This is your regular reminder that the Liquid signers are not public. Storing money in Liquid is “trust whoever Blockstream says you should trust but you don’t get to know who they are”.
Fine for money you are happy losing, but even storing your money in Coinbase is way more sane.
I had no idea, and personally stay the hell away from liquid, but to play the devils advocate, isn't one of the greatest risks of the pow-less blockchains the ability to pressure the verifiers to misbehave? A close second being collusion?
Don't get me wrong, this is a pretty crude way to fix those problems, but it does kinda fix them.
The issue is that we don't know how diverse that panel of signers are.
It could be that every signer is registered at Blockstream and that the list is known to government agencies and marked as top secret to prevent us from knowing it.
So then one or more governments might have the power to coerce a majority of signers and they know how to do it discreetly too, but we don't know this.
Conspiracy theory? Maybe, but until we know, we don't know.
Agree up to "storing your money in Coinbase is way more sane". No idea how a single kyc exchange could be a better option
Exactly. It's a bit like how Tether, on paper, is a dreadful idea. In practice, it got a lot more usage than supposedly more legit options. Storing up trouble for the future? Yep, almost certainly. And bitcoin is better as a sovereign store of value. But these things are not clear cut.
I dunno, one company you know who they are and where they’re based and you can sue them if your money disappears vs an unknown set of companies in unknown jurisdiction with unknown assets to back things up and unknown security practices? Sure, privacy is great but if you wanted privacy you weren’t using a custodial system to begin with.
Exactly. No federation list, only members in the advisory comities and whatever.
Those members are functionaries, aka signers, as far as I understood. That is what they mean by "expanding the federation".
It is curious though, that a proper list (other than all the logos in the image I linked earlier) indeed does not seem to exist.
OTOH, it's not like they are keeping the members hidden, or the size of the federation, you can find this in their blog posts over time.
They may announce some of them, but there’s no authoritative list - I assume if some leave it won’t be announced. Also no idea what the required threshold is.
Perhaps nostr:nprofile1qqsfy229w70e8lgtxavlz9t78k06yrel6fxyhreteafqet8kfxhhwmg2c6av2 could clarify.
Damn, weren't you a cofounder...
Still 11of15? I think I heard there were plans to grow that number. I wonder if secrecy is to try to protect against government/regulatory attacks. Its use in wallets like Aqua & Breez is quite convenient. And extra privacy of blinded payment amounts much appreciated. Main chain bitcoin in and out of Liquid maybe nice privacy mixer if threat model not too severe. Wouldn't say amounts are money happy to lose, but could afford to lose. I wonder if with the advent of a service like Boltz if moving in and out could be considered less permissioned.
Liquid is best considered a pass-thru vehicle, more of a bypass lane than a parking lot. Like Lightning, it's meant for petty cash spending, either by exchanges or LN channel balancing of accounts. Storing value is best done with self-custodied offline key-signers, in large amounts, on an infrequent basis.
If you're storing value on exchanges, in Liquid, or LN, you aren't using your tiols properly. Off label use always has inherent risks, no matter the prescription.
what’s Blockstream reasoning on this? safeguard the signers?
OTOH making the signers private reduces risks of them being compromised by force.
Same as how Tether refusing to release details about their bank accounts was arguably a good thing.
