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Starting a project like this in C seems like a dangerous proposition. Anonymity would be essential for all parties in the operation, and starting a project in a

Starting a project like this in C seems like a dangerous proposition. Anonymity would be essential for all parties in the operation, and starting a project in a memory unsafe language doesn't seem like the strongest foundation to build on. It sounds like all of the people involved are experienced, but it still seems like unnecessary risk. Especially as I don't see which part of this would need to be so performant that C is the only option. However the people behind this have been thinking about it far more than I have so I'm sure they have their reasons for doing it in C.

mike_hearn 12y ago
It sounds like all of the people involved are experienced It says nothing about the people involved or their experience. It claims they are "9 cryptographers" and says nothing more. They also appear to be trying to raise money for this: http://coinmesh.io/ http://coinmesh.io/ I agree that using C is a really dumb idea for anything security sensitive. However the people behind this have been thinking about it far more than I have I see no evidence of this either. In fact all I see is an attempt to grab money from people for a product that does not exist, has no prototype and quite possibly never will exist. As to their identities, I suspect it's the same people (Amir Taaki and friends) who are doing Dark Wallet, given that they're the only people who use libbitcoin as far as I know, they explicitly recommend Dark Wallet although it has almost no users, and both sites very much match their writing style and general way of thinking. It's exactly the sort of thing that they'd think was a good idea.
- petertodd 12y ago
  I agree that using C is a really dumb idea for anything security sensitive. It's rather curious the website says it's written in C against the libbitcoin library, as libbitcoin is a C++ library that doesn't even export C headers. As to their identities, I suspect it's the same people (Amir Taaki and friends) who are doing Dark Wallet. I rather doubt that as I haven't heard anything about Slur from that group - as Dark Wallet Chief Scientist they pretty much always run new ideas past me. Secondly they already have a better protocol for paying for information that that I and Amir Taaki developed: https://github.com/unsystem/paypub https://github.com/unsystem/paypub PayPub uses a non-interactive revealing stage to avoid the need for the trusted escrow agents that Slur claims to use. re: Dark Wallet, keep in mind it's still officially an alpha undergoing testing prior to release, but its CoinJoin mixer gets regular usage, mixing what seems to be in the region of a few thousand dollars worth of bitcoins every day on average. It is the only CoinJoin implementation I know of with any usage, other than the known to be badly broken blockchain.info one that doesn't provide any privacy. Recommending people use it to donate anonymously is quite reasonable.

mike_hearn 12y ago

It sounds like all of the people involved are experienced It says nothing about the people involved or their experience. It claims they are "9 cryptographers" and says nothing more. They also appear to be trying to raise money for this: http://coinmesh.io/ http://coinmesh.io/ I agree that using C is a really dumb idea for anything security sensitive. However the people behind this have been thinking about it far more than I have I see no evidence of this either. In fact all I see is an attempt to grab money from people for a product that does not exist, has no prototype and quite possibly never will exist. As to their identities, I suspect it's the same people (Amir Taaki and friends) who are doing Dark Wallet, given that they're the only people who use libbitcoin as far as I know, they explicitly recommend Dark Wallet although it has almost no users, and both sites very much match their writing style and general way of thinking. It's exactly the sort of thing that they'd think was a good idea.

petertodd 12y ago
I agree that using C is a really dumb idea for anything security sensitive. It's rather curious the website says it's written in C against the libbitcoin library, as libbitcoin is a C++ library that doesn't even export C headers. As to their identities, I suspect it's the same people (Amir Taaki and friends) who are doing Dark Wallet. I rather doubt that as I haven't heard anything about Slur from that group - as Dark Wallet Chief Scientist they pretty much always run new ideas past me. Secondly they already have a better protocol for paying for information that that I and Amir Taaki developed: https://github.com/unsystem/paypub https://github.com/unsystem/paypub PayPub uses a non-interactive revealing stage to avoid the need for the trusted escrow agents that Slur claims to use. re: Dark Wallet, keep in mind it's still officially an alpha undergoing testing prior to release, but its CoinJoin mixer gets regular usage, mixing what seems to be in the region of a few thousand dollars worth of bitcoins every day on average. It is the only CoinJoin implementation I know of with any usage, other than the known to be badly broken blockchain.info one that doesn't provide any privacy. Recommending people use it to donate anonymously is quite reasonable.