Sill bullish on eCash? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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1570 sats \ 27 comments \ @nullcount 27 Apr 2024 bitcoin

For those who are still bullish on this model of achieving scale and privacy using centralization and third-party custody, why are you still bullish?

Especially now, when even the centralized noncustodial services are beginning to bend the knee or are forced to shutdown.

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1091 sats \ 2 replies \ @_vnprc 27 Apr 2024

Ecash mints are useful for their privacy properties and the fact that they don't require a consensus change. They will still need to use geographical arbitrage or network privacy techniques such as tor to remain operational in the face of state sponsored attacks. This is still an easier path than achieving consensus on a soft fork. My ecash bullishness remains unperturbed.

One of the frustrating aspects of discussing these options is the constant attempts to play different solutions off of each other. We don't need to focus on a single solution. We can try all solutions at once. Please stop implying that all scaling solutions are rival. They are nonrival.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount OP 27 Apr 2024

don't require a consensus change

This is why I'm bullish. eCash is actually happening right now.

Let's hurry up and build (or rule out) every non-consensus solution. Then, after building them all, let's also consider changing consensus.

We can try all solutions at once

Agree its possible. But there are tremendous advantages to having focus. Time is scarce and so are the number of people with skills, resources and desire to build.

Builders are free to try a dozen things that are centralized and learn one-by-one (the hard and long way) why Bitcoin has to remove central issuers and custodians to continue to operate outside state control.

13 sats \ 0 replies \ @TwoLargePizzas 28 Apr 2024

As an individual having focus on one thing is great but having everyone in a group focused on the same thing can be detrimental. Too many cooks in the kitchen.

Besides, even if we wanted to get everyone focused on the same thing it's almost impossible to do practically. Ironically, this desire would lead to centralization, the very thing we set out to avoid.

People's desire to build comes from their different views and beliefs about the best way forward. Like it or not it's going to happen that way regardless. That's healthy in a free market of ideas.

171 sats \ 7 replies \ @TheBTCManual 27 Apr 2024

It's going to be interesting to see how this custody model develops, will mints limit the amount you can hold under a certain amount to limit their exposure to customer funds and make it unattractive to use as a mixing service?

Will users know they can hold funds across multiple mints?
How will mints protect themselves by rules in certain jurisdictions?

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount OP 27 Apr 2024

Maybe the mints/tokens become abstracted away from end users.

Just like how your Tor browser selects a handful of relays to route with, maybe a fedimint enabled wallet will auto-select a handful of mints to distribute user balances.

Instead of earning "yield" like a traditional savings account, you pay a "tax" whenever one of the mints that held some of your balance rugs or is shutdown.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @om 27 Apr 2024

This is already in development for Cashu. The user of several Cashu mints can make a Lightning payment cashing in tokens from multiple mints, and the receiver doesn't have to know.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @BlokchainB 27 Apr 2024

What I fear is mints coming huge bucket shops for scams and ruggings

50 sats \ 3 replies \ @TheBTCManual 28 Apr 2024

I can see that happening, sadly people will trust con-artists and not much we can do about it, its up to the individual to pick the mints they use, but at least you can have multiple mints and distribute your rugging potential

Maybe wallets can have UIs with reputation scores, but this can always be bought off or manipulated
Maybe wallets can have metrics like amount in the mint, number of users, mints an redemptions, but this can also be manipulated
Maybe wallets can warn you, you're overweight a mint and to migrate funds

I think there will be losses though regardless, scammers will always find a way

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @BlokchainB 28 Apr 2024

Yeah this is the counter argument bitcoiners fail to recognize. I wonder how many complaints the FBI and FINCEN get from normies getting scammed.

I think it would be amazing if trusted institutions would set up mints like coinbase cash app Robinhood River and strike. Trust is somewhat already established and they already meet some sort of compliance. Then people can have privacy with their balances and have a minimal risk of being rugged. And if they do get rugged we have someone to go after.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @TheBTCManual 28 Apr 2024

How would that work?

I don't think it helps to have eCash mints since you're already KYC'd so what's the difference from the current infrastructure? You could just log requests and link it to the account anyway so what privacy benefit would there be?

