A New Competitor for Bitcoin

[cafucafucafu]

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536641/a-new-competitor-for-bitcoin-aims-to-be-faster-and-safer/

[crazyivan]

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536641/a-new-competitor-for-bitcoin-aims-to-be-faster-and-safer/

Not even close. One of the biggest BTC strengths is its community. It would take years for something like to gain attention. By that time, crypto s gonna be really big and BTC s gonna be the king or there will be no crypto.

[RodeoX]

Where is the source code? And it is unclear if this is a distributed network. If it's proprietary software then I can't be bothered with somebody's facebook credits. 

[pedrog]

Are there any reviews of this proposal?

[gentlemand]

It's being adopted by Stellar so I assume the idea runs along similar lines to Ripple and themselves already, but hopefully it would be improved to avoid those forktastic moments.

Not much to see here, just the weekly Bitcoin killer.

[NyeFe]

Where is the source code? And it is unclear if this is a distributed network. If it's proprietary software then I can't be bothered with somebody's facebook credits.  

The only difference, is that it doesn't require miners. They used a whole page to tell me that they've built a software which is better than Bitcoin, in terms of security, faster  at confirmations because it doesn't require miners [...]

 HowItWorks

The new SCP system also relies on people running software that communicates over the Internet, but trust is not enforced through mining. Instead, each person running the software must identify a few other trusted participants to correctly apply the cryptographic rules used to validate transactions. Each instance of the software will recognize transactions only once a certain majority fraction of its trusted partners have also signed off. And the trust relationships are all public.

Mazières says the math shows that those rules will allow his system to reliably verify transactions much more quickly and with less energy.

[RodeoX]

Where is the source code? And it is unclear if this is a distributed network. If it's proprietary software then I can't be bothered with somebody's facebook credits.  

The only difference, is that it doesn't require miners. They used a whole page to tell me that they've built a software which is better than Bitcoin, in terms of security, faster  at confirmations because it doesn't require miners [...]

 HowItWorks

The new SCP system also relies on people running software that communicates over the Internet, but trust is not enforced through mining. Instead, each person running the software must identify a few other trusted participants to correctly apply the cryptographic rules used to validate transactions. Each instance of the software will recognize transactions only once a certain majority fraction of its trusted partners have also signed off. And the trust relationships are all public.

Mazières says the math shows that those rules will allow his system to reliably verify transactions much more quickly and with less energy.

Ah, thanks for the find. Well it is nothing like bitcoin then. I assume the issuer controls the supply, the price, and decides who should receive the coins. In that case the good professor has just reinvented the frequent flier mile.

[AgentofCoin]

This is a bizarre concept and will not threaten Bitcoin.
This is basically a blockchain for banks to use between themselves (through trusted networks).

EDIT:
Bitcoin is special because we don't need to trust or have trusted networks.
The banks already have this, they are just incorporating the blockchain concept I guess.

[redsn0w]

OP, I suggest you to change the title to the thread (it is a little misleading) because there it not any valid competitor to bitcoin at the moment. Stellar is only an altcoin, how can you compare it with bitcoin ?

Where is the source code? And it is unclear if this is a distributed network. If it's proprietary software then I can't be bothered with somebody's facebook credits.  

I think if the code will not be open source no one will trust this "new bitcoin competitor"  . One of the reason of why bitcoin has a big success is because it is 100% open source.


Ps: I think that you know that thing better than me.

[NyeFe]

This is a bizarre concept and will not threaten Bitcoin.
This is basically a blockchain for banks to use between themselves.

 You couldn't have been much more accurate

Stellar’s backers include the payments company Stripe

[juju]

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536641/a-new-competitor-for-bitcoin-aims-to-be-faster-and-safer/

This is what they are talking about: https://www.stellar.org/galaxy/

From the White paper - https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf

Professor Mazières’s contribution to this publication was as a paid consultant, and was not part of his Stanford University duties or responsibilities.

