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This is a very one-sided discussion which makes it seem like it was written by a person who wants Monero's value to rise. It doesn't mention any drawbacks of Mo

by ikken 10y ago

This is a very one-sided discussion which makes it seem like it was written by a person who wants Monero's value to rise. It doesn't mention any drawbacks of Monero - like poor scalability - that blocks it's wide adoption. There's also a good deal of FUD around Dash and Zcash, which has been quickly refuted on reddit [1]. Apart from that I liked this post and it shone some light on issues I wasn't aware of. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4nai1r/on_fungibility_bitcoin_monero_and_why_zcash_is_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4nai1r/on_fungibility_...

plasticmachine 10y ago
I read through that Reddit post. How has it been refuted, exactly? If anything, the criticisms are shown in even more stark contrast with unbalanced commenters hurling insults instead of addressing points that are raised. ZCash has a number of very real problems. The SMPC paper [1] (which is meant to fix the trusted setup issue) will result in 12.8gb of data PER PARTICIPANT. A new node seeking to verify the SMPC will not only have to download double- or triple-digit gigabytes of data, but will then spend several days verifying it. Incidentally, the SMPC paper's results were based on a monster Core i7 with tons of RAM, so let's not even get started on how much of a fail that will be on a consumer PC. Oh and then it's controlled by a CORPORATION! That gets paid taxes by the blockchain!!! If there was ever a way of handing the TLAs a central point of control, that's it. ZCash should never even attempt to exist right now, the cryptography is way, way too immature to attempt implementation that could result in people losing tons of money. One last thing I noticed is that the developers (especially Zooko) have no idea how cryptocurrency works. They need to be taken out back and put out their misery for attempting idiotic shit like this: https://github.com/zcash/zcash/issues/713 https://github.com/zcash/zcash/issues/713 As for Dash, the participants on Hacker News are not your run-of-the-mill idiots. Surely you're not stupid enough to think that Dash is decentralized, with a small cluster of masternodes mostly owned by one guy (Otoh)? Cmon, nobody in their right mind believes that except pumpers and MLM idiots. [1] https://ieee-security.org/TC/SP2015/papers-archived/6949a287.pdf https://ieee-security.org/TC/SP2015/papers-archived/6949a287...
petertodd 10y ago
Note that Monero's scalability problem also exists in Zcash - an indefinitely growing list of spent tokens; if scalability is a drawback of Monero it's a drawback for Zcash.
- ianmiers 10y ago
  An indefinitely growing list of spent transactions is the least of Monero's scaling issues. Monero doesn't scale to large anonymity sets. Monero uses CryptNote's ring signature approach, which scales linearly with the number of coins you want to mix with. Want to fully mix 1,000 coins together? You need a 30kb transaction[0]. You chunk those coins into smaller mixing sets, but then they aren't fully mixed. In anything using this approach, your anonymity set is limited by what you can transmit across the network in any given transaction or a small set of transactions. I've never seen an exact proposal for mixing tx size and I'd be very interested to see one, but if it was more than 100 coins per tx I'd be surprised. In ZCash, transactions are constant size and are fully mixed with every other coin in the current anonymity set. Both approaches do have the indefinitely growing list of spent tokens issue. Which in practice means you need to move coins into a new anonymity set after e.g. 2^32 serial numbers and throw away the old coins and spent serial number list[1]. So there is an inherent limit on the maximal anonymity set you get out of any anonymous ecash scheme. Zerocash hits that limit. Due to its per transaction scaling issues, CryptoNote simply can't. As a result, in ZCash, your coin is hidden amongst all the coins in the maximal anonymity set. In Cryptonote/Monero, it's hidden amongst a far smaller fraction of that set. In Monero, you are far less anonymous. All things being equal, you want to be more anonymous. Of course, all other things are not equal. There are merits to both Zerocash and CryptNote on a technical level, but scalability isn't where CryptNote shines. [0] Assume one group element per signature in the ring at 32 bytes per element. The real scheme is likely worse. [1] There more sophisticated approaches that can be used.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - plasticmachine 10y ago
    I don't understand your terminology. What do you mean "mix 1000 coins together", and what is the use-case there?
choffman 10y ago
So how do you advocate for a cryptocurrency that you truly believe in without being called a shill...or a pumper? Monero/CryptoNote based coins offer better privacy than any other competitor. And we live in an age where that's becoming increasingly important.
- powera 10y ago
  Create a cryptocurrency that isn't designed to provide massive increases in wealth for early adopters?
  - choffman 10y ago
    There are plenty of early adopters who purchased Monero for several dollars each. And it languished at 30-50 cents for well over a year. And is now only ~$1. So there's been plenty of time for anyone to be an early adopter....continuing through today and easily for months to come. Or skip Monero altogether. Aeon, a related project is available right now for less than 1 penny. And has been for quite some time. So, as to your question, Done. You can be an "early adopter" right now.
  - jjawssd 10y ago
    Then almost by definition such a cryptocurrency is doomed to failure.
  - jm1234 10y ago
    If you're referring to Monero, can you explain how it's "designed" to provide massive increases in wealth for early adopters? Is it the volunteer contributions? Lack of ICO? Perhaps it's the fact that the current market price is lower than when the coin was released two years ago. That surely gives the early adopters an advantage....

