Bitcoin was made for a purpose: to upheave the outdated fincancial systems and governments holding us down. There has been a recent rise in “Altcoins,” some of which build on Bitcoin, and others which only serve as a birthing ground for scams, pumpers, and shady developers. Some of the innovative altcoins have created systems that improve on Bitcoin at the protocol level and enrich the community, rather than the developer.
Today, I had a no-so-pleasent experience with Vior, a coin which had what is called an “ICO,” or initial coin offering. 95% of ICO coins turn out to be scams, with an occasional rarity, and it annoys me to see coins claiming innovation, while not improving on the systems distributed technologies serve to build on. Vior is a prime example of this. Vior has implemented Voip calling from it’s wallet, and is certainly not the first (or last) coin to do this. You may consider this innovation, but it’s barely a millimeter closer to the goal that cryptocurrency aims to achieve. Vior’s systems are centralized and run through a central server, which is bad for a number of reasons:
Trustlessness: Cryptocurrency is founded on the notion that the only trust we should have to put into it is trust in mathematics and the code that powers the coin. Coins that use a centralized server, such as Vior and Stellar fail to achieve a functioning model, as they rely on the end user to trust the server. Despite claiming that this server is secure, they provide no evidence that it isn’t owned by any of the 3-letter agencies out there, or owned by a snoop looking into private calls. The fact that you have to trust a faceless person on the internet to protect your information, thoughts, and private life destroy any notion of privacy and usefullness of these systems.
Advantage over existing systems: You may say, this centralization is better than nothing, however it only lures in users with a false sense a security, away from actual skype and voip alternatives that protect you privacy in a publically verifiable way, eliminating the need for trust in the system. An example of these systems is Tox, a revolutionary free distributed, p2p, voice and video call system, which will soon integrate bitcoin payments. The ICO money that went to Vior and goes to scamcoins all day rarely serve to even improve on existing systems.
For these reasons, I believe that centralization is not only bad, it’s toxic to the digital currency ecosystem. I invite Viorcoin’s developer to a public debate on this.
Questions/Comments? Email me at
whit@whitjack.me
