Bitcoin Forum

Hi!

Your market is broken. There are a multitude of accounts that have been locked up for several weeks going back into October. The Charts page has been inconsistent and delivering error messages or out of date information for the same period. You allegedly had your first con artist list an asset under the exact same name as the exchange "GLBSE" and managed to claim that this was a fake through proxies and only after shares in the asset were sold, and now many of those buyers are locked out of their accounts and unable to access the damage that your negligence is responding or protecting the market has permitted. The fact is that you sold them the right to list that asset by taking fees, you accepted the name that they assigned it, and you are responsible for it.

Despite 18 different attempts to communicate with "Nefario" and the other entities listed on the Contact page as being responsible for the project over the past 3.5 weeks, the only response I have received to date was a false statement by ColdHardMetal that Nefario would be resetting the bitcoind failure on the 14th of November. This has either never happened, or it was not the problem because anecdotal information indicates that the market is continuing to work for some users, and not for others.

I can understand that people relocate and travel. I can accept that developers get into car accidents and are laid up for a few days and not up to fixing things. I understand that people involved in bitcoin projects often have a multitude of other things going on in their lives, and don't place user issues as their highest priority. That does not excuse almost a month of keeping my account in a broken condition. It does not give license to manipulate values artificially by letting some players continue to use the market while locking others out of the process.

It seems unfathomable that a single developer is the only one involved in the project who hold the magic key to fix things, and somehow he cannot be contacted to take action, only to give out false assurances that things will get fixed "soon". I am positive that one of the other worthies involved in the project could be trusted with the passwords or secret codes to access the program and fix what needs fixing, to unlock what needs unlocking.

This type of unprofessional and potentially criminal negligence is exactly the wrong message that bitcoin needs.

At this point I must demand action be taken. I have been patient for long enough. While the value of my holding may not be massive, your fiduciary responsibility to those who entrust their value to you is very significant, and legally binding. I am holding Nefario, and all other entities listed as responsible for the project accountable for this failure.

I am available through any of my contact methods listed here or through the GLBSE registration or forum. I have also provided direct contact information in my many emails. If you need any information from me, I will provide it again, but I demand that my account be unlocked or repaired or dipped in honey and reborn or whatever else you need to do to restore full function to me as the account owner, in full, immediately.

In frustration, I remain

username: LoupGaroux

Did you keep a record of your glbse user id and backup your keys?

GLBSE means freedom.

Yes.

What is the issue you are having then?

My account is locked in an endless loop of trying to load my data. It accepts my ID and my keys and never manages to pull anything up.

interesting.. got a screenshot?  does your account show up in your account list after the keys have been imported?

Yes, I can get all the screenshots I need. My account shows up after it accepts my password, but does not load any details. I have tried refreshing,  reloading, clearing cache and reloading, hard re-boot and re-loading, re-importing my account and reloading, all to no avail.

@Matty? Could you please take your group of businesses, your peerless group of investors, and your message to another thread? I am grateful for the thoughts and help that are being offered, but your posts are really more in the nature of editorial content, and add nothing to solving my issue. Thanks for trying, but your message really didn't do a lot except put up a flare for your flame-buddy to come trolling over here too.

Just to make sure it is the system failing here and not something you are doing.  Please try making a new account, clearing you cache, re-importing that new account and see if it works as it should. 

Some shareholders of the GBLSE company are publicly known. Possibly you could convince one of them to introduce a motion to give you a refund or something like that.

Thanks for those suggestions, I really just want to get communication, as they have promised multiple times, and get access back into my account. Solutions have not been forthcoming from them, so I have asked publicly for them to contact me to work together to get me into my account.

Other users have been helpful and offered suggestions- thanks again teek, others have trolled my thread to hear themselves speak, but I still need to hear from Nefario, or some other big GLBSE cheese to help get me back in.

That's all- I just want to use their service as they have offered it. Please.

  I am not at all affiliated with GLBSE and unfortunatly cannot offer any answers. But I would like to ask a few questions, if I may, to help try and troubleshoot your issue until a more accurate correspondence is presented.

  What operating system are you running?
  What browser and version? If IE8 are you using the combatability view settings?
  Have you tried with other browsers? Namely Chrome or Firefox?

