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I am long Zcash: * The founder is Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, creator of Zooko's triangle, the BLAKE2 hash function, Tahoe-LAFS, and former employee at MojoNation (a

by mappum 10y ago

I am long Zcash: * The founder is Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, creator of Zooko's triangle, the BLAKE2 hash function, Tahoe-LAFS, and former employee at MojoNation (an early attempt at cryptocurrency/P2P filesharing where another employee, Beam Cohen, went on to create Bittorrent). He knows a thing or two about decentralization/P2P. * This project is NOT a trivial Bitcoin clone with only a new proof-of-work swapped in. The Zero Knowledge Proofs they use to keep transactions private is state of the art crypto. Also their PoW is actually memory-hard (many currencies have used PoW functions which they thought would be memory-hard and ASIC-proof, such as Litecoin with Scrypt, but it turned out not to be the case). * Their "Founders Reward" is less like a premine and more like startup vested equity (it pays out to them gradually over 4 years to incentive themselves not to pump and dump). * The team is extremely helpful in the Zcash Slack and are a relief after dealing with the pedantic, difficult Bitcoin developers.

cloudjacker 10y ago
What do you think about Cryptonote projects? Such as Monero, Boolberry, a variety of other similar networks Some advantages Cryptonote has that come to mind: - They are private by default. Zcash requires two states, a state analogous to bitcoin, and the anonymous zcash state which has to be explicitely opted into. Shadowcash also has this, but opted for ring signatures for the anonymous state (like cryptonote coins use by default) instead of the zkSNARKs. The market hasn't focused much attention on Shadowcash. - Cryptonote projects have proof of work algorithms that are durable and so far ASIC-proof. Cryptonite, Wild Keccak still are CPU and GPU friendly. But I'd have to read their respective papers before I say "ASIC Proof because memory hard" - Cryptonote are also auditable if a user wants to reveal information about a transaction. But even then the information is limited, it will show that payments came in and out of specific amounts, but it won't show the sending/receiving address along with those transaction IDs. - Cryptonote projects have nonthreatening names. Many privacy centric projects have names like Dark- Shadow- Anon- whereas noteworthy cryptonote projects have names that at worst simply wouldn't be taken seriously by a "powerful establishment" until so much capital and infrastructure is already built. I think ZCash or "Zerocash" isn't going to get smiles and congratulations from FinCEN. Hyperbole, but I don't think it is an advantage for the project. Its one thing to be optimistic about the founders and their company, but for you to say "long" something that doesn't seem like a better investment, makes me wonder what you see in comparison to some other existing technologies. Looking forward to your thoughts
- ewillbefull 10y ago
  > Zcash requires two states, a state analogous to bitcoin, and the anonymous zcash state which has to be explicitely opted into. It does not require two states, this is a misconception that originates from the paper which refers to "basecoins" and other obsolete terminology. The protocol was anticipated to be a sidechain of some kind, but due to technical limitations that never panned out. Our system does use two states, but I personally advocate for removing the "transparent" system in the future when we have things like private multi-sig. > Cryptonote are also auditable if a user wants to reveal information about a transaction. But even then the information is limited, it will show that payments came in and out of specific amounts, but it won't show the sending/receiving address along with those transaction IDs. You can do all of this with our system as well, it was one of our design goals!
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
    I get that the protocol in theory doesn't need two states, Zcash the product will have two states. The harder second state likely won't be used that much. There are several cryptocurrencies that had multiple states to promote privacy. Darkcoin's darksend was an option in an otherwise bitcoin clone. Shadowcash has two states where the default state is an otherwise bitcoin clone. Zcash doesn't differentiate there. As regard to your second point, I know, thats why I said "also". Aside from the marketing budget and evangelists, Zcash isn't really standing out to me. What do you see? Your idea and possibility of removing the transparent system? From my understanding this means every transaction will have the high system requirements, it still seems like a worse execution of this technology than other existing cryptocurrencies who will be even further ahead by the time these growing pains are even considered on the Zcash network.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  CryptoNote doesn't look very scalable; if you want a large anonymity set, your transaction size grows linearly with the size of the set.
  - cloudjacker 10y ago
vegabook 10y ago
As you are zealously talking your zcash book, maybe you would be willing to let me short this worthless charlatanry and transparent crytopportunism to you for actual dollars? Via a personal CFD?
rspeer 10y ago
I can't stand the proliferation of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies in a world where people don't have to pay for the externalities of the energy they use. Let me know when there's a cryptocurrency based on proof-of-carbon-sequestration or something.
- DennisP 10y ago
  I'm working a coin minted for proof of carbon sequestration. It'd be implemented as a ledger on Ethereum (which is currently PoW but moving to proof of stake). Pay ether to a smart contract, it forwards the ether to approved organizations doing sequestration, and you get new minted coins. A couple weeks ago I presented the idea at MIT's Solve conference, and I've got a writeup at MIT's ClimateColab that made finalist this year. http://climatecolab.org/contests/2016/shifting-behavior-for-a-changing-climate/phase/1314434/proposal/1331638 http://climatecolab.org/contests/2016/shifting-behavior-for-... http://solvecolab.mit.edu/challenges/2016/fuel-carbon-price http://solvecolab.mit.edu/challenges/2016/fuel-carbon-price (The Solve writeup is pretty old, the Colab is recent but I've done more thinking about the minting schedule since then and made some changes.)
  - rspeer 10y ago
    Neat. Aside from the fact that it's built on a bug-prone foundation (Ethereum), the idea at least gives me some hope that cryptocurrencies don't have to have a negative impact.
    - DennisP 10y ago
      Cool :) As for Ethereum, so far the bugs in the underlying platform have been minor; right now they're dealing with DoS attacks resulting from mispriced opcodes but that's getting fixed. Most issues have been due to poorly-written smart contracts rather than the platform. That's not entirely the fault of the contract authors; it's taking some time to figure out the attacks and best practices. I'm not planning to launch in the near future anyway, because Ethereum is going through some major changes next year for scalability, and contracts will need to be coded differently to take advantage of that. In the meantime I've gotten a job doing Ethereum app work, so I should be reasonably well-prepared to get the technical side of things right. I think the bigger challenge is making sure the climate action is actually effective. Something I learned from people at the MIT conference is that while carbon offsets are readily available in the voluntary market, even the certified offsets are often very poor quality, or even outright scams. Also I'd like to figure out a governance system that doesn't rely on central administration, but that may not be workable; a more democratic system could end up funding charismatic projects that don't actually do much good. I've got some ideas though.

