Topic: Critical problems with Trestor - Read before use (Read 13957 times)

Dear Rotten Egg,

Skang is a reasonable individual and he would probably be the last person to feel scared or intimidated in any way.

Thank you for calling all of our parents rich!!

Nice pseudo-name, Suits you.

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

 

http://dumpcast.com/wp-content/uploads/Funny-Facepalm-Collection-Pic-7.jpg

Sorry, but I cannot let this statement unchallenged:

You are assuming that there is an “algorithm” in Bitcoin preventing the creation of new coins “out of thin air”. That assertion is full of misconceptions. The creation of coins is defined by the protocol. The protocol is, whatever the majority of miners defines it to be. The Bitcoin protocol is not unchangeable, quite the opposite: It changes a lot over time in order to improve Bitcoin. This also comes with bad side effects like the fork a few day ago:

Coindesk: Double Spending Risk Remains After July 4th Bitcoin Fork

The only thing that prevents miners from changing the number of newly created coins is their incentive to not devalue their reward. This can easily change in the future as default reward is going down and income from fees may not rise to the same level.

The situation is the same with Trestor validators. They will reject any transaction that is not covered by existing accounts, rendering creation of coins impossible. It is in the hand of the majority how all these aspects of the protocol are defined, and maybe changed in the future.

And all of this by the way has nothing to do with proof-of-work.

So far, I guess, by reading the above answers one can conclude that Trestor is a cryptocurrency and shares the same legal status as Bitcoin across the world.

We would encourage everyone to bring out anything specific that has been left unanswered or unclear.

We do not want anyone in the community to have any sort of uncleared doubts.

Cool. Now it is up to the reader to find the flaws in my questions & your answers.

You guys satisfied with the thread title etc? Okay if I lock it & move on?

This is Stephan, one of Trestor's protocol architects.

Not true. The idea is that Trestor Foundation provides deposits to institutions (e.g. universities), which are willing to voluntarily run a node. Pretty much like Tor nodes. As running a node does not require vast resources like mining, it can be easily run by any willing institution.
The more independent institutions from different jurisdictions are getting on board, the more decentralized control over the network will become.

That claim does not make sense. It is up to the majority of validators, which after some time will not be controlled by Trestor.


What? That statement makes me think that you do not understand Bitcoin.

A (honest) node cannot vote for a transaction conflicting with a transaction it previously voted on, that is correct. But your analysis is based on assumptions about our protocol which are incorrect. A node can still get knowledge about the conflicting transaction. At that point, the node will blacklist the corresponding account until all those transactions are invalid (plus some buffer).

I will further add to the answers above:


Not true. Anyone can run a validator. This is somewhat similar to proof of stake systems. One needs to have a defined minimum amount of Trests in their account to participate in voting. To bootstrap the network initially, the amount of Trests required to run a validator node is high so that attacker has no incentive to add node(s) and gain 80% of consensus to corrupt the network. This is why initially Trestor will give Trests to selected universities (read: trusted entities) so that they support network by running a validator.

As more nodes are added to the network, by consensus of existing validators, this minimum amount reduces and it will get easier for an individual to participate in voting. But at the same time it becomes harder for attacker to achieve 80% consensus. The idea is to have sufficiently big amount (or money) required for someone to break or corrupt the network; which is same as bitcoin where it is calculated in terms of computing power and which translates to money again.

About Incentive or Profit: Projects like TOR, Torrent network, Wikipedia and many others are successfully running despite of having no incentive for people helping/volunteering for it. Actually the incentive doesn't have to be in terms of money. It is just that people really enjoy to help a good cause.



Again, not True. Simply put, it is NOT Trestor's discretion. Trestor, or anyone else for that sake, can not change history, or the closed ledger (UNLESS they have 80% of network control, in which case they can rewrite all of the network. This number is just 51% in case of Bitcoin). Also, The network stores history and the current state can be verified by history or vice-versa (so if Trestor or anyone changes anything in ledger or history, it will be easily detectable). Important thing to note here is that history does not define current state, which makes it different from bitcoin. Validators vote for the ledger and once there is a consensus, ledger is updated and closed with it's hash (and history is updated). Also as mentioned earlier, a 51% attack on bitcoin can also change history, here one would have to gain 80% which is even more difficult as explained in the answer above.


Umm, again incorrect. Say if there is a exchange (or bitcoin foundation itself) who is always willing to buy/sell any number of bitcoins at USD 300. The value of bitcoin rises to USD 300 and stays there (but yeah, no one would ever do that).
In this case, Trestor Foundation is willing to exchange any number of trests for 0.01 USD, so it may seem like Trests have a fixed value, which is not the case. No one is bound to exchange Trests at this rate, they can exchange it at a lower or higher rate (subjective value). This also answers the legality of Trestor network in India or anywhere and how Trest is a cryptocurrency.


