https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Taler
Or perhaps The Lightning Network?
(Yes, I know that TLN uses Bitcoin)
Taler needs buy in from banks and irrc it’s only being trialled by some Swiss banks atm.
Private banks would not relinquish the power and profit they get from the need of a bank account with them in order to be able to pay electronically. In reality central banks can reliaby provide that ability to the people in their jurisdictions. But private bank interests stand in the way of that.
There’s tons of regulatory hurdles to operating any kind of money transmitter, at least in the US. Also, Taler is designed to be reversible which is problematic in some situations. The opposite is of course problematic in other situations.
Chaum’s original digicash patents are long expired by now. I wonder if those schemes should be revisited.
I would love an ethical solution to banks and currency. I think it’s one of the most important areas for decentralisation.
Absolutely not.
Just use bitcoin and traditional contracts if you’re going to use blockchain technology. “Smart contracts” are a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist. Altcoins are a scam.
Tried the demo a little while ago, ready to use whenever it’s being actually usable.
Sure. Why not?
While not a very well known project, Crowdbucks’s (a Liberapay/Kofi alternative for the Fediverse) dev told me that he was investigating how GNU Taler works and wanted to implement support for it in his project: https://mastodon.social/@reiver/115097895209652675
Liberapay’s team should also be working on implementing support for it. They got a grant specifically for that: https://nlnet.nl/project/TALER-Liberapay/
If we are lucky, we will see GNU Taler being used by the EU as the system behind the digital euro in a few years. Then it most likely will become mainstream.
I wish it actually became more mainstream than Wero e.g.
Wero is a trap at best or more likely a figleaf that is meant to fail.
EU private banks much prefer the status quo over systems like the Brazilian PIX taking over the digital payment systems.
So when the EU central bank started looking into a sovereign alternative to Visa/Mastercard etc. the private banks scrambled to put together Wero to delay and maybe prevent the central bank from coming up with a system like PIX.
Sadly GNU Taler was never really an option for these banks, as it is an open standard and thus even if they supported it, the central bank could still plug into it with their own system and thus they would be forced to compete with that.
Wero is a trap
It is also insecure by design and actively supports scamming people.
Potentially, maybe. Taler is centralized and has poor privacy protections, but if it ever takes off it might become a good option in jurisdictions where decentralized currencies are illegal.
Meanwhile, Monero already works for the Fediverse:
https://deadsuperhero.com/the-fediverse-and-content-creation-monetization/#honorable-mention-mitra
Taler is centralized and has poor privacy protections
This is non-sense. It’s not centralized at all and the privacy protections are excellent, just designed to different specs (privacy for buyers, but not sellers).
It’s not centralized at all
It depends on the banking system with its proprietary APIs and centralized money issuance.
privacy for buyers, but not sellers
In order to spend money, you need to receive it first. I don’t know if it makes you a “seller” in Taler, but in any case, this partial protection probably makes de-anonymization of all transactions via statistical analysis much easier.
It depends on the banking system with its proprietary APIs and centralized money issuance.
It does not. That is as optional as fiat exchanges with cryptocurrencies.
In order to spend money, you need to receive it first. I don’t know if it makes you a “seller” in Taler, but in any case, this partial protection probably makes de-anonymization of all transactions via statistical analysis much easier.
No, you get it from an exchange. And the resulting tokens are like physical cash and can not be de-anonymized by the exchange or anyone else in the chain. That’s like the entire point of Taler. I think you should really inform yourself better before making yourself look really stupid by confidently spreading such non-sense.
It does not. That is as optional as fiat exchanges with cryptocurrencies.
Taler claims to be “not a currency”, that means it has to be used with existing currency such as Euro. That means an exchange is not optional. I guess it can be used with a cryptocurrency too, or fake money, but obviously this is not what people are interested in.
And the resulting tokens are like physical cash and can not be de-anonymized by the exchange or anyone else in the chain.
Again, according to the Taler website, the exchange tracks every transaction in order to prevent double spends. If it has a full view of the network, it can employ statistical analysis.
I think you should really inform yourself better before making yourself look really stupid by confidently spreading such non-sense.
Only you make unsubstantiated claims here.
If you believe Taler is decentralized, provide an example of it being used with a widely accepted peer to peer currency such as Bitcoin.
If you believe Taler is fully private, show us a security audit which confirms Taler’s resistance to statistical analysis.Indeed, no one is really interested in using fake money (aka crypto currencies). But that doesn’t mean Taler depends on banking APIs. Taler is a complete digital bank software package and some unofficial regional currencies (most notably a bigger one in Italy) have started using it fully independent of the officially recognized fiat banks or their APIs.
Again, according to the Taler website, the exchange tracks every transaction in order to prevent double spends. If it has a full view of the network, it can employ statistical analysis.
Again, you spend max. 5 minutes browsing the website and now claim you are the expert on Taler 🙄 Just because you track if a token has been spend or not, doesn’t mean you can track who spend it, or what on. This is all well explained in the Taler documentation and it has been explicitly designed to be resistant against such statistical analysis.