by mappum 10y ago

cloudjacker 10y ago

What do you think about Cryptonote projects? Such as Monero, Boolberry, a variety of other similar networks Some advantages Cryptonote has that come to mind: - They are private by default. Zcash requires two states, a state analogous to bitcoin, and the anonymous zcash state which has to be explicitely opted into. Shadowcash also has this, but opted for ring signatures for the anonymous state (like cryptonote coins use by default) instead of the zkSNARKs. The market hasn't focused much attention on Shadowcash. - Cryptonote projects have proof of work algorithms that are durable and so far ASIC-proof. Cryptonite, Wild Keccak still are CPU and GPU friendly. But I'd have to read their respective papers before I say "ASIC Proof because memory hard" - Cryptonote are also auditable if a user wants to reveal information about a transaction. But even then the information is limited, it will show that payments came in and out of specific amounts, but it won't show the sending/receiving address along with those transaction IDs. - Cryptonote projects have nonthreatening names. Many privacy centric projects have names like Dark- Shadow- Anon- whereas noteworthy cryptonote projects have names that at worst simply wouldn't be taken seriously by a "powerful establishment" until so much capital and infrastructure is already built. I think ZCash or "Zerocash" isn't going to get smiles and congratulations from FinCEN. Hyperbole, but I don't think it is an advantage for the project. Its one thing to be optimistic about the founders and their company, but for you to say "long" something that doesn't seem like a better investment, makes me wonder what you see in comparison to some other existing technologies. Looking forward to your thoughts

