Re: [Taler] (docs) taler-in-a-nutshell.txt

[Sebastian Javier Marchano]

Thien, from another newbie I can say that I find this overview really interesting. What I think it may confuse is in step 5 where it says "These coins are not anonymous", since coins do not change its condition but is the merchant who reveals its identity in the operation.

I was thinking how to put it in simple words and maybe what's missing is the concept of the contract. 

Maybe:

In step 3.5 merchant creates a contract with the terms, currency and amount.

In step 4, either the merchant or the consumer are able to send the (contract + coins) to the exchange. In return it gives a receipt.

In step 5, the consumer can call the exchange to get the coins left over from the payment.

I'm not entirely sure so my comments may need a review if that's how the protocol works.

--
Sebastian

On Wed, 10 Feb 2021 at 05:59, Christian Grothoff <grothoff@gnunet.org> wrote:

Some comments...

1) Your nutshell is missing the Taler auditor, very crucial entity --
otherwise people tend to wonder why anyone should 'trust' the exchange.

2) Of course you can include our existing diagram(s) in any way you see
fit. Note that it omits the auditor to keep it 'simple'. We have others
that include the auditor, but not the banks.

3) Where to put it? I guess we could add an 'introduction' chapter, that
describes all of the components and also points to the various chapters
that document those in detail (links to exchange, auditor, merchant,
wallet manual chapters, Taler is a protocol, hence API spec chapter,
Taler is Free Sofware, hence developer chapter, etc.).

My 2 cents

Christian

On 2/10/21 12:56 AM, Thien-Thi Nguyen wrote:
>
> Please find attached taler-in-a-nutshell.txt, a wip overview
> (very brief) of how Taler works, based entirely on diagram on
> figure 4.1 (page 75) of Florian's PhD thesis.
>
>
>
> The intended audience is complete newbies (like myself).
>
> My questions are:
>
> (a) Is this accurate?  If not, what could be improved?
>
> (b) Where to put this in the docs tree?  Can we include that
>     (excellent) diagram as well?
>
> Thanks in advance for any feedback/guidance on this.
>