  Can't really think of much else until I know what has been tried. Sadly I have not yet worked with the GLBSE website so cannot go look myself to see how it is interacting with various web browsers. I look forward to your response and hope myself or someone can help you. Or that the best case happens soon and a representative assist you.


   Cheers,
     Derek

Win 7 Ultimate fully updated
Firefox 8.0 and 9.0 (failed on both)

This configuration worked flawlessly except when they had issues with deposit address generation about 6 weeks ago. Whatever the fix was then sorted it perfectly.

Thanks!

  Thanks for the info. Are you able to give it a try with Google Chrome?

Just tried Chrome- same thing... no love.

I did create a new account and am attempting to send some btc that way- it does open, shows a balance and will actually generate a deposit address, so my guess is that there is something wickedly locked up with my original account.

  :(

  Yea, sounds like it is account related. :/  I really do wish I could help there.

Really appreciate the try. Just a simple word back from them would be great, kick that little piggie in the butt and get it moving again...

  Very welcome.

  Yea, I hope they smooth it all out. I am in the process of working on something and will need to utilize their services heavily.

  I would like to see them find more ways to monetize the site. I think that would go a long way to making it more fruitful for them to get this stuff ironed out.

Are you having the same problem as this? https://glbse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=242

To summarize, the account keys seem to be in some kind of encrypted state and we have no idea how to decrypt them. Nefario did answer once, but unfortunately his solution didn't help and he dropped out of contact shortly after.

Is that what your account key export looks like?

this is a major problem, and I salute the OP for starting a public conversation.

GLBSE has no support at all which to put it simply: really sucks.

I lost my private key to one of my accounts do to hardware failure back in October and could not retrieve it. Of course this is a learning experience for me and because of it I now backup all my private keys on other medias.


There are several other users who are in the same boat as I am, Nefario stated that he could create another account and move my assets there if I could prove I was me, I can very easily prove I am me of course but since then Nefario has not responded.

I have made several email contacts with no luck.

I think it's the wrong attitude to take to say that if you lose your private keys you are stupid and deserve to lose your account, which is the feeling I have gotten of the course of this problem.

GLBSE needs a ticket system and needs someone who is going to respond to the tickets. I would gladly set up this ticket system and even host it if necessary, but I cannot offer support

Nefario I can completely relate if your time is valuable, I would be happy to even pay you a support fee to be able to get back into my account.

GLBSE needs support, and I really think if Nefario does not have the time to do this he needs to pull one of his trusted friends in that has the time to do this.

I will gladly donate my time and money if at all I can help get something in place and get all of us back into our accounts.


that is all. :)

@fizzizizt- my encrypted data doesn't appear to be the same format as yours- and when I opened a new account to test it did encrypt and decrypt the data correctly... until this morning when the second account went down with the same lock-up as the first

@cablepair- agreed. And I have to believe that somewhere in the system there is record of what was owned by that scrambled or even lost private key. I believe that there is a statement by Nefario that if you can accurately describe what should have been in the account, he can recover the account. That presumes, however, that Nefario is speaking. And thanks for your comments.

All I want, and I believe a lot of other users would want- is a system that works as advertised, and has some level of responsiveness when it doesn't work as advertised.

Actually, the asset that is listed as GLBSE on the exchange is alleged to be a scam. There was some discussion on their forum that they might take their shares public one day, and some investors thought that when GLBSE hit the market they had done so, but the story being circulated is that was not the case, it was supposedly a scammer.

Of course, I can't get into either one of my accounts now to see if this is true or not.

I do agree that having someone engaged, active and willing to capitalize the venture would be of enormous value.

Nefario himself has said that the current GLBSE is a fake one and that it's going to be removed, he hasn't removed it yet though

https://glbse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=239

+1 for thie entire thread. GLBSE is a great idea, but execution and support has sadly faltered in the last few weeks/months.

We need either a distributed GLBSE (possibly utilizing blockchain tech), or one with a serious organization behind it.

I'm having this same problem.  I can enter my account, but it just says "loading..." and never loads.

