[HN Gopher] Diem - Facebook open source Cryptocurrency written i...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Diem - Facebook open source Cryptocurrency written in Rust
        
       Author : modinfo
       Score  : 83 points
       Date   : 2022-10-27 14:25 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | lakomen wrote:
       | Great, more crap to waste energy on so the planet and thus
       | humanity dies faster
        
         | AlmostAnyone wrote:
        
       | yellow_lead wrote:
       | > Note to readers: On December 1, 2020, the Libra Association was
       | renamed to Diem Association. This report was published before the
       | Association released White Paper v2.0 in April 2020, which
       | included a number of key updates to the Libra payment system.
       | Outdated links have been removed, but otherwise, this report has
       | not been modified to incorporate the updates and should be read
       | in that context. Features of the project as implemented may
       | differ based on regulatory approvals or other considerations, and
       | may evolve over time.
       | 
       | https://developers.diem.com/docs/technical-papers/the-diem-b...
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | latchkey wrote:
       | I wonder how much Silvergate paid for it...
       | 
       | https://www.diem.com/en-us/updates/stuart-levey-statement-di...
       | 
       | They still plan to launch a stablecoin in 2022...
       | 
       | https://www.silvergate.com/solutions/digital-currency/diem.h...
        
       | derefr wrote:
       | I would suggest the mods change the title here to something that
       | communicates that this project hasn't been associated with
       | Facebook in years (maybe "ex-Facebook"?); and also that this
       | isn't something that just came into existence, but rather has
       | existed for years. As it is, this is drawing comments mostly from
       | people assuming that this is something just happening now,
       | leading to very non-productive conversation.
        
       | anonym29 wrote:
       | Oh yeah, let's trust Facebook with a monetary system. They have
       | such a great track record of respecting our trust. /s
        
         | laweijfmvo wrote:
         | Thought experiment: if you're in a situation like Zimbabwe
         | ~2010, or Argentina recently, who do you trust more with your
         | currency? Facebook, or your own government?
         | 
         | Relatedly, with ~3B users, this is why I think the regulators
         | shut this down before it started.
        
           | meowtastic wrote:
           | I think it's only a matter of time till this becomes a
           | reality. And I'm saying this as a crypto sceptic, and someone
           | who's never invested in any.
        
           | lawn wrote:
           | An actual cryptocurrency that's not controlled by Facebook of
           | course.
        
             | laweijfmvo wrote:
             | oh like Celsius?
        
               | anonym29 wrote:
               | No, like Bitcoin.
        
               | tossl568 wrote:
               | You're going to have a hard time on here... money MUST be
               | controlled by the government is the general belief.
        
               | anonym29 wrote:
               | Yeah, otherwise it would be impossible to print on-demand
               | to fund hostile, militarized occuptations of other
               | countries OR punish people for saving rather than
               | spending by diluting the value of existing units of the
               | currency. What a horrible world we'd live in without
               | granting governments such abilities. /s
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | julianeon wrote:
         | By this logic, we trust them with React, which at the end of
         | the day is much more impactful.
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | That's why it was canceled.
        
         | secondcoming wrote:
         | I'd rather trust FB engineers with a monetary system rather
         | than some randomers off the internet.
         | 
         | Besides, it's written in Rust! It's flawless by design.
        
           | krautsourced wrote:
           | And blazingly fast. Don't forget how blazingly fast it is.
        
           | anonym29 wrote:
           | This is a joke, right?
        
             | _wolfie_ wrote:
             | Which part? :)
        
               | anonym29 wrote:
               | The last part, especially.
        
         | yodsanklai wrote:
         | Believe it or not, Meta is highly regulated. A lot of their
         | engineers work on privacy issues.
        
           | ethanbond wrote:
           | And all the others also work on privacy issues!
        
           | giantdude wrote:
           | That is really funny!
        