Yes that is true. Trestor Foundation is committed to nourish and grow Trestor Network. Assigning 100% of trests at genesis to Trestor foundation helps the network in multiple ways.

In bitcoin network, one can get bitcoins by mining (thus helping the network). In trestor network, one can get Trests by volunteering, contributing to code, helping spread the word, running a validator (and thus helping the network).

So instead of competing (mining) with each other and wasting resources, people can help the cryptocurrency network in many other ways. It is not limited to buying expensive hardwares to mine.

I am unable to understand what sort of legal protection is required?
Getting Trests from Trestor foundation is comparable to mining. Is there any sort of legal protection required when one mines bitcoins? No, because the bitcoins themselves can be verified and same is with Trests because that is how cryptocurrencies are designed.


We will be happy to answer any subsequent questions. Also, if anything requires more clarification, feel free to ask.

Dear Skang,

Trestor team will like to thank you for creating this thread, it definitely helped us improve our communication.

We now understand that explaining the story is almost as important as the story itself.

Thank you once again.

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

Dear Skang,

There is no legal definition what constitutes a Cryptocurrency under Indian Laws.

Some additional clarifications:

Proof-of-work is not required, a consensus is enough. (Thus trestor validators' consensus is needed to be trusted & they can change anyone's trests.)


If 80% of Trestor validators collude, they can make/block any transaction, wheras in bitcoin if 51% of miners collude, they can make/block any transactions and they can also rewrite the entire history of the blockchain.    

Value of a cryptocurrency is whatever people exchange it for. Trests however have fixed rate (No other cryptocurrency "sells" their currency.)


As more and more trests are out in the market, price of a trest will change as per market dynamics, Trestor Foundation's job is not to fix the market but to create a smooth transition from pegged to unpegged.

Trests are 100% pre-mined


Yes, 100% of the trests have been pre-assigned to Trestor Foundation. There is no mining in Trestor network.

When you buy trests, its not a purchase but a donation, so there is no legal protection for you.


Yes, Trest is neither Goods nor Service, Trest is itself the final settlement, it is a "Store of value"

The right to become a validator is by "buying" it from trestor but there is no return as profit!


Trestor is in talks with some of the leading academic institutions who have shown interest in running Trestor node. After final selection, they will be given 100 million (locked) Trests each, 2% Trests will automatically unlock every year and can be utilized by the institution to fund its research.    

If there is a dispute, there is no history and resolving it is purely a matter of Trestor's discretion.


The primary reason we chose not to have a typical blockchain is because a 51% attack can rewrite the entire history, Trestor Network agrees to the state of the ledger every 10 - 20 seconds, which is equivalent to taking a picture of our ledger every 10 - 20 seconds and sharing that picture with the world. In case of any doubt the network goes back to the latest picture, but in no circumstance, even with the whole network colluding can the picture change. Trestor's history cannot be Overwritten.

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

Right. Except trestor is not a cryptocurrency.
Just because it is a digital currency using cryptography doesn't make it a cryptocurrency.

Dear Skang,

Can you send money from Canada to India using Trestor? Yes.
Is sending money to India & holding it allowed, as per Indian or Canadian laws?


Trestor has created a digital "Store of value" and yes it can potentially be used for Remittance, but we are not a money transmitter and do not provide money transmission services. Its obviously clear how people can use Trests to send value across the world for free.

Cryptocurrency is a very new industry with practically zero regulation, as governments begin to regulate cryptocurrencies, Trestor will be proactive and comply by it.

Regulation always lags behind technology.

You can think of the current cryptocurrency situation as that of Internet in the 90's. It took Indian government more than 10 years to make sense of Internet and thereby enact the first Indian IT law on 17th October 2000.


Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect 

This thread will be locked on 8th July. Post your final statements or anything by then.
This is not my fight & I am not taking it up.

Very logical statements PalmCoins. I read the whitepaper.

Yes, I am not a legal expert & I take back my judgement for it to be illegal - very likely a personal opinion.
I have nothing against people in Trestor but against 'this' business model. They could make changes in their model & I would welcome & even advertise them like I promote all other Indian cryptocurrency businesses.
I would have been more cordial had they not been taking people's real money.

Here is how my though process started regarding legality - Can you send money from Canada to India using Trestor? Yes.
Is sending money to India & holding it allowed, as per Indian or Canadian laws?









Bandhu. I don't even have a reason to take up this fight. This was just a PSA. I fear rich people & I am changing the title of this thread.
Peace.

Dear Chokho,

None of the questions have been answered by Trestor & this thread is accurate. Their stance is to act dumb & pretend they did not understand.
Even the whitepaper released does not address the few questions they said it would.

