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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

#161

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

There's a general attitude to some of the comments here.

  "Another altcoin."
  "I wouldn't weigh the odds that this specific system really lasting
  more than 4 years out especially high."
ZCash isn't just another fly-by-night cryptocurrency scam. It's a serious engineering effort that was carefully undertaken by some very well-known cryptography and security experts.

  Matthew Green
  Daira Hopwood
  Taylor Hornby
  Ian Meiers
  Zooko Wilcox-O'hearn
Every one of the names in the preceding list is or was involved in the ZCash project to some capacity. Every one of those names stands alone on their own merits.

Ask your cryptography expert friends what they think about ZCash. Yes, the one who are always yakking about side-channel cryptanalysis and which character device to use for generating random numbers. If you don't have any such friends, go to ##crypto on Freenode and say "Hi". It's all uphill form there.

Saying the equivalent of "Monero is better" is little better than trolling. Let Monero stand on its own merits; being negative and hostile accomplishes nothing.

Saying the equivalent of "Sigh! Another doomed altcoin" is needlessly pessimistic. ZCash represents what every other altcoin should have been doing all along:

  - It uses a real proof-of-work function.
  - It offers actual anonymity (an improvement over BitCoin).
  - It uses an entropy source that won't fail open (like so many BitCoin apps did).
  - It was designed and implemented by a team of academic cryptographers
    and industry experts on secure cryptography implementations.
  - The team took their time bringing a solid implementation to market.
  - Every design decision was documented and discussed openly.
If you have technical concerns about the protocol design or implementation, please don't feel discouraged in sharing them. It's the dismissive attitude that's bothering me.

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

#162

Post by JumpCrisscross »

stale2002 wrote: post #160
lisper wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How are those different? They have equivalent meaning.

When I send a friend an encrypted Signal, it's confidential i.e. its contents are secret. My friend knows it's from me. I am not anonymous.

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

#163

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nickff wrote: post #2

ZCash looks like a promising tool to prevent civil forfeiture and legalized theft. It is interesting how the same (or similar) technologies that have made cash rare, and allowed tracking of transactions and spending, may subsequently enable radical anonymity. P.S. I hope to see an investment market based on anonymous cryptocurrency one day; it would allow many people who currently lack access to investment markets or…

In respect of protection against civil forfeiture, how is it different from a regular bank account?

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

#164

Post by chx »

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…

AlphaBay is pushing Monero http://motherboard.vice.com/read/monero-cryptocurrency-dark-... . This is not a surprise: right now, aside from a few geeks meddling with things the only real world usage for all of these cryptocurrencies (where the word currency is strongly debatable) is one which a bank can not do because if a bank can do it, it's better to use a bank for now. See, one of the (biggest?) selling points of banks are providing a safety layer between the stupidity of people and their money. All cryptocurrencies remove this to one extent or another (I believe this https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4yru3h/scared_and... to be the sad end of the scale).

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

#165

Post by Ar-Curunir »

wslh wrote: post #159
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't see anything there about zkSNARKs?

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

#166

Post by Ar-Curunir »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #161

There's a general attitude to some of the comments here. "Another altcoin." "I wouldn't weigh the odds that this specific system really lasting more than 4 years out especially high." ZCash isn't just another fly-by-night cryptocurrency scam. It's a serious engineering effort that was carefully undertaken by some very well-known cryptography and security experts. Matthew Green Daira Hopwood Taylor Hornby Ian Meiers Z…

This dismissive attitude infests HN; whenever some-one does something, the top comments are from people nit-picking and finding flaws with the work.

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

#168

Post by problems »

zby wrote: post #109
problems wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure of that, there already exist some alternatives which seem better in some ways like Monero. I have very low trust for scam developers like the ZCash ones, I'm sure someone quite capable could take it up.

'scam developers'? A bit harsh isn't it?

They're running a pump and dump, sure, they made it rate limited, but a delayed pump and dump is still a pump and dump.

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

#170

Post by problems »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #146
problems wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be so sure of that, there already exist some alternatives which seem better in some ways like Monero. I have very low trust for scam developers like the ZCash ones, I'm sure someone quite capable could take it up.

The people behind ZCash are definitely not "scammers"; they're respected computer scientists and applied cryptography engineers.

They may have some flashy names, but there's no truely provable reason to believe they're better than the fly-by-night guys who pop up on bitcoinforums with a new altcoin and dump it as soon as it's up and running.

Since there's no cryptographically provable way to know they won't do this, well, we have to assume it's what they'll do. Distrust is the basis for cryptocurrencies afterall.

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