       | anm89 wrote:
       | Lol, remember that time like a year ago when Facebook had
       | redefined their company to chase some other thing of the moment
       | that has nothing to do with the new thing they have totally
       | redefined their company to chase.
       | 
       | Definition of flail
        
         | threeseed wrote:
         | a) VR is completely aligned with the mission of the company
         | which is to connect people together.
         | 
         | b) Meta has always been chasing their competition. It's why
         | they have overhauled their feed algorithm multiple times,
         | acquired Instagram and WhatsApp, implemented Stories etc.
         | 
         | c) They are hardly flailing around. Apple has shown them how
         | sensitive and vulnerable their business is to privacy changes.
         | And that if they can own the whole stack and be the Apple of
         | potentially the next computing paradigm then that is a goal
         | worth betting the company on.
        
           | anm89 wrote:
           | > the mission of the company which is to connect people
           | together.
           | 
           | I guarantee you Zuck doesn't wake up every morning and say
           | "how can I connect people just a little bit better today". He
           | was just able to say this because the world threw money at
           | him for 15 years so he didn't have to worry about that part.
           | 
           | Facebooks mission is to make money. Crypto didn't help them
           | with their mission. Recreating miis with a vr headset is
           | doing the exact opposite of that mission.
           | 
           | Time will tell. Maybe he will look like a genius in 5 years.
           | I've got skin in the game betting against that
        
       | ajsnigrutin wrote:
       | Oh man.. the ultimate HN post
       | 
       | Facebook .. a large company eveyone knows
       | 
       | open source
       | 
       | crypto(currency)
       | 
       | using the "language of the month"
       | 
       | and a github link!
        
         | pvg wrote:
         | _Please don 't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
         | [...]
         | 
         | Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet
         | tropes._
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        
           | cies wrote:
           | I thought this was funny and on point. How is this a sneer to
           | you?
        
             | pvg wrote:
             | Beside the guidelines, there's years of moderator
             | explanations on this sort of thing, it comes up more or
             | less weekly. Recently:
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33318559
             | 
             | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33295889
        
         | dekervin wrote:
         | I have a tagging tool for HN and the more used tags are: big-
         | tech, oss, cryptocurrency, dev-language... The only missing
         | tags are "climate" and "entrepreneur".
         | 
         | Edit: the perfect headline would be "How Facebook acquired my
         | climate friendly cryptocurrency startup, rewrote it in rust and
         | open sourced it".
        
           | meowtastic wrote:
           | Mind showing/sharing it? I was thinking of doing some
           | historical analysis on trending topics on HN.
        
         | hardwaregeek wrote:
         | Rust has been the language of the month for a few years now
        
           | dymk wrote:
           | Over a decade, I'd say?
        
             | rob74 wrote:
             | Sure feels like it...
        
             | runevault wrote:
             | Eh wasn't that big pre 1.0 and that was 2015. I feel like
             | it was 2017 or 2018 before it was on my radar so much I
             | needed to assess it for myself.
        
             | mirekrusin wrote:
             | I've heard it was favourite language of Ada Lovelace.
        
             | worik wrote:
             | Since about 1997....
        
         | napo wrote:
         | I wanted to invest but I don't see where it talks about VR, ML
         | and microservices
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | dingosity wrote:
       | So much hard pass: cryptocurrencies (hard pass), facebook (hard
       | pass) and rust (great language, tool ecosystem and community, but
       | needs to stabilize before it's used for critical infrastructure.)
        
         | benatkin wrote:
         | Couldn't be more wrong about rust. People are using WASM with
         | Figma everyday and Rust is the most production ready for both
         | WASM and non-WASM targets. Sure, Rust is the future, but it's
         | also the present.
        
           | throitallaway wrote:
           | Rust support is also landing in the Linux kernel very soon
           | (version 6.1.)
        
         | tossl568 wrote:
         | How do you see anything clearly from so far up on your high
         | horse?
        
           | Cantinflas wrote:
           | Horses? Hard pass
        
         | adwn wrote:
         | > _rust (great language, tool ecosystem and community, but
         | needs to stabilize before it 's used for critical
         | infrastructure.)_
         | 
         | There's hardly another mainstream language out there that's
         | more stable than Rust: the standard library as well as the
         | language itself follow a strict backward compatibility policy -
         | breaking changes are only allowed to fix safety-relevant bugs.
        