With personal allegations, this is getting too dirty & so I stopped replying. Read everywhere, I have even offered suggestions how they can become legal etc. but it is evident from their ignorance that they clearly understand their nature.

I don't care about bitcoins. I am programmer with interest in algorithms associated with cryptocurrency.

Yes, I am defaming them by exposing their scam & my intention was to save my fellow Indians.
But most people are ignorant to not care so its fine. Go buy trests & enjoy.

Dear Palmcoins,

Go watch that video. Especially the part where I ask Benson about altcoins & notice him getting uncomfortable.
I have been opposing him ever since I joined here because he is bullish on bitcoin.
Me however, being a programmer, am only concerned with the algorithms of various coins.

As for the proof, none of the questions in this post has been answered but ignored.

All of this, if we pretend to forget that Trestor is illegal

Yes, exactly that is why this thread is misleading.

The title of this thread says what exactly Trestor is not. It tries to defame the foundation. Trestor Foundation and team members have been able to answer all the questions put up by community members. Now everyone knows that this project is not a scam but a project which is in process of doing a number of things and in that process sometimes things get miscommunicated too.

Also, it's not required to remove the thread, but it the title should be not be misleading, and should be summarizing the discussion. It can be : "Questions for Trestor" or something on the lines, but not accusive.

I hope you understand. I respect you and as you are the moderator, I seek help from you on this.

This has been marked as a bad report as there are many personal opinions on this thread, along with newer ones coming up as well from multiple people. And now that there are posts all over the forum, I cannot remove something because you'll have cross answered and posted and anyone reading needs to take comments from this post into their judgements as well.


Another bad report, as skang and myself do not work together.


Note: I won't be handling anymore of these trestor reports - will be marking as ignore. And someone else should be able to pick them up.

According to wikipedia, Market Cap is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding. In this case, a share is comparable to a Trest. Since, 1 Trest = 0.01 USD, and a total of 100 Bn trests are there; the market Cap is $1 B.

The next question, why does the price does not fluctuate or stays fixed?
As of right now, market price for trests does not fluctuate much because Trestor Foundation is actively engaged in market-making activities around that price. Over time, as more and more trests are out in market, our ability to make the market would go down.

Next question, if Market cap is 1Bn, then why isn't it listed on Coinmarketcap.com?
Trests are not on Coinmarketcap because Trestor hasn't yet made an effort to get listed on an exchange. However, the Whitepaper, Tech-Draft, APIs and the source code is open, http://trestor.org/source. (Small parts of code are still not added there as they are being worked for some improvements.)

Here, we believe that decentralization is a process, not a final state. Trestor is on track to make Trestor network (T-Net) fully decentralized. As of right now, the entry barrier to run a full Trestor node is high. We are accepting applications from academic institutions interested in running a Trestor full node, and upon successful due diligence process, they will run Trestor full nodes (Validators).

Trestor's control over T-Net will be over in near future. By October 1, 2015, T-Net will be fully decentralized and anyone with minimal resources would be able to run a full node.  At that point, we will be far more decentralized than Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency.

For Further discussion, please post to main thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-trestor-the-most-efficient-money-payment-and-market-system-in-the-world-1106047

This thread has already been reported for inaccurate and misleading content and the moderator should take action soon.

WTF - they claim a $1 B market cap in this article?!

http://cointelegraph.com/news/113467/90-of-all-the-cryptocurrencies-today-should-cease-to-exist-within-the-next-24-months

Complete BS.

That is not the complete history.

They have shown in another thread a complete chat history with indian forum moderator Benson , I thought its a good company when I saw their website but soon i realised that they hadnt hit any exchange site yet .

I doubt, we'd be able to defend "rational/irrational" arguments for long.
Why don't you stop having discussions here. These people are not your target audience and customer demographic. They're experienced with digital currency that doesn't mean high receptibility from business point of view.

Enjoy BTCIndia's rational trolling \m/

Palmcoins, however, seems intelligent enough not to be affected by your interpersonal influence through appreciative psychology.

Dear BTCIndia and Palmcoin,

Thank you for bringing some rationality and logic into this debate.

Technical whitepaper along with associated source code is scheduled for release tomorrow. It should help clear the fog.

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

Problem is state of mind.

Way to troll! There is no debate about initial pricing. The Indian law requires fixed pricing. And since they are centralised, the Indian law requires them to be registered as pre-paid instruments. And the Indian law also requires to be nation specific to avoid money laundering.

You are free to file a PIL and get it rectified, but until then they are illegal.

All of what I wrote is not my problem. My problem is that they are scamming people, which is besides them being illegal.