by ikken 10y ago

plasticmachine 10y ago

I read through that Reddit post. How has it been refuted, exactly? If anything, the criticisms are shown in even more stark contrast with unbalanced commenters hurling insults instead of addressing points that are raised. ZCash has a number of very real problems. The SMPC paper [1] (which is meant to fix the trusted setup issue) will result in 12.8gb of data PER PARTICIPANT. A new node seeking to verify the SMPC will not only have to download double- or triple-digit gigabytes of data, but will then spend several days verifying it. Incidentally, the SMPC paper's results were based on a monster Core i7 with tons of RAM, so let's not even get started on how much of a fail that will be on a consumer PC. Oh and then it's controlled by a CORPORATION! That gets paid taxes by the blockchain!!! If there was ever a way of handing the TLAs a central point of control, that's it. ZCash should never even attempt to exist right now, the cryptography is way, way too immature to attempt implementation that could result in people losing tons of money. One last thing I noticed is that the developers (especially Zooko) have no idea how cryptocurrency works. They need to be taken out back and put out their misery for attempting idiotic shit like this: https://github.com/zcash/zcash/issues/713 https://github.com/zcash/zcash/issues/713 As for Dash, the participants on Hacker News are not your run-of-the-mill idiots. Surely you're not stupid enough to think that Dash is decentralized, with a small cluster of masternodes mostly owned by one guy (Otoh)? Cmon, nobody in their right mind believes that except pumpers and MLM idiots. [1] https://ieee-security.org/TC/SP2015/papers-archived/6949a287.pdf https://ieee-security.org/TC/SP2015/papers-archived/6949a287...

petertodd 10y ago

Note that Monero's scalability problem also exists in Zcash - an indefinitely growing list of spent tokens; if scalability is a drawback of Monero it's a drawback for Zcash.

ianmiers 10y ago
An indefinitely growing list of spent transactions is the least of Monero's scaling issues. Monero doesn't scale to large anonymity sets. Monero uses CryptNote's ring signature approach, which scales linearly with the number of coins you want to mix with. Want to fully mix 1,000 coins together? You need a 30kb transaction[0]. You chunk those coins into smaller mixing sets, but then they aren't fully mixed. In anything using this approach, your anonymity set is limited by what you can transmit across the network in any given transaction or a small set of transactions. I've never seen an exact proposal for mixing tx size and I'd be very interested to see one, but if it was more than 100 coins per tx I'd be surprised. In ZCash, transactions are constant size and are fully mixed with every other coin in the current anonymity set. Both approaches do have the indefinitely growing list of spent tokens issue. Which in practice means you need to move coins into a new anonymity set after e.g. 2^32 serial numbers and throw away the old coins and spent serial number list[1]. So there is an inherent limit on the maximal anonymity set you get out of any anonymous ecash scheme. Zerocash hits that limit. Due to its per transaction scaling issues, CryptoNote simply can't. As a result, in ZCash, your coin is hidden amongst all the coins in the maximal anonymity set. In Cryptonote/Monero, it's hidden amongst a far smaller fraction of that set. In Monero, you are far less anonymous. All things being equal, you want to be more anonymous. Of course, all other things are not equal. There are merits to both Zerocash and CryptNote on a technical level, but scalability isn't where CryptNote shines. [0] Assume one group element per signature in the ring at 32 bytes per element. The real scheme is likely worse. [1] There more sophisticated approaches that can be used.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- plasticmachine 10y ago
  I don't understand your terminology. What do you mean "mix 1000 coins together", and what is the use-case there?

choffman 10y ago

So how do you advocate for a cryptocurrency that you truly believe in without being called a shill...or a pumper? Monero/CryptoNote based coins offer better privacy than any other competitor. And we live in an age where that's becoming increasingly important.

powera 10y ago
Create a cryptocurrency that isn't designed to provide massive increases in wealth for early adopters?
- choffman 10y ago
  There are plenty of early adopters who purchased Monero for several dollars each. And it languished at 30-50 cents for well over a year. And is now only ~$1. So there's been plenty of time for anyone to be an early adopter....continuing through today and easily for months to come. Or skip Monero altogether. Aeon, a related project is available right now for less than 1 penny. And has been for quite some time. So, as to your question, Done. You can be an "early adopter" right now.
- jjawssd 10y ago
  Then almost by definition such a cryptocurrency is doomed to failure.
- jm1234 10y ago
  If you're referring to Monero, can you explain how it's "designed" to provide massive increases in wealth for early adopters? Is it the volunteer contributions? Lack of ICO? Perhaps it's the fact that the current market price is lower than when the coin was released two years ago. That surely gives the early adopters an advantage....