           | worik wrote:
           | Rust is very cool. It is a language I have been waiting for
           | since 1999
           | 
           | But it is not ready for critical infrastructure for two
           | reasons:
           | 
           | 1) It is not defined. the definition of rust is "the compiler
           | accepts it"
           | 
           | 2) There is one implementation
           | 
           | I use rust for a lot of things, things that I really want to
           | be solid and reliable.
           | 
           | But I would not want to use it for systems where lives were
           | at risk.
           | 
           | That is not a domain I work in, so I am hazy on what is
           | available but I know the avionics people have systems and
           | processes. Have they adopted Rust yet?
           | 
           | Rust will be excellent in this space. But it needs definition
           | and alternative implementations first. Probably will not be
           | long.
        
             | steveklabnik wrote:
             | While I'm not sure about avionics, there's some aerospace
             | and automotive uses in non-critical places. A version of
             | the rust compiler is undergoing certification so that it
             | can be, but that work is not yet complete.
             | 
             | Also, there are multiple implementations, though they are
             | in various stages of completion.
        
         | stusmall wrote:
         | > needs to stabilize before it's used for critical
         | infrastructure
         | 
         | What do you view as unstable? What features have you seen
         | disappear? What do you know of that existed in the past
         | post-1.0 that doesn't exist today or has materially changed?
         | 
         | I've been writing rust since about 1.4 back in 2015. I think
         | once in ~2017 I ran into an issue where a bump in the compiler
         | cause an existing crate to not build. That's it. It was bug
         | that was quickly fixed. As style changes and new crates and
         | features are build, old ones are still very stable/reliable and
         | can be intermingled inside the same program. I have trouble
         | thinking of a more stable ecosystem I've worked in.
        
       | glitchc wrote:
       | Facebook has abandoned Diem. It is now an open-source project
       | that's ripe to play around with. There are some neat, performant
       | design choices in HotStuff, the underlying consensus protocol.
        
         | dboreham wrote:
         | See also this fork of the project:
         | https://github.com/OLSF/libra
        
         | c7DJTLrn wrote:
         | It was considered hot with the radioactivity of Facebook from
         | the moment it was born. Governments were pretty quick to say
         | no, so no surprise it died.
        
           | dontknowwhyihn wrote:
           | I actually thought they were going to go ahead with it,
           | lawmakers be dammed, in the spirit of Uber. Laws don't apply
           | to big tech until they come into direct conflict with banking
           | I guess.
        
       | elforce002 wrote:
       | They have to throw Facebook's name if they want traction. Devs
       | and public alike have a really bad perception of Facebook. Tbh,
       | Zuckerberg needs to resign, enjoy its billions and let someone
       | else to start the PR "healing" process.
        
         | NayamAmarshe wrote:
         | PR healing won't be enough if Facebook continues its dystopian
         | practices. What Facebook really needs is a deep ideological
         | change along with new management.
        
           | SQueeeeeL wrote:
           | Facebook has obviously just been seeking to maximize profit
           | for their shareholders as possible (maybe at the expense of
           | some people, but no more so than any cigarette or oil
           | company). Are you implying that ideology should be changed?
        
             | worik wrote:
             | > Facebook has obviously just been seeking to maximize
             | profit for their shareholders as possible .... Are you
             | implying that ideology should be changed?
             | 
             | Not me.
             | 
             | But they are a poster child for greed destroying a fabulous
             | business. They were on the verge of connecting every single
             | person on the planet, becoming the hub of everybodie's
             | communications.
             | 
             | And they threw it away for a bit of extra monetisation
        
               | SQueeeeeL wrote:
               | That's a contradiction. Either profit ideology is good or
               | it isn't, but you're trying to say it's situational,
               | uncaring markets don't work that way. Facebook/any
               | private company goal should _never_ be anything
               | egalitarian, and if it is, that 's arbitrage and will
               | eventually be stripped away.
               | 
               | Bob Iger (ex-CEO of Disney) is the king of this: "We have
               | no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make
               | history. We have no obligation to make a statement. But
               | to make money"
        
       | 29athrowaway wrote:
       | Libra was opposed by most governments. Diem is Libra.
        
       | v3ss0n wrote:
       | Facebook (META) + Cryptocurrency == Big Red Flag
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | lucasmullens wrote:
       | Last commit was two months ago. Why are we talking about this? I
       | don't think Facebook has anything to do with this anymore.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-10-27 23:01 UTC)