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<eva> @lawrencefrommexico: this looks excellent, going to give it a more thorough read, but this already stood out to me:
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<eva> I know that feeling
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<lawrencefrommexico> ha! :)
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<eva> so currently m-arca uses the blockchain, right?
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<lawrencefrommexico> i'm reading your white paper -- it's more info rich than my own, so it's going take a while. anyway, at a glance it reminds me a lot of Ripple due to the consensus and trust metaphors.
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<lawrencefrommexico> do you hear that a lot?
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<lawrencefrommexico> 1 for financial trx's and another to record user activities related to p2p lending
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<lawrencefrommexico> so when you type "THE" blockchain, i guess we're only talking about financial transactions
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<lawrencefrommexico> nonetheless, we want to record policy actions as well. like loan approvals, loan reviews, etc
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<eva> Heh, "info rich" is one way to say it! I think it's up to like 50 pages now :) There's also a piece on Medium that might help put it more succinctly : https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949 RE: the trust metaphors, I think it might have some similarities in the term "trust," but its an entirely different algorithm (so far as I understand it - @dm may be able to shed more light) I
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blockchain" I really just means blockchain tech, so that makes sense.
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<eva> Does that mean that each of the nodes (Arcas) would be mining?
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<lawrencefrommexico> i started w the sci fi journey :)
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<eva> oh good!
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<eva> :)
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<lawrencefrommexico> the Arcas: yes, these will be put to work somehow to wrap transaction batches to post these to our 2 block chains. we won't pursue the same plan at bitcoin in that, there's not a need (or at least i dont think there's a need) for increasing difficult in the "proof of [something]"
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<lawrencefrommexico> more likely that the Arcas will be put to work in a distributed fashion such that more Arcas attached to the network means that the "proof of xxx" will become the result of increasing amounts of computing power over time. hope that makes sense
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<lawrencefrommexico> maybe more simply put: a small network consisting of 2 Arcas gets you a hash that XX in size whereas a mature network with 10,000 Arcas gets you a hash that's XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX in size.
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<eva> that makes sense at first blush - I'm certainly not a consensus expert myself :)
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<lawrencefrommexico> me neither
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<eva> I suppose I'm wondering how much power/electricity it would take up for each Arca-owner
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<lawrencefrommexico> that's precisely what i need to avoid
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<eva> heh exactly
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<regisg> @eva, yes of course, no problem.
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<eva> my understanding - again, NOT an expert! - of blockchain tech is that it does take up a significant amount, but perhaps your implementation would be different?
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<lawrencefrommexico> Arcas are just Arduino boards running on 110V or solar. so not much horsepower. plus, they're not ASICs. the Arcas do a lot of other stuff as well
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<lawrencefrommexico> probably i should just get heads down and power thru your paper. the answer might lie in what you guys have already cooked up. [i hope]
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<eva> Hehe I very much hope so too!
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<eva> still reading yours as well
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<lawrencefrommexico> btw, back to my original question. anyone building a mexico gateway?
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<lawrencefrommexico> if not, maybe that's something that we should chat about in the near future. also btw, are you guys in SFO i suppose?
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<eva> oh I didn't see that! As far as I know, no plans to build a gateway in Mexico yet. Sure, would love to chat about gateway stuffs :)
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<eva> We're in SF, yus
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<eva> do you think you might be interested in running a gateway yourself?
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<sacarlson> lawrencefrommexico: I read one part of your white paper about off grid propriatary muled data, where data is moved by peoples moving android. I assume this does not exist
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<lawrencefrommexico> hi sacarlson, correct, it's purely academic
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<sacarlson> if it did I don't think it would directly connect on the stellar network as it requires realtime connections. you could however use what is already available called mesh
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<lawrencefrommexico> our Arcas are the Internet gateways. conceptually speaking, the intention is to simulate TCP/IP (in real time things will be considerably slower). if an entire transaction on SCP can be defined in a finite series of steps then our mule network would not (in theory) present a problem
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<eva> cc @monsieurnicolas ^^
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<lawrencefrommexico> as all data eventually concentrate to an Arca, and the Arca relays this data/from devices on your network
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<sacarlson> so Arca is a centralized system rather than stellar being uncentralized?