GLBSE seem to be down and has been so for the last at least 18 hours according to when I last tried to log in and not getting any information back.

But it seems LoupGaroux got it to work by creating a new account and importing his data?

  GLBSE, where are youuuuu?   :D

  There are many among the community, myself included that are more than willing to pay more for your services if that would help you to resolve any current issues.

  If I may, I'd like to offer up a very unorthodoxed solution to the current fradulent asset under the assumed name GLBSE.  I think you should assume control of the asset and keep it, in as far as the name is concerned. Of course, we'd expect you to offer any one that bought into it the chance to sell back their shares. But, I trust that those that did buy those shares did so because they want to invest in GLBSE. I want to invest in GLBSE. I want to see it grow and there is a definite need for its services and lots of potential to add even more traditional IPO/Stock functions.

  Monetization Idea;

  One way I see for GLBSE to better monitize from the existing platform would be to modify the cost of creating assets. The .5 BTC fee for new asset seems fine but I don't see why GLBSE should not have a share based fee as well. This could work in one of two ways.
 
      A. When an asset is created, charge a fee based on total value of shares created. I.E., a % of the total BTC value of all shares. Something small like .5%, 1% or 2%. Maybe base that fee on certain risk
           factors of the asset creator. Besides extra revenue this model will also reduce the creation of junk assets...
  
       B. Request that the asset creator either assign a % of the total share creation or set just an obligation to GLBSE for that % of shares. The earlier would earn GLBSE dividends from those shares and the
           later would give GLBSE the option to own or sell the value of the shares. GLBSE could offer both of these as choices and charge a lower % of shares for the assigned option than the ownership one. I.E.,
           Someone creates an asset of 10,000 shares and GLBSE would either receive .5% (50 shares) assigned or 1% and GLBSE would receive 100 shares transfered in a manner that did not assign them for
           dividend dispersements.  GLBSE would also not offer the assignment option for assets that did not have a dividend baring assignment, due to being a bond or other asset type.

  I am sure there are many other fair methods of monetization that your potential client base can support. Unfortunatly it is not an area that I am an expert in so you may not find my ideas laudible but I am just very interested in seeing GLBSE be sucessful. As I feel it is a very vital aspect of the community going forward.


   Cheers,
     Derek

+1.  When an exchange has a known fake/scammer ticker w/ same name as the exchange and promises to remove it are not fulfilled even after months the exchange is nearly worthless.

We have seen this time and time again w/ Bitcoin type businesses.
Stage 1: Someone comes up with an idea
Stage 2: Someone tries to implement it but screws it up badly.  The site/project is just an embarrassment to the community but it is the only one which exists.
Stage 3: Someone else implements the idea properly with polished execution.

I am sure the stage 3 for the Bitcoin stock exchange will come along soon enough.

In regards to #3, care join up and do just that? Nerfario and his GLBSE has cost my company and its investors alot of money as a result of the issues within its programing. I would create an exchange at this point just to have an second option.
PS. NEFARIO! ANSEWER YOUR F*ING MESSAGES. LAST WARNING

I'm a web developer, and interested in assisting with building an open-source web exchange similar to GLBSE.  A block-chain based exchange would be cool, but I would be less able to assist with it.  Could we somehow use the personal namespace of namecoin?  Should we start another thread to discuss this?

EDIT: Looks like someone beat me to it. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=52494.0

I don't think Nefario frequents this forum much these days so he may not be aware of this thread. His profile on here says he's gone to https://bitcoin.org.uk/forums/ (https://bitcoin.org.uk/forums/)

Also looks like could be moving out of China and back to Europe at the moment.

https://bitcoin.org.uk/forums/index.php?app=ccs&module=articles&section=promote&post=2193 (https://bitcoin.org.uk/forums/index.php?app=ccs&module=articles&section=promote&post=2193)

On Behalf of BTCWebHost.com I will be happy to offer free hosting for this project, if someone actually does this.

Nope, my second account died the same death this morning. I am now locked out of two accounts and counting.

Have you guys seen the following posts yet? Seems like you can recover your accounts now if they’re locked.

https://glbse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=252&p=842#p842

https://glbse.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=254&p=844#p844

Yay, thanks for letting us know! Very glad to hear that Nefario is back in action again.

