Dumb question, maybe. I was listening to Calle talk about this on WBD, but this episode was back in April and he said the issue was being addressed.
741 sats \ 5 replies \ @Wumbo 21 Jan
This is not a perfect solution but one option I heard is if leaving a Mint and moving to another Mint is made easy and cheap enough, occasional bank (mint) runs could be an option.
Basically make bank runs so easy to do that it highly encourages Mint runners to be prepared.
It is not a if but a when that a mint will have to "prove" they have 1 to 1 reserves.
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349 sats \ 2 replies \ @freetx 21 Jan
How will you be able to vet all these different mint operators that you would move to? You go to webpage that has list of 1000 different mints with random internet monikers...who do you trust?
I think only answers are: small known group and/or limited duration exposure to mint (you lock up funds for 1 day, etc then withdraw).
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Agreed, I can see using many mints and for short periods being "best practice"
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it should be ideally local community of people known to each other.
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wouldn't the ease of this successfully being pulled off depend on lightning liquidity surrounding the mint?
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The fedimint website lists debasement as a potential problem under their tradeoffs section. From what they say ecash's privacy elements make it difficult to audit.
I think the guardians can audit how many tokens they have created vs how much bitcoin they have, and they could publish on chain addresses so users could survey those, but users would still have to trust them that they didn't create tokens greater in value than the amount of bitcoin they hold.
Also: only guardians can create tokens (or at least they have to sign off on the creation) so if unbacked tokens were being created it would mean that the people you are trusting not to rug you are lying to you on another count.
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you need mercury layer for that...
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Statechains still require trust though.
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hello, can you please expand on this one, how so?
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Mercurylayer gives you full custody at all times, no need to prove anything :)
Read more here: https://mercurylayer.com
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @erik_ 21 Jan
+1 still a work in progress as far as i know.
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I have an experimental PoL server running already for the testnut mint. It's going to take a while until wallets can adopt this, there's still a ton of possible optimizations to make this be effortless. But the sheer existence of a possibility to audit ecash mints is already very bullish to me.
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413 sats \ 6 replies \ @freetx 21 Jan
No, there is no cryptographic way to ensure you are not being frac-reserved.
The only ways would be operationally (ie. coordinated bank run feature of wallets, etc) but these all have usability and potential fee impacts.
To be clear, other federated solutions (ie. sidechains like Liquid) have an auditable supply of tokens issued. So all of this is a matter of trade-offs.
The issue I see with Chaumian eCash long term is that the tendency will be for federations to grow in size (network effects). Who believes Coinbase, once they become the biggest mint, wont reserve-frac their users?
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Until this is resolved it seems to me that all large organizations running mints should be avoided, similar to our mantra of "get your coins off exchanges." That's why I see the use case as small family and friends mints right now.
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Yes. Either small known-party mints or conversely short time-duration mints.
I think these "ad-hoc" mint setups could be really good (ie. my 3-day festival idea I've posted about in other threads). So in this case the threat to frac-reserve would be limited by your time exposure to the mint itself. (add an auto expiry function added to Cashu protocol?....hmmmmm....)
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If I remember correctly, in the early days this seemed to be the use case everyone envisioned. I guess it changed at some point?
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That is what I'm talking about. Use it and trow away. But this is just banking on steroids. Our own version of rug pulls.
Now I see your concern from the other day. I didn't realize this was even an issue
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That is why I just see ecash more like a toy, use it and immediately cash out for real Satoshi.
Good point. I've been reading about fedimint and I've also heard people talk about it, but I can't find anything. There should be a way to confirm these values.
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You can audit how much the mint has on-chain but you can't verify how much ecash has been issued. This is kind of an impossible problem because ecash is basically just a signature, there is no way to stop the federation from creating signatures without you knowing.
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how do signatures work, is each ecash token signed by all guardians? or could guardians check number of every other guardians signatures, and see if there are discrepancies between each other?
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It’s an aggregate sig by the federation.
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ah, but guardians incentivised to not have their mint implode, so even that wouldn't work would it
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Would zero-knowledge proofs somehow provide it?
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Hmmm, I guess its up to the mint, maybe an API showing issues and redemptions backed by the multi-sig wallet funds/LN channels, gets complicated real fast though and isn't something that cannot be faked
So my guess is Bank run, is the best way to verify lol
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By not sending to the mint in the first place. Don't settle for Bitcoin derivatives.
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fedimint provides a solution for general public for whom self custody may not be that easy a better way to buy and store bitcoin a federated system in between the centralised and the purely decentralised system. It will be the way forward till self custody is taught in primary schools.
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I really have to disagree. Fedimint is nothing more than a middleman selling rugs under the premise mentioned in your reply. They're a distraction. We can do better.
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and what is the better?
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I tend to agree, but I want to be sure, since people who know more than me see value in it.