
"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-foun...
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.
I guess, anybody that creates a new Facebook account now, because he wants to also get the Stellars will fall into the spam category.
tl;dr: Isn't it a legitimate interest, to get something that others get? Or is it just a giveaway for Facebook users? When so, would you please say so in the first place (, that your system is only for them). It does not foster my trust in this new system, when I am locked out, just because I am not inside some "special club" (I don't remember, that Facebook membership is now essential to interact in the internet -- .... I am at the verge to feel discriminated.).
I find it good, to have an alternate payment method to get out of the trap of traditional payment systems, that are dominated by a few big corporations .... and then, what happens, I have to bow to one even bigger monopolist. --> Does not foster my trust into a system that claims to be free and open.
A part of me was sorely tempted, out of annoyance, to simply acquire enough facebook accounts that would bypass your check just to point out how little value it has. I've long since quashed the urge but not everyone will.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8115272
Edit: They are calling the $3M a loan, so not sure if that is the full payment in stellars or not.