Happy to report I have gotten a communication from Doc Nefario as well, and the fix is begun.

Hello everyone, I'm back, back in the west and back to my old self again.

It's pretty late right now and I'll be up in a few hours, I'm heading to Manchester today which is where I'll be from now on(well I'll be back in Ireland for Christmas and the new year). Please forgive spelling mistakes or any lack of clarity.

In regards to my "lack of presence" these last few months the best I was capable of was to keep GLBSE just about running, and even at times I'd not managed that too well. But it's the best I could do, I'm not going to go into details as it's personal. But that doesn't matter. I'm sorry for not doing better.

Now onto GLBSE.

Communication: I'll try to be as in touch as possible, including frequenting this forum, irc, and any other communication channel I can.

I believe GLBSE to be something of a slight failure, but one that is not unsalvageable.

In my attempt to provide a web application that was as secure as possible (mission achieved, no breakins) I have learned some hard lessons.

Sometimes security is not the most important, the public/private key methods of authentication are very secure, but very difficult to use. It put all the responsibility to look after those keys on the user, which has proven to be something of a mistake. Bruce Schneier has said that key management is the real barrier to mass adoption of cryptography and he's right, it's really hard. And that's what that issue was, key management.

After choosing this authentication method I had to improve usability (who still uses the command line client? How much easier is the web based one?). But I'm not a Javascript expert, I can play a little but building something this complicated (cryptography in JavaScript) was well above my level of ability(we had to implement some of the most basic cryptographic building blocks to get this working). So I managed to find an excellent developer in the states, paid him very well, and he built the web interface that you now know.

Then he stopped, was no longer interested in getting paid it seemed and stopped developing, eventually stopped answering me. I tried but failed to find an alternative developer. As a result client side development on GLBSE came to a standstill. It was during this time that I tried to go to the states(you all know the result of that). Not long after returning my personal issues got in the way.

I was the lead dev on this project, and I brought development in a direction that I could not personally do, relying on another developer that was hard to replace, and eventually let me down. Essentially I lead this project down an evolutionary dead-end.

The next big mistake was to have EVERYTHING as anonymous, normal users fine but even having people who issue shares be anonymous has turned out to be a recipe for disaster. There were a number of reasons for this choice though. First was privacy, which I believed everyone should have, and still do(with exceptions, I'll get to that later). The second was simply logistical, we were trying to run a market, not spend our time verifying whether someone is who they say they are.

The combination of the new authentication method (which has proven secure but hard to use) and total; pure anonymity, combined with bad timing for events in my personal life was GLBSE's downfall.

With regards the fraudulent GLBSE listing, I'll find out just what was lost and attempt to re-imburse investors who had bought shares with my own funds (it really depends on how much, I'm pretty skint/poor at the moment).


The future of GLBSE

Does GLBSE have a future? The sad answer to that questions is no, certainly not in it's current form, and not in this direction of development. So it's here that I'm going to outline where we're going.

I'm not sure whether to drop webkeys and the whole public/private key authentication system entirely or just build a normal web-based front end onto it (what do you think? opinions below). I don't want to throw away something that others have built on.

Whatever  the choice we will have:
A traditional web based interface with full market functionality
Normal username/password + traditional account recovery methods for authentication
Simple json over https web service for people using the market
Privately developed charts specifically developed for GLBSE
Streaming quotes over websockets

Identity authentication for anyone who wants to list (i.e. they'll need to prove they are who they say they are), I understand that the bitcoin police are already working/finished this, if not then I'll ensure it's developed.

I will be GLBSE's first full time employee.

In terms of funding GLBSE has at it's disposal over 1000BTC, which is OK but not much for a startup. But from reading many of the posts on here it seems that many many others want to, not so much invest but want to be a part of this and make it something great.

I will push to make GLBSE (as ticker symbol BG, I'll take back the symbol GLBSE from the fraudsters)  a publicly held share on the market, so that everyone can own it, invest in it, profit from it, and have a say over it. This will take a little time.