Palmcoins, A pyramid scheme is exactly what you describe. What you follow up with, is what trestor is doing practically in real life, but on paper they are posing otherwise.
The trestor network is posing as a cryptocurrency.

- If we consider them to be a cryptocurrency, the 'validators' in T-Net have no economic incentive to validate transactions. But 'validators' have to buy validating rights from trestor. Why would someone buy something with no benefit? They won't. So either they earn benefit through fees or through become retail merchants. Both of these are then pyramid schemes.

- If we consider them for what they are doing in real life, they are just a digital currency like paypal or paytm. But they are hiding behind cryptocurrency to eliminate national boundary boundations (which does not apply to a centralised currency) & fixed price boundations by Indian law and are thus a scam. Also, there is no way to 'buy'. Everything is a donation, so that the consumer is legally unprotected.

I hope you read there technical draft, then my comments in detail & I am sure you would understand that they are a scam.

There are literally more than 10 cryptocurrencies in this sub-sub-forum alone but do you see me calling them out?

I love all coins but I hate frauds. I don't know why Palmcoins and BTCIndia would support a scam.

I am not affiliated to any company nor do any coin & have no benefit in doing this but only wanted people to realize this scam. But rather I feel the community doesn't care.
People who understand the protocol should raise their voice about the scams otherwise it is gonna come back and bite the cryptocurrency scene in India.

To each his own.
Since I have pointed out all I wanted, I am gonna lock this thread in a day or two.

Great, so am gonna remove the tag and move this to the Alt Section.
You can lock it as well if you wish.

Am done with my questions as well

So much fuss about fixed price. Does anyone here believe that Pizza event established first price parity for Bitcoin which had no "intrinsic value" and that helped to create some "intrinsic value" for commons?

Well, Trestor you should have planned some market stunts. Like, 1 Kg of Caschew mozambique sold for 10,000 trestor and perhaps it would have second costliest Caschew deal someday in future.

And death of debates about initial pricing. I hope, you know answer to chicken and egg dilemma.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11423036 - May 19, 2015, 07:24:45 PM


http://www.ummid.com/news/2015/June/20.06.2015/trestor-partners-with-cameron.html


How did you'll move from 'very early stage of development' to $4mil in a month?


BTW @skang, these things have been informally tagged as e-fiat scams. I liked the sound of that .

Yes, Trestor is a scam in it's current form. It is not a cryptocurrency, but a centralised digital currency pyramid scheme that is trying to ride the cryptocurrency wave.

Trestor is illegal as per 'Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007', 'Notification No. FEMA 15/2000/RB dated May 3, 2001' and 'The Sale of Goods Act, 1930' and Customs (http://www.dov.gov.in/newsite3/section7.asp).

If you fix the value of a trest and make it country specific, you will become legal like paytm, paypal etc.

Dear Skang,

David's paper about Stellar protocol (SCP), which already forked due to faults. There is a reason why Stellar is now centralised and working with Ripple.


We are citing David's work in general, his SCP research was commissioned because of the fork, paper was released much later. 

Do you still think Trestor project deserves such a thread title?

Trestor - A confirmed cryptocurrency scam !


Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

Skang,

We are confident that you have genuine intentions and your motivation is to save the community from yet another altcoin fraud.

Trestor team is not a scam, just a bunch of Individuals who have come together to create something truly new and innovative. All of us are financially well placed, money is our secondary motivation, primary is to 'create something awesome which not only us, but our parents and our country can be proud of '
   
We will be happy to answer any more questions here.


Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

I am done saying what I had to.
'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it' but I hope people read everything and decide for themselves.

Trestor is now citing David's paper about Stellar protocol (SCP), which already forked due to faults. There is a reason why Stellar is now centralised and working with Ripple.
Anyways, Trestor doesn't use SCP or even byzantine consensus.

I have few questions as well. Just waiting for skang to finish.

Dear Skang,

Welcome back. Hope you had a fun trekking trip.

Trestor protocol makes no assumptions about the rational behavior of attacker. Compared to generic proof of-work/proof-of-stake schemes, our protocol has minimal computing requirements. UTXOs is not the only solution for distributed security. Prof David Mazieres, Head of Stanford's secure computing group has written extensively on this topic. http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/

Do you really mean the following statements: 

1.  A consensus is not enough; proof-of-work is also required.

2.  Worst still, if a majority decides that a transaction is valid, that transaction is validated, irrespective of any algorithm preventing trests to be created out of thin air; not even Trestor!


Also, we didn't quite understand the legal protection and two-level pyramid scheme accusation.

