taler.tex (6373B)
1 \documentclass{article} 2 \usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry} 3 \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 4 \usepackage{wrapfig} 5 6 \usepackage{graphicx} 7 \usepackage{url} 8 \title{GNU Taler: \\ 9 Ethical Online Payments for the Internet Age} 10 11 \begin{document} 12 13 \author{Florian Dold \and Christian Grothoff} 14 15 \maketitle 16 17 % Teaser missing! 18 % Too much crypto lingo 19 % structure (context -> problem -> solution -> impact) 20 % Advertisements, local currencies 21 % mention that p2p systems lack payments 22 % discuss bitcoin better 23 % balance between privacy and taxability 24 % we don't mention energy efficiency aspect 25 % mention asymmetry 26 % used to read too much like a manifesto 27 % bring in the news distribution stuff 28 % internet of things: privacy concerns 29 30 %\emph{Teaser: 31 %The internet urgently needs a new payment system to supplant the crumbling ad 32 %industry as a revenue source for independent journalists, bloggers and other 33 %content creators. 34 %} 35 36 37 38 %\begin{center} 39 %\includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{anonymous.png} 40 %\end{center} 41 42 GNU Taler is a new digital payment system currently under development at INRIA. 43 It aims to strike a balance between radically decentralized technologies such 44 as Bitcoin and traditional payment methods while satisfying stricter ethical 45 requirements such as customer privacy, taxation of merchants and environmental 46 consciousness through efficiency. Taler also addresses micropayments, which are 47 infeasible with currently used payment systems due to high transaction costs. 48 49 Addressing the problem of micropayments is urgent. The overwhelming majority of 50 online journalists, bloggers and content creators currently depend on 51 advertisement revenue for their income. The recent surge of ad-blocking 52 technology is threatening to destroy this primary source of income for many 53 independent online journalists and bloggers. Furthermore the existing 54 advertisement industry is based on the Big Data business model, and users do 55 not only pay with their attention but also with private information about their 56 behavior. This threatens to move our society towards 57 post-democracy~\cite{rms2013democracy}. Our goal is to empower consumers and 58 content creators by giving the choice to opt for micropayments instead of 59 advertisements. 60 61 Unlike many recent developments in the field of privacy-preserving online 62 payments, GNU Taler is not based on blockchain technology, but on Chaum-style 63 digital payments \cite{chaum1990untraceable} with additional constructions based on elliptic curve 64 cryptography. Our work addresses practical problems that previous incarnations 65 of Chaum-style digital payments suffered from. The system is entirely composed 66 of free software components, which facilitates adoption, standardization 67 and community involvement. 68 69 From the consumer's perspective, Taler's payment model comes closer to the 70 expectations one has when paying with cash than with credit cards. Customers 71 do not need to authenticate themselves with personally identifying information 72 to the merchant or the payment processor. Instead, individual payments are 73 authorized locally on the customer's computing device. This rules out a number 74 of security issues associated with identity theft. We expect that this will 75 also lower the barrier for online transactions due to the lower risk for the 76 customer. With current payment solutions, the risk of identity theft 77 accumulates with every payment being made. With our payment system, the only 78 risk involved with each individual payment is the amount being payed for that 79 single transaction. 80 81 82 % token -- use other word instead? 83 In Taler, the paying customer is only required to disclose minimal private 84 information (as required by local law), while the merchant's transactions are 85 completely transparent to the state and thus taxable. Taxable merely means 86 that the state can obtain the necessary information about the contract to levy 87 common forms of income, sales or value-added taxes, not that the system imposes 88 any particular tax code. When customers pay, they use anonymized digital 89 payment tokens to sign a contract with the merchant. The digitally signed 90 contract is proposed by the merchant and is supposed to contain all the 91 information required for taxation -- which typically excludes the identity of 92 the customer. Later, the state can obtain the contract by following a chain of 93 cryptographic tokens, starting from a token in the wire transfer from the Taler 94 payment system operator to the merchant. The payment system operator only 95 learns the total value of a contract, but no further details about the 96 contract or customer. 97 98 To pay with GNU Taler, customers need to install an electronic wallet on their 99 computing device. Once such a wallet is present, the fact that the user does 100 not have to authenticate to pay fundamentally improves usability. We already 101 see today that electronic wallets like GooglePay are being deployed to simplify 102 payments online. However, the dominant players mostly simplify credit card 103 transactions without actually improving privacy or security for citizens. GNU 104 Taler is privacy-preserving free software and both technically and legally 105 designed to protect the interests of its users. 106 107 We plan to use Taler as the basis for future research that investigates 108 censorship-resistant news distribution in decentralized social networks. In 109 addition to online payments, we eventually want to adapt GNU Taler to mobile 110 payments with NFC-enabled devices. We hope that mobile Taler payments will 111 further the proliferation of local currencies (such as the Abeille in France), 112 which are currently popular in parts of Europe, but suffer from practical 113 problems such as easy counterfeiting and the limitation to physical coupons. 114 115 GNU Taler was started at TU Munich in April 2014 and is now being coordinated 116 by the TAMIS team\footnote{\url{https://www.inria.fr/en/teams/tamis}} at INRIA 117 Rennes, with contributions from the free software community at large and the 118 GNUnet project\footnote{\url{https://gnunet.org/}} in particular. The initial 119 research is being funded by ARED and the Renewable Freedom 120 Foundation\footnote{\url{https://renewablefreedom.org/}}, but we plan to launch 121 a startup to drive the commercial adaptation of the technology. We encourage 122 readers to try our prototype for Taler at \url{https://demo.taler.net/}. 123 124 125 \bibliographystyle{alpha} 126 \bibliography{taler,ui} 127 128 \end{document}