Maybe apps could have support for 3rd party mints, but I doubt that's going to fly with regulators

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 28 Apr 2024

It does help because the mint doesn’t know your balance. Vastly increasing your financial privacy.

I think that is the major value proposition even with KYC services. You still get some level of privacy with a trusted/legacy financial institution. Of course in the current political climate this would never pass (FISMA 2.0 just got broad support) but if the political climate changed then something like this can be a compromise.

169 sats \ 2 replies \ @0xIlmari 27 Apr 2024

It's easy to chase and shutdown a couple big names like ACINQ or BlockStream.

But imagine:

every family has their own mint, run by the local Uncle Jim
every town/district/housing community has its own mint
every single pub/library/hotel/hospital has its own mint
everyone belongs to a dozen of mints (related to their residence and services they use)
it's painless to move funds between them transparently

How do you shut this down?

37 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount OP 27 Apr 2024

Still waiting for everyone to run their own website and email server.

But most people/families/orgs/businesses are satisfied with their Facebook page and use one of the handful of email providers that can actually get mail delivered without going straight to the spam folder.

Only the medium-large actors have a website. And by virtue of being large, their website must comply with all applicable regulations.

But I'm sure hosting something as high-stakes as people's savings will be easier /s

But I agree, this is probably the most bullish/realistic take so far.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @0xIlmari 28 Apr 2024

Running your own website and email server is "trivial" *.

sudo apt-get install sendmail apache2

Indeed, in the last century, a lot of people were doing that. Why are email addresses the way they are? It's because user@example.com really identifies the user account user on a machine identified as example.com.

If your computer had port 25 internet-accessible and was hosted under the domain mycomputer.com then after installing sendmail you would be able to receive mail at nullcount@mycomputer.com, delivered straight to /home/nullcount/mbox file.

And a website? Just dump your files into /var/www and Apache will do the rest.

I'd say that's significantly easier than setting up a Bitcoin+LN stack.

*) So what happened that we don't do it anymore? Well, Internet kinda exploded in popularity, and with it came malicious actors. Spam is now a thing, and competition can denial-of-service your piddly webserver with ease, potentially taking you out of business.

So we recognized the effects of scale and started centralizing hosting of email with dedicated service providers who can handle the spam volume, develop better filters, and hire people to keep the lights on. We moved websites to CDNs which give us virtually limitless bandwidth and (D)DoS protection.

But Bitcoin is different. There are no benefits from centralizing. In fact, the opposite is true - the network is more secure with more nodes being run, so it is in every user's best interest to run their own node(s).

Unlike spam and denial-of-service which have almost zero cost, attacking Bitcoin carries a very high cost, thanks to proof-of-work.

Lightning and eCash mints are a slightly different animals, in that there needs to be some expertise involved in running it, and it's almost a business-like venture to do so.

But there are, or will be, more-or-less turn-key solutions like Umbrel, or my own Sov-Stack. There will be fewer Lightning nodes than Bitcoin nodes, and even fewer mints, but I don't see that as a problem.

61 sats \ 0 replies \ @TNStacker 27 Apr 2024

because this isn't all about the U.S. nor West. Have the use cases for Fediments and eCash, LN or BTC changed? I'd say the argument for has been reaffirmed.

63 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 27 Apr 2024

Only some, not all are bending. The weak have to be weeded out.

20 sats \ 10 replies \ @rtr 27 Apr 2024

I like Fedimints coupled with Lightning since it makes managing liquidity a non-issue. It's very beginner-friendly and the privacy benefits are a nice bonus as well.

It makes it easy to get people started with small amounts of Bitcoin that they can immediately use to purchase things.

I prefer getting people into Bitcoin by showing what you can do with it. Why it's better than paying using credit cards, etc.

Starting with an hour-long lecture on Lightning, channel management, on-chain privacy, and self-custody will just push them away.

100 sats \ 9 replies \ @nullcount OP 27 Apr 2024

It makes it easy to get people started with small amounts of Bitcoin that they can immediately use to purchase things.

This is only true if mints do not require KYC. Once mints are forced to act like the other custodians, they will also require KYC.

...the privacy benefits are a nice bonus as well

Yes, its great! I just wonder who is going to actually operate these (fedi) mints in practice.