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

Trestor further admits:
3. Trests are 100% pre-mined (but since 100%mined means no mining they call it 'pre-assigned' & explanation is too complex so they will release separate document on it)
4. When you buy trests, its not a purchase but a donation, so there is no legal protection for you (because "Trest" is short for Trestor Donation Receipt & it could not have been Trestor Sale Receipt)

Here are the problems in the algorithm:
1. Account not UTXOs. In Trestor Network, ‘the state’ stores a list of accounts where each account has a balance, and a transaction is valid if the sending account has enough balance to pay for it.
- The definition of a coin as per Satoshi's paper is "electronic coin as a chain of digital signatures." In bitcoin, we could only store the addresses with their latest balance; why the hell do we need to store all the past transactions? Blockchain's space requirement problem solved isn't it? Brilliant? Absolutely not. Maintaining a chain of transactions is required to maintain the consensus of validated blocks. It means that even if a block is disputed, you could trace its origin right back to the coinbase.
Since Trestor is 100% premined, they are the ones issuing accounts and 'the state' maintains account balance, just like a bank.
If there is a dispute, there is no history and resolving it is purely a matter of Trestor's discretion.
Worst still, if a majority decides that a transaction is valid, that transaction is validated, irrespective of any algorithm preventing trests to be created out of thin air; not even Trestor!

2. Since there is no mining to validate transactions, the way to validate is, you pay (or rather donate?) Trestor to award you the designation of a 'Validator'.
Now when a transaction comes through, the validator can at best check if the sender's account has balance of trests. If so & if that validator has not approved a contradicting transaction before, they validate it.
Since the validators have no economic incentive to validate trests, why would they do so? To earn from fees or to earn by selling trests.
Both ways it is a two-level pyramid scheme where investors who will continue to recruit other investors for an incentive that is presented as an investment opportunity - the right to sell a particular product or to earn fees from them.

Even if all of the above was legal on some planet or that I am totally crazy to miss out on something, the algorithm is still flawed:
- In case of a double spend the transaction gets stuck, since validators can't vote against themselves. To resolve this they have implemented time-bound validity of nodes. This doesn't solve it. Consider a scenario where first 50% validated A->B and second half validated A->C at the same time. The transaction gets stuck. Votes expire after time t and now the first half votes for A->C & the transaction gets stuck again & so on..
- The value of t is not based on anything but pulled out of air.
- If more than 80 percent of a node’s peers have voted for a set of transactions, it goes through. The value 80% and node's peers (100) is based on nothing but pulled out of air.
- To make T-net scalable, a validator doesn't needs votes from 80% of the network but from random 100 validators. This randomization implementation would be out when Trestor open sources it's code on 1st July, but unless it is based on a physical system, it would most likely be predictable. Even if not, this list is stored by Trestor so is prone to corruption.
- When a new validator node gets set up, it will select a fixed number of peers (e.g. 100) from the known set and use their votes as a basis. At the same time, there will be about 100 nodes selecting this new validator as their basis. Graphs don't work that way. Suppose 4 kids are standing in a circle holding hands, as an example of 4 validators with 2 peers. When a fifth child comes and offers its two hands to be held by 2 random kids, the kids already in the network need to produce a third hand! Thus the number of edges in the graph changes unless the graph reorganizes itself for every newcomer which is a separate problem.
 

A funny thing is, all of the above would be legal and ok (though hackable) if you register as a pre-paid instrument like PAYTM or Paypal or a bank.

So to summarize people, Trestor has admitted to two things:
1. Proof-of-work is not required, a consensus is enough. (Comfortably ignoring the failure of consensus based systems like hashcash that existed much before bitcoin. Also, Trestor has no proof-of-whatever in their system, so there)
2. Value of a cryptocurrency is whatever people exchange it for. Treats however have fixed rate (, determined out of thin air.)


Yes, we admit it. Network consensus is enough.

As more and more Trests come out in the open market, exchange value of each Trest would begin to be subjectively determined by market participants.

Dear Trestor,
1. What is your justification of a 100% premined currency?
2. The only way to obtain trests is to buy them from the Trestor foundation. Why does the foundation lists every sale as a donation?

Strictly speaking, Trests are Pre-Assigned not pre-mined, because pre-mined is used where the creators of a protocol, mine some coins before opening their network to other mining participants. As, there is no mining in Trestor Network, Pre-Assigning is a more appropriate term. Justification for Pre-Assigning is strong but complex, therefore it will be detailed in our whitepaper. 

"Trest" is short for Trestor Donation Receipt (TDR). 

We look forward to understanding the flaws that you discovered. Enjoy the trek.

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

So to summarize people, Trestor has admitted to two things:
1. Proof-of-work is not required, a consensus is enough. (Comfortably ignoring the failure of consensus based systems like hashcash that existed much before bitcoin. Also, Trestor has no proof-of-whatever in their system, so there)
2. Value of a cryptocurrency is whatever people exchange it for. Treats however have fixed rate (, determined out of thin air.)

