<story><title>Stellar</title><url>https://stripe.com/blog/stellar</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jxf</author><text>I was able to successfully sign up and get 5,000 STR, so that worked for me at least. But then I started looking a little deeper into the blog post.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Development is led by Jed McCaleb and Dr. David Mazieres in collaboration with a small team of others. (The technology is based on the open-source Ripple project, originally created by Jed a few years ago.)&lt;p&gt;So, is Stellar fundamentally the same thing as and&amp;#x2F;or a fork of Ripple? They&amp;#x27;ve hired the same guy who started Ripple (Jed McCaleb), and as I recall there were a lot of concerns around that, as noted in a WSJ article [0] and other places. Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members -- and so wields a considerable amount of influence.&lt;p&gt;If so, then doesn&amp;#x27;t it have all the same problems and concerns as Ripple? Centralized authority holding a large chunk of initial funds, questionable governance decisions, etc., just to name a few of the political problems, not just the technical ones.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d love to see the &amp;quot;IP layer for currency&amp;quot; described by Stripe succeed, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure that this implementation of it represents a good idea. And I&amp;#x27;m also concerned about whether Jed, the cofounder of both MtGox and Ripple, has the best interests of Stellar at heart.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/22/ripple-alternative-digital-currency-plunges-as-mccaleb-liquidates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blogs.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;moneybeat&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;22&amp;#x2F;ripple-alternative...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mrb</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;If so, then doesn&amp;#x27;t it have all the same problems and concerns as Ripple?&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Correct. Like Ripple, Stellar requires special (and dangerous) trust in certain nodes. For example, gateways (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-stellar/#gateways&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.stellar.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;introducing-stellar&amp;#x2F;#gateways&lt;/a&gt;) have to be trusted by the Stellar network as they send messages like &amp;quot;a user deposited 100 USD via a bank wire transfer, so please accept this digital representation of 100 USD, trust me&amp;quot;. This trust is dangerous as people running an (initially) honest gateway may start acting maliciously and lie about how much USD or EUR or other currency exist on the network. By the time the malice is detected, maybe the network could trace all USD or EUR that was issued by the gateway, and revoke it, suddenly pissing off a lot of users who owns this currency as it would disappear from their wallet. Users would then loose trust in Stellar, and the network would collapse...&lt;p&gt;Stripe would presumably be the first gateway trusted by the Stellar network. Okay, so what if Stripe decided they could not trust other gateways and wanted to remain the only gateway? Well Stripe would be the &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; way to inject USD or EUR or other currencies in the network, effectively making Stellar a fully centralized digital currency, with the entire Stellar network being dependent on Stripe not being hacked, not being abused by a malicious employee, not shutting down, etc.&lt;p&gt;This is the complete opposite design principle of Bitcoin which requires absolutely no trust in any specific authority.</text></comment>
<story><title>Stellar</title><url>https://stripe.com/blog/stellar</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jxf</author><text>I was able to successfully sign up and get 5,000 STR, so that worked for me at least. But then I started looking a little deeper into the blog post.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Development is led by Jed McCaleb and Dr. David Mazieres in collaboration with a small team of others. (The technology is based on the open-source Ripple project, originally created by Jed a few years ago.)&lt;p&gt;So, is Stellar fundamentally the same thing as and&amp;#x2F;or a fork of Ripple? They&amp;#x27;ve hired the same guy who started Ripple (Jed McCaleb), and as I recall there were a lot of concerns around that, as noted in a WSJ article [0] and other places. Jed is also on the Stellar board, too, one of only three members -- and so wields a considerable amount of influence.&lt;p&gt;If so, then doesn&amp;#x27;t it have all the same problems and concerns as Ripple? Centralized authority holding a large chunk of initial funds, questionable governance decisions, etc., just to name a few of the political problems, not just the technical ones.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d love to see the &amp;quot;IP layer for currency&amp;quot; described by Stripe succeed, but I&amp;#x27;m not sure that this implementation of it represents a good idea. And I&amp;#x27;m also concerned about whether Jed, the cofounder of both MtGox and Ripple, has the best interests of Stellar at heart.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/05/22/ripple-alternative-digital-currency-plunges-as-mccaleb-liquidates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blogs.wsj.com&amp;#x2F;moneybeat&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;22&amp;#x2F;ripple-alternative...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joyce</author><text>Great question - here are the two key items:&lt;p&gt;- Stellar is a nonprofit. No one owns it. The board and advisors represent a diverse group of people in tech, finance, nonprofit and academia to encourage cross-pollination of ideas. The board is also required to expand to 5 members by year-end.&lt;p&gt;- Almost all the stellars will be given away for free (95%) because the goal is to educate and provide access to digital currency&amp;#x2F;financial services. This is really good for cryptocurrency as a whole because it provides access to a huge segment of the world that would not have access to digital currency otherwise.&lt;p&gt;This should all help the effort be open and transparent.</text></comment>