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Keybase chooses Zcash

keybase.io

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Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#61

Post by nickik »

alvarosm wrote: post #14

You need a ton of space and/or processing power for the zero-knowledge transactions. The anonymity isn't free! In practice Zcash/zcoin (different tradeoffs) are of no use to you unless you are willing to go the extra mile to hide something (criminal activities and such). There's no point in paying for the extra effort for normal transactions.

Anonymity of the system as a hole is the value. Just like with Telegram and the concept of a secret chat, you should not only use anonymity if you particularly need it. Anonymity and Security should be the default and you should optionally to be able to not have it.

Maybe even if I don't need the anonymity now, maybe in 10 years I will, and then I don't want to start using them because that change provides information.

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#62

Post by petertodd »

elif wrote: post #16
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #2

I like Zcash. I think it's a good solution to a problem that Bitcoin did not solve, and creates a cryptocurrency more in line with the vision spelled out in A Cyperpunk's Manifesto than the previous attempts. (Yes, I've looked at the other attempts to build a private alternative to Bitcoin, including Monero: https://github.com/monero-project/monero/issues/1271 )

Yeah, but proof that (Beyond the 10% pre-mine) more ZEC are not being secretly generated for the creators relies upon trust in a cabal of six individuals based upon a "public" exhibition of genesis involving theatrical destruction of computers (whose video was supposed to be published but I can't find?) Even if they are 100% legitimate actors, the lack of absolute proof undermines the provenance. From my perspective,…

> Beyond the 10% pre-mine

It's 20% for the next few years, not 10%

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#64

Post by petertodd »

alvarosm wrote: post #15
xiphias wrote: post #4

I'm not that much into zcash, but this is cool: https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust...

At least I hope he got paid well for that idiotic tale...

Like I said in the article, I didn't get paid for my involvement other than having my expenses reimbursed.

Did you actually read it?

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#65

Post by petertodd »

Panino wrote: post #52

The biggest criticism of Zcash is the Founder's Reward. Some people say it's greedy, that they should have given away their work for free. I disagree. I think it's great that they will get paid for their work, and it also gives me confidence for the future of the coin. They have an incentive to make Zcash a long-term success. Getting paid for work done should be the default, of course. I could understand that if a bi…

The founders reward is extremely high, so high that the founders have a significant ability to manipulate the market. This is a concern in part because the founders may be forced to do that - the actual implementation is with a single address, rotated periodically, which means that address is a single-point-of-failure for the whole currency in the sense that compromising it can be used to crash the price. Finally, 20% is high enough that it gives a significant advantage to 51% attackers.

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#66

Post by petertodd »

detaro wrote: post #39
alvarosm wrote: post #14

You need a ton of space and/or processing power for the zero-knowledge transactions. The anonymity isn't free! In practice Zcash/zcoin (different tradeoffs) are of no use to you unless you are willing to go the extra mile to hide something (criminal activities and such). There's no point in paying for the extra effort for normal transactions.

How large is the overhead in numbers? I tried to search but didn't find any clear examples. EDIT: found some data in the ceremony report linked elsewhere in this discussion: https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust...

Sending takes a few minutes of computation on your wallet - but that's not such a big deal as it's comparable to the time it takes for block confirmations anyway.

The problem is verification of private transactions is very slow by cryptocoin standards, and verification is something that every full node and miner must do. Zcash would fail if private transactions were used in large numbers, as blocks would take too long to validate for mining to remain decentralized; Bitcoin transactions are a few orders of magnitude faster to validate, with a 4x more conservative block interval and 2x smaller blocksize, and the Bitcoin dev community has had to make heroic efforts to further optimize validation.

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#67

Post by atweiden »

The "zaddress" is already implemented in Bitcoin in the form of a stealth address, pioneered by libbitcoin [1].

This news spurred me to delete my Keybase account. I regret ever giving a corporation that much control over my personal privacy.

[1] https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin-explorer/wiki/Steal...

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#68

Post by Taek »

kyledrake wrote: post #45
StavrosK wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a data point, I found the example perfectly clear, although I do wish you had added Monero instead of Zcash, just because it looks more legitimate to my uninformed eyes.

This. Can someone chime in here and give me an argument for why Zcash is better than Monero? Because everybody I've talked to thinks Monero is better. I'm not saying it is, but Monero came out far earlier than Zcash, and unless there is a substantial argument for using it over Monero, I'm not convinced of the argument to standardize on it. The only striking difference I can see between Monero and Zcash is that Zcash…

I do not understand all of the details behind Monero, but basically the privacy is incomplete. When you spend money, you basically say "I am one of X people", where X is usually fairly small. It's a lot better than Bitcoin where X=1, but it's still something that advanced algorithms can get though, and it still collapses if enough people have their identities and transactions revealed.

In Zcash on the other hand, your anonymity set is everyone who holds Zcash. It's a lot nicer, and there isn't really the same collapsing effect as can happen with Monero.

That said, Monero crypto is simpler, doesn't have trusted setup, and overall I would advocate that people treat Zcash as hemorrhaging-edge experimental, while Monero is somewhere between cutting-edge and bleeding-edge.

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#69

Post by coldpie »

malgorithms wrote: post #32

Author here. Seeing some of the discussion go down on Twitter, I feel maybe I should explain further the "white supremacist" example in the post. (one tweet at me: "So now you can hide the fact that white supremacists are sending you money? F!@#ing weird example.") When I shared a draft post with some friends, a lot of them had an ah-ha moment, so I was hoping for the same from others. I was trying to illustrate 2 pr…

> In the blog's hypothetical, you're not receiving money from some asshole because you're collecting Klan dues from him. Rather, you performed some public transaction with a stranger.

To clear this up, I'd suggest adding the explanatory labels ("Old copy of...") directly adjacent the lines in the image, instead of in a separate key.

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#70

Post by petertodd »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #9
mtgx wrote: post #6

Since Zcash uses the same codebase of Bitcoin, does that mean it would be possible to later integrate it back into Bitcoin, and just transition Zcash T-addresses to regular Bitcoin addresses, and then add the Z-addresses on top of the Bitcoin addresses ecosystem? I also wonder about how much of a risk to its own ecosystem Zcash being a private company represents. Was that really better than making it a non-profit? An…

No, most likely not. ZCash shielded transactions have completely different structure to normal BTC ones.

Nah, they're just extra data, that could easily go in the signature fields; it's definitely possible to add Zcash functionality to Bitcoin in a backwards compatible soft-fork.

Basically you'd have a pool of "shielded" txouts that could be spent with a zcash signature, without any requirement that a particular txout be spent for a given signature. Surpisingly easy upgrade all things considered; the main blocker is Zcash's crypto is very experimental and slow.

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