Each mint has its own eCash token that is only redeemable at that particular mint. So for a mint's token to be useful in commerce, it needs to be very popular. (Or a market need to develop that makes it easy to exchange tokens for more sailable ones).

A very popular centralized privacy service is a prime target to be forcefully shutdown. Especially if the service is collecting substantial fee revenues.

34 sats \ 0 replies \ @rtr 28 Apr 2024

This is only true if mints do not require KYC. Once mints are forced to act like the other custodians, they will also require KYC.

How hard would it be to just go to a different mint that doesn't require KYC? As far as I understand it, a fedimint can move liquidity between different mints using Lightning.

I just wonder who is going to actually operate these (fedi) mints in practice.

Basing from the fedimint pitch, they intend the tech to be used in small to medium size communities. Ideally, groups where users are large enough that they have sizable liquidity when pooled but small enough that rugpulling will have severe social consequences.

https://sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/losaec1ain/contrib/share/ext/2024.4.28..00.40.58-fm-spectrum-custody.excalidraw-4db14732495b99429517511026155dfa.png

Image source: Fedimint.org

Each mint has its own eCash token that is only redeemable at that particular mint. So for a mint's token to be useful in commerce, it needs to be very popular.

I think the intent of Fedimint is to make it so that every mint is interoperable between each other. There's no "Alice's Sats" and "Bob's Sats." Mutiny Wallet does it already with its fedimint implementation, you can join a federation and send "eSats" to users from other federations and even use that for non-Fedimint Lightning payments.

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @om 27 Apr 2024

(Or a market need to develop that makes it easy to exchange tokens for more sailable ones).

Just use LN bro

10 sats \ 6 replies \ @nullcount OP 27 Apr 2024

Then you give up the privacy that eCash offers

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @Hamstr 28 Apr 2024

I am really interested to learn eNut or eCash as I'm pro privacy. But I find myself confused with this model. You wrap the SATs and deliver them as eNuts/eCash? The receiver unwrap the SATs?

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @om 28 Apr 2024

ecash (at least as currently implemented) is an IOU note issued by the mint. Usually it's denominated in sats but both fedi and cashu can in principle support fiat denominations. Fedimints are connected to LN through a gateway that exchanges between ecash and LN sats. For cashu mints, the mint itself is the gateway.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Hamstr 28 Apr 2024

Fedimints are communities on Fedi? (is that correct?)

So, I would need to trust them, then?

Is there a map or something, because this isn't registering in my thick skull. Also, I don't understand ecash, fedimints, cashu mints, mints. I only understand Fedi is an app. This really seems like a pain in the ass to learn compared to XMR. Which is excessively easier than what you're describing to me as they use RingCT 16.

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @om 28 Apr 2024

Ecash is money as a piece of text that you can just copy and paste or transmit with a QR-code or with a private message or however you want. It's a bearer asset: you have the piece of text = you have money. Usually ecash is an IOU but European Union plans to issue euros as ecash as well.

Mint is anything that issues ecash. It's the job of the mint to prevent double spending. When you receive ecash, you need to contact the mint to make sure it wasn't already spent. If it wasn't, you get fresh ecash of the same value. If you want, the old coin is melt and a new coin is minted, hence the name.

Fedimint is the software for running a mint as a group. A group mint running fedimint is also called fedimint because "fedimint-running mint" sounds stupid. Cashu is the software for running a solo mint. Fedi is the app to use fedimints.

Which is excessively easier than what you're describing to me as they use RingCT 16.

Can't agree here. Fedi is very user-friendly. In comparison, XMR mobile wallets need you to sync the chain all the time. With ecash you can push money: "here, scan this, here's 1k sats for you" but with XMR you can only pull ("give me your address so I can send you some piconeros"). Mint transactions are final in seconds, there's no waiting for the next blocks to confirm.

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @om 27 Apr 2024

That's not what I meant. You use ecash but there's a gateway. You go to a vendor and pay with LN through the gateway. The vendor might receive it in ecash through the mint he trusts or can just use LN directly, you don't care.

This works in cashu/fedi already. The gateway doesn't have to know who you are. The part where you give up privacy is the chat: your Fedi client connects to the chat server(s) asking "any dms for nullcount?" when you open your wallet.