[redsn0w]

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536641/a-new-competitor-for-bitcoin-aims-to-be-faster-and-safer/

This is what they are talking about: https://www.stellar.org/galaxy/

The article says:

"Mazières’s new cryptocurrency protocol, called SCP, is being adopted by a nonprofit called Stellar to replace a Bitcoin-inspired system meant to make financial services cheaper and more widely accessible in the developing world (see “Bitcoin-Inspired Digital Currency to Power Mobile Savings App”)."

How can they think to replace bitcoin? I think they are only joking.

[juju]

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536641/a-new-competitor-for-bitcoin-aims-to-be-faster-and-safer/

This is what they are talking about: https://www.stellar.org/galaxy/

The article says:

"Mazières’s new cryptocurrency protocol, called SCP, is being adopted by a nonprofit called Stellar to replace a Bitcoin-inspired system meant to make financial services cheaper and more widely accessible in the developing world (see “Bitcoin-Inspired Digital Currency to Power Mobile Savings App”)."

How can they think to replace bitcoin? I think they are only joking.

SCP = Stellar Consensus Protocol

Stellar team paid Mazières’s as a consultant for his contributions to the project.

Edit: Spelling

[medUSA]

A Stanford professor claims to have invented a Bitcoin-like system that can handle payments faster and with more security.

Last year Stellar’s system unexpectedly “forked” into two networks that disagreed on which transactions were valid, and several hours’ worth of transactions got rolled back. Mazières says his new system avoids the part of the design that caused that problem.

A Stanford professor coded an alt and increased the block rate. What a genius!  

There is nothing special about the news. Alts are invented here everyday, his ideas have been thought of before. He is employed by Stellar to fix their system, no big deal. Not a competitor to bitcoin at all.

[Hazir]

A Stanford professor claims to have invented a Bitcoin-like system that can handle payments faster and with more security.

Last year Stellar’s system unexpectedly “forked” into two networks that disagreed on which transactions were valid, and several hours’ worth of transactions got rolled back. Mazières says his new system avoids the part of the design that caused that problem.

A Stanford professor coded an alt and increased the block rate. What a genius!  

There is nothing special about the news. Alts are invented here everyday, his ideas have been thought of before. He is employed by Stellar to fix their system, no big deal. Not a competitor to bitcoin at all.

Unfortunately you are right. We had dozen of these so called 'Bitcoin Killers' already. It is quite sad for me when I see that people are wasting their effort on creating something that probably will be discarded anyway, and have little chance to be successful. They should instead just focus of improving the obvious winner - Bitcoin.

[patmast3r]

My problem with it is that humans need to trust other humans in a manual manner (If I understood correctly).
That's just not as elegant as other consensus mechanisms where the protocoll does that for you.
Same problem with DPOS where people have to vote for delegates.

If you want fast adoption then everything needs to be as easy as possible. You can't bother avg people with voting or "trusting". They wanna use the system and that's it. The security should "just happen".

[waterpile]

I don't believe that this will be a competitor unless if  they find a way not to rely in bitcoin to have a price/value but if not then its just a dream.

[tokeweed]

That article is over-reaching.

[sniveling]

My problem with it is that humans need to trust other humans in a manual manner (If I understood correctly).
That's just not as elegant as other consensus mechanisms where the protocoll does that for you.
Same problem with DPOS where people have to vote for delegates.

If you want fast adoption then everything needs to be as easy as possible. You can't bother avg people with voting or "trusting". They wanna use the system and that's it. The security should "just happen".

I don't trust Stellar at all because they promised a big giveaway to all Bitcoin and Ripple holders and never delivered on it. They said they had taken snapshots of the Bitcoin and Ripple blockchains in a specified date and intended to give away big amounts of coins to people with funds in the snapshotted addresses.

I'm not voting or "trusting" who to trust when I don't trust Stellar itself.

[tyz]

"SCP can only guarantee safety when nodes choose adequate quorum slices."
If I got this mechanism right, it is too costly for normal users being a part of the network. They don't want trusting or voting in any case. It seems it is a proposal from a nerd to nerds but nothing for wider adoption.