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<sacarlson> oh sounds like some attempt at satalite links to the uncentralized stellar in some way. I'm not sure
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<sacarlson> I have heard of people speak of offline wallets that I guess is what your system would require but I have yet to see a prototype. not that they don't exist or couldn't
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<lawrencefrommexico> it's not really centralised sacarlson. the Arca's work like network hubs (aka very dump precursors to network routers). it's a hardware device that operates 2 logical levels below SCP. granted i still need to finish reading your white paper, but based on what i understand so far, the SCP end points would be the users' Android devices connecting via the Arcas
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<sacarlson> I put just a bit of thought into it but you could setup off line wallets as maybe Arca as a 3rd party trusted agent signer. so you could lock an account while it is out in the field not connected to the network
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<sacarlson> in the field people could see that Arca signed saying it had this much credit. not sure how you would setup sub transactions in the field. someone at a high paygrade than me could probly figure it out if not already
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<lawrencefrommexico> yes. exactly
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<sacarlson> and this assuming you had a number of people that had trust in Arca of course
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<lawrencefrommexico> yes again, regarding explicit trust of the Arca itself. also unsure of sub trx's, but, 1 step at a time. in important element of M-Arca which i don't think i did a good job of communicating is that it's important that user conduct commerce with each other point-to-point using the balances on their android devices.
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<lawrencefrommexico> thanks @eva , will watch during lunch
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<sacarlson> I'll be interested in reading a white paper on an offline wallet system
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<lawrencefrommexico> anyway, @sacarlson , the point-to-point transactions will naturally almost always occur offline, and will need to settle some time later when either device's packet data next reaches an Arca.
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<sacarlson> that would be cool
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<eva> Nicolas definitely touches on that in the vid :)
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<monsieurnicolas> yeah, what I was explaining was a way to do payment reconciliation (wrt sequence numbers) when a client comes back online. There is probably a way to build this Arca system on top of such semantics and avoid having to build at the SCP layer. Building on top of SCP directly would have different benefits such as actually getting to consensus there but the problem is that SCP requires quite a lot of messag
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physical movement, it may be too slow.
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<lawrencefrommexico> thanks @monsieurnicolas , i'll finish reading your white paper later today. afterward i hope i'll have a clear understanding of the precise flow of a basic transaction. i think the million dollar question for the moment regards who is the "user/end point": the person in possession of an android device, or the merchant who owns the Arca. i hope to have an educated point of view by tomorrow sometime.
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<lawrencefrommexico> thank you all very much for helping me get up to speed on SCP, which btw looks absolutely fascinating. i wish i'd been introduced to it much sooner
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<eva> awesome, looking forward to your future thoughts on it :) (hopefully tomorrow :P )
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<monsieurnicolas> The paper will only give you part of the answer on the SCP side of things. For what I am talking about, you can read the small examples https://github.com/stellar/stellar-core/tree/master/src/transactions#operation-examples in particular the examples titled "worker nodes" and "Long lived transactions". It's all about having the equivalent of "relationships" with the network for each offline wallet, so t
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various transactions offline without stepping on each other; and only reconcile at one point on the overall network. That said, I am not aware of anybody that did a write up on offline wallets yet.
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<lawrencefrommexico> well @monsieurnicolas , that sounds exactly like what i want M-Arca to be able to do, albeit with the added twist that the users are only sporadically connected to the Internet. so, if i can wrap my head around that one wrinkle then i think SCP is probably something that, at a minimum, i'm going to want to drill-down on right away. thanks again!!!! (also, i'll read the long-lived transactions paper a
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<lawrencefrommexico> )
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<monsieurnicolas> sounds good, the more knowledge you have the better. and having somebody think hard about building offline wallets is nice :)
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<lawrencefrommexico> oh hey, to all, i was scanning thru the team bios and came across multiple names that are sources to my original M-Arca paper. namely MIT Media lab (open mustard seed) and ripple (my paper basically assumes use of ripple, without me actually calling them out by name). crazzzzzzy that i'm only now finding out about SCP.
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<eva> @lawrencefrommexico: heh, well it's fairly new! The first draft of the white paper was only released this past April :)
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<lawrencefrommexico> @eva: thx for the youtube link. it was extremely helpful to see the client API at 40k. it totally get the basics now (but still look forward to diving into the entire 50-page description of the details. one thing that's implied throughout all that i've read so far, but have not seen for certain: is there a defined, 3rd party market-making role within SCP in order to translate between currencies? i mo
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in the youtube video. thanks!!! :)
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<eva> @lawrencefrommexico: yay I'm glad it was helpful! I think sometimes it helps to have someone talk through it. Have you gotten a chance to look at the concept docs? I think that might help clarify at what level the pathfinding happens (it isn't at the protocol level, it's a step "higher") https://github.com/stellar/docs/blob/master/concepts/exchange.md
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<eva> so, no, SCP doesn't handle that bit, but Horizon - a client-facing API server - does.