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Keybase, the Whatsapp alternative with an integrated Stellar wallet.

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@gamer00
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Hey!

A long long time ago, I invested a bit of money in a cryptocurrency called Stellar XLM. It was I think right about after there was some turmoil around Ripple, and Jed McCale had left Ripple to create his own new blockchain.

Friends

I was disappointend at how Ripple treated their then current userbase, and started catering to banks and big business instead, eventually leaving their individual desktop client users stranded.

I wonder if you remember this, but before Ripple became Ripple.com, there was a small site called RipplePay.com, run by a Canadian bloke called Ryan Fugger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9KqSgRZYgg

Ryan's idea was to create a distributed peer-to-peer ledger of IOU's he coined "The Network of Trust". That idea blossomed, and with a help of a few other alternative currency enthusiasts, myself included, the site saw a good amount of attention, development, and trade using nothing but chains of trust (friendship) between a network of users.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySzqM5dpF7s

It happened that Ryan got ill somewhere around 2011, and couldn't continue with working on the RipplePay project, he gave control of the project to Jed McCaleb, who was a Bitcoin pioneer that also had earlier been contributing to the RipplePay project.

Ripplepay was later incorporated into Jed's work in Ripple Labs. He hired Chris Larsen (former chairman of E-Loan and founder of Prosper Market Place) in 2012.

The IOU's of RipplePay were (and are) still a part of the Ripple blockchain, but since the direction of Ripple eventually went for creating a SWIFT alternative for banks, Jed eventually left the project and created what is now known as Stellar.

I did invest some money into the new blockchain currency, hoping it would replace the Ripple that once was RipplePay. Alas, that day never came... Until a few months ago when I saw someone mention Keybase, and that the Stellar foundation would be making a big airdrop of Lumens to its integrated Keybase Lumen wallet.

That's when I got interested in Stellar again

I set up some trust lines to a couple of payment gateways for testing purposes.

Now I checked, and it appears that trustlines in Stellar are still a thing (Jed did think of us old RipplePay users), but they are a bit quirky to set up. (Need to use tools that are not available in the mobile or desktop wallets.) I am still stoked, that creating trust lines between friends is still possible, albeit a bit cumbersome.

Also, the one thing that I liked in the earlier Ripple implementation was the integrated distributed exchange of assets or tokens. Excellent!

What I didn't know, is Stellar also has smart contracts. I need to investigate that one a bit further, but I think with that one could at least in principle, also create time-limited credit with some interest attached. Which would be good if it works in practice.

Looks like the airdrop is still on...

Fast forward to today. I am soon leaving towards the SteemFest in Bangkok, Thailand. And I am now wondering, if there are others who use Keybase or are interested in it. It'd be nice to add you into my contacts in the app. My handle on Keybase is @dragonhide. (I wonder why I couldn't figure out a better username though. ๐Ÿ˜…) You can add me if you like.

If you need help setting up the wallet, hit me a comment or a message. I can initialize your wallet with a small sum of XLM to help you out. (I'm quessing the absolute minimum is 1 XLM, but as it only works as a reserve, you'd still need .5 for each trust line you add, and sending tokens through the Stellar network does have small transaction fees, like almost all cryptocurrencies.

That said...

Pumpkin pie. :)

See ya later, have a nice Halloween!