I also need help:
Developers (Ruby)
Marketing, Design
Support, Documentation
Servers/Bandwidth
Funding

With the exception of ColdHardMetal who's been doing a great job on accounts I've been doing all the above. This is not charity, I won't ask for help for nothing, you'll get a share in the company so that your success is tied up with it's success.

Hi Nefario, glad to see you rise from the dead ... I hope your personal situation/problems are over, and was sorry to hear about them.

As I see it, GLBSE has a few issues right now:

1. Lack of support, and single point of failure. You, being the sole owner and the only one able to support GLBSE, is simply not good enough for a business that aims to be "the global stock exchange".
2. Stagnation of development, both in terms of website/usability, and in terms of "project development" - bringing actual legitimate investments into GLBSE.
3. You are still trying to run GLBSE anonymously. It's a barrier for GLBSE to become really huge, because if at any point it is huge, you can take a lot of money and run away with it.
4. If there can be a decentralized stock exchange, there should be one ... it's a matter of time. Take a look at this initial proposal by Meni Rosenfeld (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/q/2042/78).

These issues can be resolved. I think that if you want to push GLBSE, in addition to taking investor funds, you really need to find a good co-founder. There shouldn't be a single point of failure in such a business, and another mind to bash ideas against is a must have for a successful business. For the issues above:

1. Once you have more people that are aligned with your vision (and later ... are on your payroll), this shouldn't be a problem.
2. If you suddenly had 10,000 or 50,000 BTC, I believe you would be able to fund development, and make a real effort to attract business by various means. I suggest as a co-founder you get a non-technical type, but rather a business type, that can make the necessary connection and close deals, to attract real world business to raise money via GLBSE.
3. I believe you should really consider coming forth with a real proof of identity for yourself, and other people heavily involved with GLBSE such as the above co-founder. Credability is what's sorely missing in a lot of Bitcoin business these days. While I get and support the right to remain anonymous, it's hard to except people to trust an anonymous online identity to manage a lot of money.
4. You can develop a backend for GLBSE that will be completely decentralized and open source. Being the market leader, or actually sole player, you have a huge lead. If you publish a real P2P backend for trading stocks, with GLBSE as its frontend, you could score major points and trust, even while remaining anonymous.

One more point - I believe people who submit assets should not be required to identify, but rather all those who identify properly will be presented as "verified assets". Market forces will dictate whether the unverified assets vanish completely, or will remain a marginal portion of the market.

Good luck, and good health!

Hey Ripper,
On the issue of me being anonymous, I'm not. If you check the people page of GLBSE.com my real names there( hint it starts with J, and ends with ames McCarthy). Later this month I'll be heading to Birmingham to meet up with Vladimir (runs bitcoin.org.uk) and he'll be able to identify me to the community. It's been out there for some time. Besides I think I've managed not to run off up to this point so far  :D

On GLBSE development it had stalled for two reasons:
1) My own personal issues
2) My main developer was gone and I couldn't push it forward using the current methods(JavaScript development)

So, personal issues are now aside and once I've taken care of the main support issues (locked accounts and constant downtime) I'll start bringing it forward once again but in a different development direction.

I'll ensure that support is not going to be a problem again. I've already taken care of a good few ones (including the OP's issues).

I'll take a co-founder if I can find one. I'll also start bringing more funding onboard to make things happen.

Nefario.

 

Hmm, for some reason I was under the impression you were annonymous. That's great to hear.
You might want to strengthen that with a public photo ID ... you know, similar to what I believe you're planning to request issue holders. Not saying it's mandatory or anything, but just that writing a name on a website doesn't prove anything.


Great - just make sure there's someone you trust that can at least answer some support calls if needed.


I think this should be your #2 priority (#1 being resolving current support issues / downtimes) - it makes all the difference in the world. From what I've seen so far, I think there are a lot of people in the community and outside of it that would strongly consider it, if you made an effort to reach out for them. Finding a co-founder for GLBSE should not be a hard problem. A public blog post about it would be a a great kickstart.

I'm also interested in hearing your thoughts about re-architecturing GLBSE around a new decentralized stock exchange backend. GLBSE could provide the nice UI and verification services, while the stocks and Bitcoin themselves are not controlled by GLBSE.

