How we might market a DBC’s (Digital Bearer Certificate) Unique/Cash-like features

Aaa yes, there is no record on DBC’s within the SafeNetwork, whereas transactions with a paper wallet will be public ( pseudo anonymous)

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I’m liking the bits and pieces I see of this but coming in clueless about what DBCs are … is there a description of DBC? … a quick Google throws first post to Contracts with Bearer | Satoshi Nakamoto Institute from 1997 and second to this forum and this thread… but I wonder above is a lot of “is this true” queries.

If DBC stands outside of Safe Network, that seems a neat trick and will provide assurance but what is this if it’s not blockchain… how is a confirmation against a wallet made??.. where is DBC reference point for confirming the state of a wallet??

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I think the key point is that the network acts like a notary, or a bank, signing the DBC so that anyone can verify its authenticity.

You don’t need a ledger to check against because the network acts as a kind of guarantor and if it contains SNT the network will honour this and credit an account based purely on the authenticity of the DBC, not by checking a separate record.

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If network down/up, then method for continuity?.. but seems a good way forward. I suppose an expectation that the whole network doesn’t stop, is fair but the way that it all comes together again will need to be known to support the whole economy… unless there is a fallback that DBCs are outside network but for the sig and any worst case could still action going forward. All very new but exciting idea!

No wallet needed. So a Dbc has a parent Dbc hash in it. You can check the parent hash is in the spent book (it’s been split and this Dbc is a child). You check this Dbc is not in spentbook and bobs yer uncle.

So no blockchain and no transaction history. Transactions don’t really exist. Dbcs are not stored on the network. Only the hash of spent ones are.

Ownerless Dbc (cash) have no notion of belonging. Like cash, the holder owns it. The network does not need to know the owner, just to check it’s valid and re-min or re-issue it.

Now we might ask, if it’s cash can the network not just keep it or issue to themselves, but no. As it’s given for re-issue the Elders note the inputs and output (hashes) and sign it. No Elder itself can sign it over (it’s threshold sigs). So the client gathers the sigs and completes the transaction by handing back the network signed SpentToken. That’s stored and we are good.

This is where we mixed AT2 and Dbc together to provide a mechanism that gives us atomic transactions.

Note though a transaction is per Dbc NOT per wallet. So you can have a million Dbc’s and spend them concurrently.

So take the speed of AT2 with the hassle of spend one at a time plus the benefits of Dbc with the problem of atomic re-issue and add to spend book at the same time and we have a neat system.

i.e. Take the benefit of AT2 and throw away the bad bits (one at a time transaction plus distributed ledger - i.e. traceable) plus the benefits of Dbc (untraceable) and concurrent and throw away the bad bits (atomic re-issue)

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“Safe cash” seems like the simplest label / name for thing being described in this discussion.

People understand cash.

Cheers Nick

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There is a certain usecase for DBCs that does have a cash-like quality, however there are some nuances to it.

However there are other use cases for DBCs which are more rich, and have other features that make them un-cash-like.

In the end they give us a suite of additional solutions over and above what standard crypto currencies allow. You could anticitpate these features might end up feeling like distinct different things, and be called different things by people using the Network, even if they are all DBC powered under the hood.

We will see though!

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My final answer is ‘article’.

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Safe Note seems reasonable since promissory Notes were used for cash. But Safe Note could also suit the un-cash-like features

Is DBC a stable currency? exchanging SNT 1:1?

No, I think of it more as digital value we can transact with offline. (That is my take anyway)

Try to catch up over here

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What can the DBC value prove?

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Welcome to the community @brosmos! Mind taking this discussion to the topic @Josh provided above? How we might market a DBC’s (Digital Bearer Certificate) Unique/Cash-like features

Or maybe @mods can move it for us.

Not sure I fully understand your question but to answer it literally I would say DBC’s prove that it reliably represents the specified amount of the Safe Network Token being transacted/transferred and to whom. Also all anonymously. DBC can be exchanged half offline (think like Safe Network Tokens were put on a gift card and you could spend from that or merge balances from many gift cards assigned to you (or to no one) into one, and that value could be spent in the real world environment or be put back into the network) or it can be online or carry payloads of other data with it which could extend to many possibilities, true and secured NFT’s being just one application.

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Thanks for the answer : )

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A great thread continuing the conversation on DBC’s for Safe Network now that things are becoming tangible.

Plus other related DBC threads

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I’ve read a lot of articles about offline transactions below.
I’m not an expert on cryptography, so I may be misunderstanding something.

But I think DBC’s offline transactions are almost impossible.

This is because, unlike the physical world, the digital world cannot distinguish the original from the copies. I’ll call this the replication problem. A physical cash rarely suffers from this problem, or counterfeiting, because of superior nature of the physical world that distinguishes the copies from the original.

So, in the physical world, when you withdraw money online from an ATM, money that existed as digital data is turned into physical cash. For this reason, these systems don’t suffer from copy problems.

However, DBCs are a race against which if multiple identical DBCs exist, which one gets reissued first. Thus the offline trading of DSCs cannot solve the replication problem because they only trade digital data. Then it 's the race who gets reissued online first. For this reason, I am very negative about using DBCs for offline transactions.

Maybe there is something I misunderstood.

Hey @loum Yes, full offline capability where one could consider a DBC as good as cash is not fully solved because of the first to reissue problem you mention. There is half offline capability though where you can make out a DBC to a recipient and give it to them offline. It’s effectively reissued to them before you physically hand off a cert.

This could be good for something like a gift card for Christmas or something.

I think we’ve mentioned earlier in the thread that perhaps a wallet app(s) following certain specifications could do a offline device to device transfer via Bluetooth where the senders amount is locked up until the recipient goes online. The recipients newly received amount isn’t spendable till going online to get the reissue.
I’d think of those offline transactions as a ‘pending’ transaction that is only guaranteed by the apps following the set specifications and the recipient eventually getting back online.
Not perfect but an idea.

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Thanks for the good feedback. :grinning:

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Yeah, just too reiterate what Nigel is saying here. It’s perhaps asking a little to much of a digital currency to reliable go full offline, however functionally half-offline is super usable and brings a lot to the table especially for the current holder of funds… they could effectively operate in an offline-like state.

An example: Picture a scenario where I withdraw an amount of tokens as ‘paper DBCs’ before embarking a shopping trip, spending a little each time at a series of stores, and then the remainder I can deposit back into my account. For me as the holder, I’m transacting in and offline way. I don’t need to take a device with me, nor have a network connection. It’s the recipient, in this case the shop EPOS, that does the verification and deposits the DBCs.

Same scenario for trading between individuals. As the buyer, I can be offline, the seller online for the deposit.

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Yes, trust. In the abstract, all full-offline money only works by having a trusted authority to guard against counterfeits. Coins are stamped by a mint to state their purity/value, cash printed by a treasury, cashier checks by a bank. The naive solution to full-offline capability will likely be a full-offline method involving trusted authorities. More brainstorming is needed to have the safe network itself integrate offline protections, but it may not be necessary.

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