Talk:Crown Sterling

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This Pseudomathematics related article has been awarded BRONZE status for quality. It's getting there, but could be better with improvement. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.

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Beware of overloading a page with formulas[edit]

@Nomoresecrets, you might want to take a look at these two related discussions: "Talk:Modern Science in the Bible#Too big article!" and "RationalWiki:Technical support#So did we ever figure out why the "Modern Science in the Bible" article is inaccessible?" There have been ongoing, intermittent problems with loading the page Modern Science in the Bible, and the conclusion of what the cause is seems to be: large amounts of text + lots of calls to the wiki math module + our current computer server being unable to cope. Adding more text and/or formulas to the Crown Sterling page may have adverse effects on loading. Bongolian (talk) 04:12, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Strathspey Crown[edit]

Looking at the subsidiaries of Strathspey Crown,[1] they seem to be at varying levels of bullshit. The least bullshitty one seems to be Evolus,[2] a neurotoxin (i.e., BoTox) beauty company that is actually listed on NASDAQ,[3] which is not saying much. Grant seems to have collected credulous people or fellow-scamsters to fill up these various companies to make it look like they have governing boards and might have actual products some day. Grant must have spent his time getting an MBA figuring out how to con people using entrepreneur-speak. What is the likely actual aim of all this? My guess is to con venture capitalists. It all looks so slick (high quality website design) until one looks under the hood. Venture capitalists expect vaporware to some extent, so who knows it might be working. Bongolian (talk) 20:55, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Among other things, Grant likes to think of himself as a serial entrepreneur. Grifting is never risk-free: it helps to have multiple revenue streams in case one of them dries up. But yes, the consensus among infosec Twitter leaned towards investment fraud. That would also be along the lines of using the crypto currency as a penny stock. The reason it doesn't have to be more complicated than that, is, there's also an entire other side of the Grant's grifts that are
So basically a buffet of new-age woo for chumps, that lures in a ton of easy marks (uneducated, wealthy, bored, primed to believe in conspiracies) for the investment fraud. It might also help to know where Grant is coming from. Also this. Those two present quite an interesting set of allegations if you want to dive in. -Nomoresecrets (talk) 11:24, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes, Grant's worth an article of his own here. I looked at one of his patents, one of the intraocular ones — fairly frightening given the history of such devices[4] — patent trolling would be benign by comparison to implementation by this guy. Bongolian (talk) 21:20, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Sister Project?[edit]

Are you aware of this (https://quackers.blog/2024/01/29/is-orion-by-crown-sterling-legit-nope/) blog? They appear to have a social media account in https://ioc.exchange/@quackers -Anon — Unsigned, by: 2001:67c:6ec:203:192:42:116:183 / talk / contribs

That was an excellent read! Lot's of good stuff there to cite. Thanks for sharing! Nomoresecrets (talk) 02:23, 26 February 2024 (UTC)

Possible Misunderstanding of Crown Sterling's Awful Cryptography[edit]

I could be mistaken, but this existing text may be in error:

"What they fail to take into account is, as the group grows into e.g. 3,000 members, every time a member joins, all 3,000 members will need a new key, preferably right away."

What I take away from page 4 of the whitepaper is that the session key for a given group chat is generated when the chat is created, and never rotated. Therefore, the client used by the creator of the chat just needs to encrypt the existing key with a new user's public key and send that to them, because the key won't change for any existing users.

That would obviously be a truly amateur cryptographic system, but I think that would be keeping with the character of Crown Sterling's previous efforts. --2607:FB90:9A0C:88B3:185A:14FF:FEF6:1A30 (talk) 14:34, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

You are right in that if there is no key rotation whatsoever, there is no overhead. The text was intended to bore down into the implementation details of the planned key rotation which they incorrectly expect to "not be a problem, as it's performed only once for each member". It's not at all clear what "only once for each member" means. Proper forward secrecy always has a re-key interval, and it's never "only once". Their downplay of the issue is thus as vague as it is unprofessional.
End-to-end encryption exists to prevent everyone, especially the company staff from gaining access to the communication. Suppose a Crown Sterling team member who has access to ciphertexts in transit (it's a centralized service, no matter what they claim) is kicked from some group. Unless re-keying is done for the entire group, the kicked member could continue to use the key their client had in its memory, to decrypt any future ciphertexts of the group. Proper security design for confidentiality thus requires key rotation for the entire group any time the member list changes. If this is managed by the client of the group owner, it's going to be up to them to perform new key exchanges with every group member.
The article is now more specific about the context. Nomoresecrets (talk) 00:20, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

