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ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

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Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#151

Post by llamataboot »

hulahoof wrote: post #134
moyix wrote: post #112

I'm kind of confused by the tenor of the comments in here. I'll admit I haven't been following cryptocurrencies closely, but there seem to be a large number of comments suggesting that ZCash is a scam and that Monero is better (without any concrete arguments). Could someone enlighten me as to why that's the case? I know of ZCash via the academic papers on it, and because the people involved – Zooko Wilcox, Matthew Gr…

I have been reading through and also noticing this. I was looking for a better explanation too - from what I understand basically: Monero uses ringCT algorithm on transfer to mix the payments and obfuscate the sender Monero has a private view key and separate spend key. View key can decrypt transactions made by you to confirm your total balance (Monero balance is unknown to daemon, is calculated as (xmrRecieved - xmr…

What is the difference between a currency and a commodity? If the rate of appreciation is perceived as high enough, and the exchange rate into goods and services is high enough, anyone will have a tendency to hoard a currency - why wouldn't you?

It would be simple to create an alt-coin that degrades in value over time, thus encouraging circulation and not hoarding (though how you would battle fake-circulation through shill transactions is up for debate), but no one wants to buy into such a thing.

I happen to think the conflation of money/debt/interest with the corresponding need for continual economic growth is one of the great tragedies of our age, but I'm not entirely sure how to get out of it.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#152

Post by wslh »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #135
lukasLansky wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a/ It's naive to assume market won't work in this one case and people will happily pass ten percent of their money to support staff just because their work is important. What can be competed away will be competed away. b/ Open source works well for very complicated pieces of software. c/ As we saw in the case of Ethereum, assuming you can buy due diligence with money alone is a mistake.

Open source works well for very complicated pieces of software, except for complicated cryptography; the material used in ZCash was developed in papers as recent as 4 yrs ago. Rest assured that most programmers understand nothing about the underlying SNARKs.

You are underestimating passionate and very smart people.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#153

Post by Ar-Curunir »

wslh wrote: post #152
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source works well for very complicated pieces of software, except for complicated cryptography; the material used in ZCash was developed in papers as recent as 4 yrs ago. Rest assured that most programmers understand nothing about the underlying SNARKs.

You are underestimating passionate and very smart people.

I am not underestimating anyone; even within theoretical cryptography, SNARKs are understood by a handful of people.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#154

Post by grondilu »

> Although privacy was a motivating factor for Bitcoin’s flock of early adopters

Not quite. I mean surely there were people interested in that, but frankly this is exaggerated. We knew very early that anonymity was far from obvious, even on a purely theoretical point (that is, even if you could anonymise your IP for instance).

Bitcoin was approximately anonymous not by design, but by convenience. Who wants to have to bother checking the identity of users? In fact, I'd argue that bitcoin was no more anonymous than any other FOSS project. You usually don't ask for an ID before allowing someone to download your software.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#155

Post by lisper »

hulahoof wrote: post #143
lisper wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not moralizing about inventing these things, I'm moralizing about using them. Inventing a nuclear weapon is not the same as using one. BTW, I didn't know about Monero. Is there any substantive difference between it and ZCash?

By the same token, sending the message to launch is not the same as sending a confidential message.

Confidential != anonymous. Anonymous invites bad behavior more than confidential does.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#156

Post by schoen »

warkdarrior wrote: post #150
schoen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that you went to a restaurant and the restaurant told you where to send a payment. Then they could confirm that you had done so. Now imagine that the restaurant didn't possess any information that it could use to identify you as a result of the payment, and that no payment intermediary possessed information that could be used to identify the parties to the transaction, and that when the restaurant later spent…

So there is no way for the restaurant to know who paid if multiple concurrent payments happen? What if 5 different tables are done and ready to pay, but the restaurant sees only four payments? Who do they go after?

The restaurant could give each table a different "address" to pay, and then see which ones have received payments (which can already be done with Bitcoin, despite the lack of some of the other anonymity properties).

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#157

Post by ptravis »

echelon wrote: post #102
zekevermillion wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Premined" is not strictly accurate. 1/10 of the mining reward will eventually go toward a wallet controlled by the developers. The rate of the incentive payments starts out high and decreases over time. [1] This is different from a premine or instamine, where the devs begin life with a stash of protocol tokens, which they then have a strong inclination to dump on the market. Zcash 10% vig is an improvement over inst…

Did anyone fork or clone Ethereum to cut out the developer's premine? I'd be interested in an Ethereum-like, but only without the politics of forking based on protecting assets of the original developers.

Yes - the forthcoming UBIQ is a fork of eth without premine along with some code improvements. You can read more here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1631210.0

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#158

Post by CoryG89 »

cloudjacker wrote: post #107
seagreen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want it to be secure anyway... Oh God, I'm _really_ hoping you're being sarcastic. You've read about the dozens on dozens of compromised exchanges? You heard about the DAO hack? You realize that the majority of bitcoin is mined by like a dozen people in China? Maybe someday we'll get our act together, but right now blockchains are a recipe for FUD and centralization. (I say this as someone who thinks bitcoin is…

tolerable growing pains all of those things improve the resilience of the implementations exactly as the original white paper suggested

I'm not sure how the centralization improves the resilience of the implementations. Mining pool centralization is definitely a big downside for security on the blockchain. A lot of research is being done in cryptocurrencies looking for ways to discourage this type of centralization.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#159

Post by wslh »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #153
wslh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are underestimating passionate and very smart people.

I am not underestimating anyone; even within theoretical cryptography, SNARKs are understood by a handful of people.

I am a cofounder of a company in this space and three people in my company are in a position to understand it very well. For example Sergio who also blogs here: https://bitslog.wordpress.com

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#160

Post by stale2002 »

lisper wrote: post #155
hulahoof wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the same token, sending the message to launch is not the same as sending a confidential message.

Confidential != anonymous. Anonymous invites bad behavior more than confidential does.

How are those different? They have equivalent meaning.
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