5mo ago

A federated localmonero

With localmonero shutting down, what would be the challenges of creating a federated version of localmonero? Traders and buyers can have accounts at different servers but still be able to trade each other and see each others' listings.

The pros i can see are: It would be harder to stop without a single point of failure, and brave server maintainers can host their services in different jurisdictions to prevent legal troubles. And it would be very difficult to prosecute server admins, as they aren't the creator but merely hosting a site.

35 comments

Yeah that's Haveno. It uses TOR by default if you're more paranoid than normal
- Something that i can access on my browser, like lemmy
  
  Anything that you "can access on your browser" can and will be shut down.
  Browsers and WebPKI are designed to guarantee this.
  You're gonna have to let go of your browser obsession. Or just not get what you want. One or the other.
  
  Bisq and then change to XMR on other DEXes

The criminal bankers that control the state will label you as facilitating "unlicensed money transmission" or some other made up term and will put you in a cage.
A service allowing human rights such as free exchange cannot have an admin. Enter Haveno.
- I’m thinking, only the prosecutors in america will go for this. Other jurisdictions have different laws and are more lax with the money transmission laws. Allowing localmomero to federate means people in america can still make trades in european servers.
  
  All other countries will do anything america tells them to do since they have the power to turn off their financial system.
  Going forward any activity that threatens the bankers should be done on unstoppable decentralized services that use tor and or I2p. There should be no IP address associated with any server that they can go after.
- Facilitate deez nuts
  
  Let me guess, you do nothing yourself and just wait for others to do it.

The site(s) should operate like Nodes in a peer to peer network over TOR, where it is impossible to trace it back. We need strong enough technology where bravery is not required, the same way that Monero has been designed, for a hostile environment.

I think we have that already. It's called 'Haveno'.
- Also, i’ve been on haveno. Seems like it’s more active in europe. It’s not as active in the US from what i can see.
- Haveno is federated??
  
  This is like complaining that your new EV doesn't have a large enough gasoline tank.
  Haveno is something much better than federated: it is decentralized.

Haveno is close to what you're describing, it doesnt have federation yet, but it's discussed here https://github.com/haveno-dex/haveno/issues/901

Use Cake if you don't want to use Haveno

Since you're not asking about Haveno, the key question is, what are you trying to federate and what do you mean by localmonero?
This is what I liked about localmonero: (1) It had an easy to use web site -- this can be federated over onion; (2) it had many options (especially necessary if you're not using USD or EUR) -- federation reduces liquidity per mistance; (3) It had a reputation system for sellers -- this is hard to federate; (4) The arbiters have been proven over time to be trustworthy -- this may be impossible to federate without a reputation system.
So, IMO, your first task is to come up with a federated trust system for both arbiters and sellers. Once you have that, listings and trading can happen on any platform, even lemmy or nostr or Simplex or Haveno or something like robosats.
In my simpleminded approach, a wallet public key could have multiple reputations associated with it (e.g. seller, buyer, arbiter). There would have to be a way to confirm that sellers actually "sold" and "buyers" actually bought and arbiters actually arbitrated....I'm sure this could be done in a hidden ZK way by adding transaction IDs to the reputation . Could this be abused since a person can create multiple wallets and trade with himself? Sure, but that could also be done in localmonero and it did fall apart.
- Thank you for your detailed answer.

Is there a p2p web browser like bittorent with privacy? No? Then why look for half measures use monero and haveno? Be your own bank also means be your own server.

Isn't there also a blockchain on which files and websites can be hosted? ipfs or something?

35 comments