I hope all my advice are not taken as condescending - I would really like to see GLBSE take off.

All the best,
ripper234 AKA Ron Gross

Exactly and it is entirely possible completely opaque deals will exist. For example I could create a contract, provide no details, and issue 100 very opaque shares.  Now the public market value of these shares will be essentially nil but based on outside private information it could have robust anonymous trade.

Those who want to benefit from public market pressure will likely need to provide verification of identity, company registration, and assets in order to bolster the price.  Those who don't need those benefits and simply wish to leverage the GLBSE infrastructure to handle private dealings can do so also by submitting opaque unverified contracts.

I will provide a way to include user verification with share listings, it will be made optional but clearly labelled as missing verification.

A good number of the locked accounts support issues have now been taken care of. There are a couple still outstanding.

For some reason I can't reply to that topic.

I don't think that shares should be editable after they're issued. It is a contract that you cannot change ... otherwise, it would be worthless.
If you want to change the contract, you should issue a new share, and convince people to switch old shares for new shares, until only you own all shares.

I don't like this. What if 60% of the asset holders agree to change the contract in a way that makes the holdings of the other 40% meaningless?
When I buy a single piece of an asset, it should be invariant and immutable, regardless of what anybody else wants to change about it in the future.

Contracts that require certain policy changes (e.g. portfolio policy) should manage this particular aspect by votes, but the changes should not be done over the contract, but in other 3rd party place.

Whoa! This is a contract and an agreement between the Fund and the asset owners. Discussions on a forum, or notices on outside websites, unless specifically referenced in the contract do not affect that contract. SLV and the operating entity need to address the question of selling something completely different than the the contract that represented the item offered for sale on the GLBSE. I purchased shares based on the contract description on the GLBSE, at that point going forward the entire body of the agreement was that contract, not a discussion thread here or elsewhere.

If Nefario is willing to change a contract, that change should only be considered after a majority vote of the owners of the Fund. I can categorically state that my 5% ownership of the shares of the Fund will not support a vague liquidation based on a conversion of the asset that was not permitted under the terms of the asset contract. I expect my shares to be backed by physical silver, as stated in the contract, or with prudent re-investment in the Fund, with full distribution of the profits of liquidating the physical silver as described in the contract. Those are the only two things permitted by the contract that I purchased shares of.

I am communication privately with him, to minimize the amount of public debate. He seems to be taking a reasoned approach, and I am prepared to give it some time to see what happens.

Here we come to the problem of the architecture of GLBSE along with the timing of my absence. Contracts never could be changed,  I had intended to add that functionality and told senbonzakura this WAS going to be the case. Of course I went missing at that time.

So anyway, the new version of GLBSE will not include any of the encryption tools and techniques of the old one, simply put it's going to be a stock exchange with ease of use being the number one priority, with the second being security.

So a way to settle this contract changing business is to state what percentage of a vote(or shareholders) is required to change the terms of the contract. This then becomes a part of the contract terms so that buyers can know before buying that a contracts terms can be changed (to something they don't like) if it states so.

With the exception of 100% approval being required for a change this is always going to be the case.

The current version of GLBSE is incredibly inflexible, and I'm racing to get it replaced.

Nefario.
 

The encryption tools / techniques are awesome man.  Don't throw away your idea because some people don't understand.  Maybe a hybrid of the two ideas, but don't go completely fluffy.  I saw the fake GLBSE stock checked BG, your public key, anything I could find, and was like nope this is not nefario/glbse/BG.  That is a huge benefit to the systems architecture.  It also allows organizations that may not be able to publicly disclose exactly who they are to trade on the platform with trust.  I think that is extremely valuable. 

+1. Of course, the general aspect and usability of the web interface could be (much) improved, but the system is very good as it is.

I agree.  There's not a huge need to change the current in-browser encryption, just fix the interface.  

For example, have users set up a normal server-side website account with username and password.  When I'm in this account, I can see all my "trading accounts", which hold my assets.  These trading accounts are stored encrypted server-side. If a good passphrase is used, they are useless to someone breaking in.  When I want to use one of the trading accounts, I enter my passphrase and the account is decrypted client side, and I can use it, much like I currently can.

