commit f2cce10f5d5354d48031143a3ed0464887b0a4ce
parent c463222a6d4aaa66fbe51b3f38742886393c7f00
Author: Florian Dold <florian.dold@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2016 14:48:43 +0200
Marcello's fixes
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)
diff --git a/summary/taler.tex b/summary/taler.tex
@@ -41,10 +41,10 @@
GNU Taler is a new digital payment system currently under development at INRIA.
It aims to strike a balance between radically decentralized technologies such
-as Bitcoin and traditional payment methods, while satisfying stricter ethical
+as Bitcoin and traditional payment methods while satisfying stricter ethical
requirements such as customer privacy, taxation of merchants and environmental
consciousness through efficiency. We also address micropayments, which are
-infeasable with currently used payment systems due to high transaction costs.
+infeasible with currently used payment systems due to high transaction costs.
Addressing the problem of micropayments is urgent. The overwhelming majority of
online journalists, bloggers and content creators currently depend on
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@ payments, GNU Taler is not based on blockchain technology, but on Chaum-style
digital payments \cite{chaum1990untraceable} with additional constructions based on elliptic curve
cryptography. Our work addresses practical problems that previous incarnations
of Chaum-style digital payments suffered from. The system is entirely composed
-of free software components, which facilitates easier adoption, standardization
+of free software components, which facilitates adoption, standardization
and community involvement.
From the consumer's perspective, Taler's payment model comes closer to the
@@ -79,22 +79,21 @@ risk involved with each individual payment is the amount being payed for that
single transaction.
+% token -- use other word instead?
In Taler, the paying customer is only required to disclose minimal private
information (as required by local law), while the merchant's transactions are
completely transparent to the state and thus taxable. Taxable merely means
that the state can obtain the necessary information about the contract to levy
common forms of income, sales or value-added taxes, not that the system imposes
-any particular tax code. When customers pay, they use unlinkable digital
-payment tokens to sign a contract with the merchant. The contract is proposed
-by the merchant and is supposed to contain all of the information required for
-taxation -- which typically excludes the identity of the customer. Later, the
-state can obtain the contract by following a chain of cryptographic tokens,
-starting from a token in the wire transfer from the Taler payment system
-operator to the merchant. The payment system operator only learns the total
-value of a contract, but no further details about the contract. The payment
-system operator also learns who the issuer of the digital payment tokens was;
-beyond this, the payment process itself reveals no further information about
-the identity of the customer.
+any particular tax code. When customers pay, they use anonymized digital
+payment tokens to sign a contract with the merchant. The digitally signed
+contract is proposed by the merchant and is supposed to contain all the
+information required for taxation -- which typically excludes the identity of
+the customer. Later, the state can obtain the contract by following a chain of
+cryptographic tokens, starting from a token in the wire transfer from the Taler
+payment system operator to the merchant. The payment system operator only
+learns the total value of a contract, but no further details about the
+contract or customer.
To pay with GNU Taler, customers need to install an electronic wallet on their
computing device. Once such a wallet is present, the fact that the user does