Let's move further.

Dear Trestor,
1. What is your justification of a 100% premined currency?
2. The only way to obtain trests is to buy them from the Trestor foundation. Why does the foundation lists every sale as a donation?

After this, we shall dig further the flaws in the algorithm..

(Since I am trekking won't have good internet for next 3 days, so might reply after that)

We will be happy to answer any other questions.

Thanks guys,

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

Dear Skang,

Thank you for elaborating on the question, it is much more clear now.

Thus a consensus is not enough; proof-of-work is also required. Why? What are these issues? And how does proof-of-work solve these issues?

Your principal argument is deeply flawed, consensus is enough, that is all one needs, consensus is the end goal and proof-of-work is the tool used by bitcoin protocol to make its network come to a consensus.

There are over 300 altcoins with many variations, there is only one thing common, in fact central to every coin without exception and that is 'Consensus'.

Proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, proof-of- are tools utilized to help the network come to a consensus.

The most fundamental difference between Trestor network (T-Net) and bitcoin/alts is that we have Insulated the 'current state of the network' from 'history of the network'

Therefore T-Net transactions are always 100% confirmed whereas in bitcoin no transaction ever gets completely confirmed, every transaction is theoretically open to an overwrite. This does not in any way mean that bitcoin is unsafe, it just means that bitcoin network cannot guarantee probabilistic certainty.

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

Yes sir, and you did not need to assume since you are the previous poster in this thread above.


Cool that you recognize that the value of bitcoin is what individuals wish to trade it for.


Let's say few of us friends decide to create a playmoney system, where everyone gets equal amount of some starting money to pay others with. Whenever someone owes someone else money, they simply mail this information to everyone, saying that "I pay so&so this much money". This mail-chain is a ledger, that everyone of our friends have and thus everyone knows who paid whom what; basically a consensus. Transactions declared that conflict with previous transactions are not accepted. No one can double spend etc because there is a consensus reached by mail-chain.

This is system is the first part of bitcoin system, like the hashcash system that existed before bitcoin. A simplified version of this system is very commonly used in daily life among friends living together in hostels, where they don't actually pay money but just keep an oral record of who owes whom what and then pay up when money arrives.

But there are some problems in this system, because it won't work for large groups even if everyone has good memory(lets say they write it down in their diaries), and also other issues because of which hashcash like systems don't work.

Thus a consensus is not enough; proof-of-work is also required. Why? What are these issues? And how does proof-of-work solve these issues?

***

The reason why I asked these two questions is that I just wanted you to understand with respect to trests is that :
- Value of a trest is not decided by trading individuals
- T-net eliminates proof-of-work mining by a consensus system of validators. But simply a consensus is not enough, your understanding of which would be demonstrated by your answer to the above.

Dear Skang,

We assume you are asking these question from Trestor. We will try our level best to reply.

What gives bitcoin value? How is the price of 1 bitcoin determined? Why?

Bitcoin is an intentionally designed,  decentralized, peer to peer virtual currency. For the first time in human history, we have created a global currency which is neither backed by the market (commodity money) or the state (fiat money).

Bitcoin has properties resulting from the system's design that allows them to be subjectively valued by individuals. This valuation is demonstrated when individuals freely exchange Bitcoins over various global exchanges. This voluntary exchange between buyers and sellers determines the real time value of Bitcoin at that particular instant.

2. Since we already have consensus in the form of blockchain, what is the use of "proof-of-work" in bitcoin?

Not sure if we understand the above question, could you please elaborate?

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect

Since this thread was marked unresolved, let us try and resolve it.

Before I point out flaws in the algorithm and why the implementation is scammy, I request you to answer the following 2 questions:
1. What gives bitcoin value? How is the price of 1 bitcoin determined? Why?
2. Since we already have consensus in the form of blockchain, what is the use of "proof-of-work" in bitcoin?

SCAM CONFIRMED (or stupidity maybe? But since they took people's money I'll call it scam.)

Please read their algorithm for yourself : http://pastebin.com/bCs37CLb

Hello Skang and other India community members,

NDA would not be required, here's a link to our Technical Draft.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/182td7t8jMVKEr3K6yVwXvmeZjuC2o0vlaQ91iz0jJIA/edit?usp=sharing

Apologies for not keeping in touch, we would greatly appreciate any feedback/suggestions, feel free to comment in as your read.  

Details of our Physical offices:

Toronto, Canada:   Suite 608, 120 Eglinton Avenue East, Toronto, M4P1E2. Phone: +1-416-605-1295

Chandigarh, India:  Plot # J-7, Rajiv Gandhi IT Park, Chandigarh, India Phone: +91-0172-6579292, +91-76965-71000

Seoul, Korea: 197-33, Guro 3-Dong, Guro-Gu, Seoul Phone: +82-10-9910-2173


Regards,

Trestor Team
www.trestor.org
@trestorconnect
www.facebook.com/trestor.org

Thanks a lot Benson!