ewillbefull 10y ago
> Zcash requires two states, a state analogous to bitcoin, and the anonymous zcash state which has to be explicitely opted into. It does not require two states, this is a misconception that originates from the paper which refers to "basecoins" and other obsolete terminology. The protocol was anticipated to be a sidechain of some kind, but due to technical limitations that never panned out. Our system does use two states, but I personally advocate for removing the "transparent" system in the future when we have things like private multi-sig. > Cryptonote are also auditable if a user wants to reveal information about a transaction. But even then the information is limited, it will show that payments came in and out of specific amounts, but it won't show the sending/receiving address along with those transaction IDs. You can do all of this with our system as well, it was one of our design goals!
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  I get that the protocol in theory doesn't need two states, Zcash the product will have two states. The harder second state likely won't be used that much. There are several cryptocurrencies that had multiple states to promote privacy. Darkcoin's darksend was an option in an otherwise bitcoin clone. Shadowcash has two states where the default state is an otherwise bitcoin clone. Zcash doesn't differentiate there. As regard to your second point, I know, thats why I said "also". Aside from the marketing budget and evangelists, Zcash isn't really standing out to me. What do you see? Your idea and possibility of removing the transparent system? From my understanding this means every transaction will have the high system requirements, it still seems like a worse execution of this technology than other existing cryptocurrencies who will be even further ahead by the time these growing pains are even considered on the Zcash network.
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
CryptoNote doesn't look very scalable; if you want a large anonymity set, your transaction size grows linearly with the size of the set.
- cloudjacker 10y ago

vegabook 10y ago

As you are zealously talking your zcash book, maybe you would be willing to let me short this worthless charlatanry and transparent crytopportunism to you for actual dollars? Via a personal CFD?

rspeer 10y ago

I can't stand the proliferation of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies in a world where people don't have to pay for the externalities of the energy they use. Let me know when there's a cryptocurrency based on proof-of-carbon-sequestration or something.

DennisP 10y ago
I'm working a coin minted for proof of carbon sequestration. It'd be implemented as a ledger on Ethereum (which is currently PoW but moving to proof of stake). Pay ether to a smart contract, it forwards the ether to approved organizations doing sequestration, and you get new minted coins. A couple weeks ago I presented the idea at MIT's Solve conference, and I've got a writeup at MIT's ClimateColab that made finalist this year. http://climatecolab.org/contests/2016/shifting-behavior-for-a-changing-climate/phase/1314434/proposal/1331638 http://climatecolab.org/contests/2016/shifting-behavior-for-... http://solvecolab.mit.edu/challenges/2016/fuel-carbon-price http://solvecolab.mit.edu/challenges/2016/fuel-carbon-price (The Solve writeup is pretty old, the Colab is recent but I've done more thinking about the minting schedule since then and made some changes.)
- rspeer 10y ago
  Neat. Aside from the fact that it's built on a bug-prone foundation (Ethereum), the idea at least gives me some hope that cryptocurrencies don't have to have a negative impact.
  - DennisP 10y ago
    Cool :) As for Ethereum, so far the bugs in the underlying platform have been minor; right now they're dealing with DoS attacks resulting from mispriced opcodes but that's getting fixed. Most issues have been due to poorly-written smart contracts rather than the platform. That's not entirely the fault of the contract authors; it's taking some time to figure out the attacks and best practices. I'm not planning to launch in the near future anyway, because Ethereum is going through some major changes next year for scalability, and contracts will need to be coded differently to take advantage of that. In the meantime I've gotten a job doing Ethereum app work, so I should be reasonably well-prepared to get the technical side of things right. I think the bigger challenge is making sure the climate action is actually effective. Something I learned from people at the MIT conference is that while carbon offsets are readily available in the voluntary market, even the certified offsets are often very poor quality, or even outright scams. Also I'd like to figure out a governance system that doesn't rely on central administration, but that may not be workable; a more democratic system could end up funding charismatic projects that don't actually do much good. I've got some ideas though.