CSOV listings[edit]

hi, Simone, hope you are here... have you noticed the 3-month "maintenance period" for CSOV in fmfw? CSOV seems to have been delisted on fmfw. People have millions of tokens stuck in there... Eye (talk) 15:08, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi Simone, update on Grant ... 1. both [redacted] and Alan Green will not speak to Grant anymore. Green warns to stay clear of Grant. 2. Grant is "resetting" his Csov tokens in some sort of link with his Orion messaging platform.— Unsigned, by: Wikitoo / talk / contribs

If you are going to chat about this here then please remember. On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 11:49, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
Hi Eye/Wikitoo. Any source on Green's warning wrt Grant? -Nomoresecrets (talk) 15:17, 26 May 2025 (UTC)

Do we need this monster?[edit]

I am not really into crypto, but do we really need all this detail? For that matter - do we need the article?Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 11:45, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Yes, we do. It's perfect. The only place in the world where you can get this information. Considering the scale of this con and the fact that people continue to lose money, this page is vital. Eye (talk) 15:07, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

I very much doubt that anybody is ever going to work through the whole thing and all its minutiae. I also seriously doubt that it's "perfect" - a status that no other article here has managed to achieve!Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 09:50, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
Robert Edward Grant seems like the intersection of New Age woo, sciencey technobabble, and cryptocurrency woo. I mean, check out this guy's YouTube channel, where in the lead he urges you to check out his Gaia TV stream. The channel has videos on "pyramid geometry" and other Egypt / "mindblowing ancient knowledge!" type stuff that seems rather ancient astronaut-y, videos on "sonic geometry", and a whole flippin' playlist with other people's 432Hz vids. (Several videos in fact, by the titles at least, seem to float an idea that Leonardo da Vinci was connected to ancient Egyptian knowledge somehow. That's a new one to me.)
Of course, there are courses he offers. Such as one on "mindfulness and meditative geometry". Whee.
So, the guy seems very missional to me. So the better questions (from my perspective) is: A) "is the article too detailed" and B) "should the focus really only be on Crown Sterling"? Honestly, his New-Age-through-a-technobabble-lens schtick seems perfect for this site, but a lot of that side is not covered too much in the current article from what I see. BobJohnson (talk) 15:00, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
OK, I will be happy to accept it's missional. My concern now it that, with all the detail, it's not really readable. (And still not "perfect".)Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 17:39, 11 April 2025 (UTC)
The detail is here because this article is combating the pseudo-computer science and snake oil cryptography the company has put out. It's making a detailed case because that's what's keeping the article safe from litigation: it makes a detailed case about why it's snake oil with well sourced facts, which is the polar opposite of reckless disregard for truth. It's long because it doesn't omit any part, and it's long so that it makes lawyer time too expensive for frivolous lawsuits. The mission of this article is to guide decision making of the company's snake oil products being recommended elsewhere. It's also providing information to potential investors who are interested in the technical aspects, as Grant has made insane claims that sound nothing short of revolutionary, but that can't stand closer inspection. E.g. PrivacyGuides rejected the Orion Messenger partially due to this article. It's also the best documented case about what happened back in 2019. Crown Sterling has become almost a meme in the infosec circles, but no one else has documented what happened in this detail, so it collects everything that happened as a historical record. It's there to educate, warn, and humor people, and to laugh at the company's expense because they deserve it. Most experts in the field binned the company as snake oil back in 2019 and don't want to tar their name or give the company the free ad space.
I agree Grant deserves his own article, but I'm too busy to dive into his New Age grift, mostly because spiritual people are not open to the idea of their entire world view being product of organized grift. So it's not worth my time. I've mostly documented his background to show he has no expertise in the field of information security/cryptography, and to show he's abused his cult followers during the AXO trip of Feb 2025. I have no objection to moving Grant to his own article if the Gaia stuff etc is included. My only request is, it's also adequately long and well sourced, to avoid what happened recently between RationalWiki and he who must not be named. This is especially because he is a buddy of Robert E. Grant, and because Grant has sued BlackHat, and because Grant has threatened his AXO trip participants with counter-lawsuits if he's sued. -Nomoresecrets (talk) 13:48, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
To add, I agree the text is partially very technical, but unfortunately that's what science is, it has its own language (e.g. the big O notation) to communicate concepts. What I've tried to do with the article, is communicate the science correctly, and then have a bunch of "In layman's terms" sections to help laymen understand the meaning of the sections. One option could be to place proofs and dissections of individual algorithms under collapsed sections, but my concern is, it will make the article appear hand-wavy as it effectively hides the proofs. I might find time during the summer holidays to try that, if Bob you think it would improve it. -Nomoresecrets (talk) 15:02, 26 May 2025 (UTC)
It takes us back to a question which has come up occasionally: "Who is our audience?"
If our audience is maths nerds who are also interested in the minutiae of internet discussions then it may well be "perfect" as claimed above.
If our audience is the average person browsing the internet for information then the article is pretty unreadable. It is possible that one of these audiences is bigger then the other.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:23, 28 May 2025 (UTC)