Kunal,
1. Please share the 'tech-draft' for a review, I'll sign an NDA if you need, although it violates one of your '4 principles'.
2. Please share your Indian registrations.

Kunal's intro on the Trestor website:
"Kunal is an astute student of money and human cognitive biases, he builds his models by leveraging the fact that human beings are visibly irrational, especially in a group/tribe format."

From the FAQ on the site :

Benson Samuel
5:45 PM (20 hours ago)

to me
Telling me this is not going to help.
You need to address the forums and explain why we are incorrect.


Kunal Dixit <[email protected]>
5:56 PM (20 hours ago)

to Benson
Yes. You are right. Will do that over the weekend. I really appreciate your effort in shaping and leading a healthy cryptocurrency community in India.

You should post the rest of that mail trail as well..

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/critical-problems-with-trestor-read-before-use-1057794

Kunal,

Either you guys are marketing your product in a very wrong way, without getting consensus of the people who understand this technology, or you are running a scam.

Do clarify on the Thread.

Best wishes,
Benson

Kunal Dixit <[email protected]>
4:46 PM (21 hours ago)


Hi Benson,

Thank you for bringing this to my notice. We are obviously not a scam because to be called a valid scam you need at-least one victim who got scammed by the potential scammer.

I encourage Indian bitcoin community to call our Retail Partners, this would help Trestor because this community driven quality assurance would help us identify Retail Partner who lack appropriate knowledge to answer a Trestor related query then maybe we need to drop their name from our website. 

As a confidence building measure, I will share our non-public 'Tech-Draft' along with other critical research content with you in a separate mail.

Trestor is proudly Indian, I assure you that Trestor team is fully committed to financial inclusion and decentralization.


Kunal Dixit
Founder
Trestor Foundation
www.trestor.org

It' sad to see that people try this hard to make their scams and ponzi schemes look realistic enough so that people may become their victim instead of just putting an equal effort into creating something that might actually be beneficial for the bitcoin community and play a vital role in developing and enriching the cryptocurrency world through their efforts...

I was excited to see a crypto company coming up in India at first, but kinda went sour as I saw their marketing/ product.
It does bug me when I can see that another crypto-scam-news is around the corner from India.

If you have any suggestions on how, as a community, we can address this, I'll be glad to chip in.

Sorry, I got you wrong then. I thought you doubted there. We are on the same page here.

But they got there, if those were the words you were looking for.

Brilliant for who? As far as I can see they are doing lie filled marketing and trying to sell a scam. That would be quite rotten.

They do not access the forums, so what do you want me to do here? Who said that they were not scammers?

Lol

I want to know why there doing this? It is one of the easiest things to investigate and turn them over. Yet they continue to show this.

They have been scammers all along and their marketing has been brilliant! What are you talking about Benson?
What substance do you want? Would you only believe they are scammers if and when they do run away with the fiat?
They specifically stopped answering once people called out their bluff. They knew they couldn't argue with people who understood the protocol so took their business offline. They have a meeting this wednesday in chandigarh; send someone and verify if you please.

I ask you 2 simple questions:
1. What gives bitcoin value? Now, what gives trestor value?
2. Trestor is using consensus instead of proof-of-work. We already have consensus ledger in the form of blockchain, then why do we need proof-of-work in bitcoin?

Only a person who doesn't understand the bitcoin protocol would doubt them of not being scammers.

They were last online in April when some of the posts question their merchants were posted. Since they didn't care replying, I would still doubt they are not a scam, or not running it in a fishy manner.

They also have a team listed, which I highly doubt is real. Their currency actually promises nothing new, and it seems they are just relying on the fact that not a lot of people are aware of bitcoin, to market their own digital currency.

I would love to see a trestor reply in this thread. I do not believe that they started with the intention, to 'scam'.
The marketing that they have pursued is rotten and that needs to be addressed.

This thread seems scattered with intentions and opinions rather than something real and substantial.

I am aware of the phone calls to merchants who have denied their involvement with Trestor, but would be awesome if they could come over here and clarify once and for all.

that's actually tragic, given that zebpay and other bitcoin related Indian companies are a lot better than Trestor... and they really are taking part in strengthening the bitcoin community by their works... unlike Trestor which even though being a scam gets all the limelight... 

What is unfortunate is that when finally people lose money, I am sure the media will report it as a scam involving "Trestor - a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin".  
                                                   

Even companies like Zebpay and other bitcoin related companies are by Indian founders as well, and even got investments. But even then, you would see no mention of them in the newspapers.
Perhaps, if you are in one of the cities where the meetups are happening , someone should visit.