Then fix all the other UI stuff like making it easy to list and search all assets, see history and charts for them, etc.

A couple features I'd love to see:

-- a transaction history of my BTC balance including all deposits, withdrawals, purchases, sales, and received dividend payments.
-- a received dividends history for each of my assets (and an aggregate)

I did the same. It annoys me that users who did not do their DD (even just checking the signature on the contract) and bought the fake asset have now been rewarded for their foolishness with partial ownership of GLBSE, which is not otherwise publicly available.

Yeah..  I didn't like that part very much either..

I want to say that I think GLBSE is awesome. I think the security techniques used are innovative and smart (although I don't know much about security). Ease of use is definitely lacking, but I feel like that could be vastly improved just by better documentation.

That said, I think it makes sense to give people the option to forgo those security measures and leave their account information in the hands of the website, protected only by a username and password. I agree with the other suggestions that a hybrid of the two would be ideal.

As long as we're telling Nefario what we'd like for Christmas, here's my wishlist: :)

• Some way to communicate with shareholders. Even a simple one way messaging system (operator to shareholders) would be a huge improvement. A two way system, or a message board visible only to those that own shares would be even better, I think.
• Some way for the operator to identify the shareholders. The idea of asking a shareholder to put up a sell order with a specific price is clever, but a more straightforward method would be nice. Perhaps a listing of the account public keys and number of shares held by each. Shareholders could then prove who they are using their private key or something (again, I'm no security expert).
• Along the same lines, a way for operators to know who their shareholders are and how many shares they currently hold even if GLBSE is down. I imagine this could be done with a public transaction log like the block chain, and offsite public backups of that log. If GLBSE completely disappeared one day, I could at least know who is owed what and settle up with the shareholders outside of GLBSE.

Thank you for the suggestions and interest. It's clear that there is still demand for the crypto side of things.

So I'll keep the current system available as is while bringing out the new one, with the goal of having a hybrid system.

Sadly I wont be able to continue development of the in-browser client (the current web client) as it's beyond my Javascript ability, and I've not been able to find someone else who can move it along. So I'm going to have to either find someone else to do so or find a way around it.

The techniques used ARE secure as far as the cryptographic tools being used themselves are. But usability is terrible and development is considerably more difficult than a more classical system.

Also under the current system, when I'm paying attention a lot of my time is taken up with support for quite basic issues. I don't know how many people have gone and locked themselves out of their accounts (lots is the correct answer) but it's prone to mucking up across a number of steps. Often users don't even know their account numbers so I spend hours trying to get bits of information from them to use to identify their accounts.

So my focus is on a very easy to use system, this will take care of the non-crypto experts. Following that when I've covered basic needs and GLBSE is able to operate without me having to watch over EVERYTHING then I'll start on the crypto side.

I will certainly attempt to improve a whole host of elements and aspects including share issuer/ holder communication.

With regards to people being rewarded for buying fake shares of GLBSE, that is partially my own fault as I had not reserved the ticker symbol, it was a social engineering attack that worked. At the end of the day it's social engineering that is the easiest and often (not always) most effective form of attack which can bypass the best crypto.

Please bear in mind that roughly only 20btc worth of shares had been sold, and that GLBSE will be made available to the public early in the new year.

The problem was that a ratings agency was supposed to spring up, and do all the checking on new assets on the exchange but that never materialised, there was a blog that did reviews but I don't know how popular that became. It's probably because GLBSE hasn't hit critical mass because it's difficult to use.

Glad to see you are back and working :)

If you setup a good enough API, you won't even need to worry about the frontend; anyone would be able to write it.  If you build a restful API that returns JSON, it wouldn't be too hard for any third party to write their own clients.

I have been working on my own namecoin project, but I think GLBSE is more important.  I would be willing to work on a front-end.  I prefer python or PHP, but I have recently started playing with backbone.js.  I just recently found http://brunch.io/.  In a version or two, I think it would be perfect for a javascript client.

In fact, a couple days ago I was looking at how you were doing auth and started to implement a very similar system in a brunch site.

Looks like a lot of progress has been made.

Congrats.

This thread makes me sad now...