Establishing a tab in cryptotokens?

While the idea may seem foreign to the mainstream, it is actually the center of an agreement that finds the non-profit organization behind the world's eighth largest block chain, the Stellar Development Foundation, funding the co-founders of OKCupid and its new startup focused on cryptography. , Keybase.

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Released exclusively to CoinDesk, Keybase has accepted an undisclosed investment from Stellar.

But while the terms of the agreement are not known, the startup was not shy about bragging about the alleged size. Stellar was so enthusiastic about the concept, that the company now says he will not have to follow a round of Serie B.

And it is not small thing. Founded in 2014, Keybase is based on improving end-to-end encryption, an objective that has secured 10.8 million dollars in risk funds in a round run by Andreessen Horowitz.

Thursday's agreement, however, is not a typical VC round. (As evidence, Stellar does not take a seat on the Keybase board.) "It's a very friendly and mutually beneficial agreement. It's significantly less formal than a traditional investment round, "said Keybase co-founder Chris Coyne.

But if the idea and its participants sound surprising, Coyne, who helped launch the famous compiler of American dating in the 2000s, sees it as a continuation of years of interest in cryptocurrencies.

In fact, almost at the end of his time in the search giant, Coyne and his partners made OKCupid one of the first recognized technology companies to accept payments in bitcoins.

Coyne remembers :

"What I realized while this integration was happening was that people had to go through this great effort to acquire this Bitcoin, and then we just took it off. It never felt as if something was really happening on the consumer side. "

Now, as co-founder of Keybase (along with another co-founder of OKCupid, Maxwell Krohn), Coyne believes that his company has built an infrastructure that could accelerate person-to-person payments through stellar work and the use of its cryptocurrency.

To begin with, Keybase is accepting the funds in what he jokingly calls "dirty fiat", although over time, he indicated that it will allow customers to have value in the Stellar cryptocurrency.

Product ahead

Going back to the great idea, it is easy to see the adjustment for both parties.

Since even before OKCupid's integration into Bitcoin, Coyne and its partners have been excited about the cryptography's potential, but were disappointed to see that it was still largely used as a store of value or as speculation.

"It seems that we have almost surrendered to this story of people sending each other cryptocurrencies," said Coyne. "What excites me about Stellar is that it is incredibly fast, transaction fees are almost nil and low energy consumption is exciting for many people in our team."

But there is more ideology supporting the deal

The heart of Keybase technology is a central repository of public keys, so data can be encrypted on all of a user's devices without the need to handle cumbersome PGP keys (or even see them).

Keybase already allows users to send encrypted chats, files and even execute encrypted Slack-like collaborations, all encrypted from end to end, through multiple devices for each user. Private keys remain in each device that generated them, so the user never has to trust Keybase.

In this way, regardless of what Stellar is investing in Keybase to build the lumens ecosystem, Coyne seems to imply that the idea is bigger than a mere wallet.

He said :

"There will be a revelation at the end of this year when the product is launched.We will definitely make cryptocurrency transactions from person to person much easier. "

Characteristics of lumens

Even so, Stellar's lumens could bring additional benefits for Keybase users.

One characteristic of these tokens that the team likes is its ability to function as promissory notes by decree, backed by institutions (such as banks) that can be transferred between users.

With the use of blockchain, these lumens with fiduciary backup could easily cross borders, so a French user could pay in euros to a British user who would receive pounds, all for the small fees subtracted from the transaction.

But while most technology companies would struggle to reverse engineer an effective cryptographic integration, Keybase can do so, and the reason goes back to the initial interest of the founders in their core ideas.

"Back then, I imagined this world in which people had purses, wallets with cryptocurrencies, and we sent small amounts of money between us," Coyne told us, and concluded:

"It always felt like something we could do a very good job."

Source: [CoinDesk](https://www.coindesk.com/easy-as-chat-stellar-invests-in-okcupid-founders-crypto-quest/)