I read that post... the guy was talking about the merchant in Australia.
I was asking about merchants located in India.
anyhoo...Trestor's a scam... and that's what really matters... informing people where to invest and where not...



that's actually hilarious... i guess trestor was given such publicity and importance by Indian papers because it was launched by an Indian "enterpreneur"...   

It is funny to see that the mainstream media that does not give good coverage to bitcoin has given such a coverage to this scam...

i. http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/tech/indian-entrepreneur-kunal-dixit-launches-new-currency-ecosystem/38146/

ii. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Chaiwalas-golgappewalas-to-market-digital-currency-in-India/articleshow/46097663.cms

There is actually a reply there on the ANN thread where a guy tried to call up a number on the list : https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10445239

And seemed he had no idea about Trestor or any Cryptocurrency .

saw the thread... seems they were anxious to get involved in the cryptocurrency world... but stopped posting in the thread...


Did anyone try to ring the listed merchant in India???
If so, what did they say?

Anyway, thanks for the thread... lot of newbies are out there like me who got to know about the scam...

It is a clear scam, but seems they are relying on trapping people new to the bitcoin and the digital currency ecosystem. They are also trying to get investments for their company or altcoin, which will definitely lead to a scam.

Here is their ANN Thread on the Indian Subforum : https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ann-trestor-the-most-efficient-money-payment-and-market-system-in-the-world-890008

Thank you for the warning. My friend suggest me but I told him I need to check bitcointalk first. Now I need to warn others.

I posted on that thread too ... scam written all over. Please be careful everyone

Retail Partners
Retail Partners are independent retail businesses that support us by accepting donations on behalf of
Trestor Foundation and give out Trests (Trestor Donation Receipts).
As a Retail Partner, you can accept donations in US Dollar or any currency of your preference and give out equivalent Trests to the donors.

According to them, they are a non profit organization based in canada, So basically it means, they are accepting foreign donations through these retailers and issuing digital tokens without having a non profit organization and proper license in India.


I guess, we need to ask
Who's generating trezors and sending to retailers?
What they are doing with the donations?
Why do the need bitcoins and FIAT if trestor is better ?
LOL it's like asking people to donate all their real money and bitcoins to them and believe in a currency that popped up out of nowhere, while they are having fun with the real cash just because they have listed some retailers name on their website.

 

Yet they still have hundreds of merchants all over India.
All the numbers are there on the website, in the map at the bottom of the page. We really need to start calling and explaining the poor merchants.

It's definitely a scam,I remember posting about them many months ago.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.10374466

Edit:
Problems that Trestor admitted in the thread:
1. Proof-of-work is not required, a consensus is enough. (Thus trestor validators' consensus is needed to be trusted & they can change anyone's trests.)
2. Value of a cryptocurrency is whatever people exchange it for. Treats however have fixed rate (No other cryptocurrency "sells" their currency.)
3. Trests are 100% pre-mined
4. When you buy trests, its not a purchase but a donation, so there is no legal protection for you.

Problems that Trestor's developers said they did not understand:
1. Trests only get sent from one app to another if they are validated by validators. The right to become a validator is by "buying" it from trestor but there is no return as profit! So why would someone become a validator? Either to earn from fees or to earn by selling trests. Thus it becomes a pyramid scheme where investors who will continue to recruit other investors for an incentive that is presented as an investment opportunity - the right to sell a particular product or to earn fees from them.
2. If there is a dispute, there is no history and resolving it is purely a matter of Trestor's discretion.
3. Even if trestor starts saving the history, there is no proof of it's correctness since they do not use proof-of-work or anything. thus every new participant in the network needs to trust the pre-existing validators. Thus also vulnerable to mitm.
4. If a majority decides that a transaction is valid, that transaction is validated, irrespective of any algorithm preventing trests to be created out of thin air; not even Trestor, because again, they have no proof-of-work.
5. In case of a double spend the transaction gets stuck, since validators can't vote against themselves. To resolve this they have implemented time-bound validity of nodes. This doesn't solve it. Consider a scenario where first 50% validated A->B and second half validated A->C at the same time. The transaction gets stuck. Votes expire after time t and now the first half votes for A->C & the transaction gets stuck again & so on..

All of this is apart from the problems in legality & code.
Is it legal to send any centralised form of money from a foreign country to India?


Old Content:
I recently traveled to chandigarh and came across a very active cryptocurrency community here to my surprise!
On further investigation, see for yourself : https://trestor.org/

http://www.meetup.com/Trestor-Connect-Chandigarh-Chapter/ supposedly going all over India!

Spread the word please, save people.