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Keybase chooses Zcash

keybase.io

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Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#141

Post by kzrdude »

brilliantcode wrote: post #18

Consider that after by end of this month there will be 200,000 ZEC released following every month with 20% going to the founder's coffers after 4 years. Extreme inflation will continue sending prices crashing. Recall early this month prices were hovering around 2 Ferrari 458 and now it's tanked to under a 100 dollars. If we were to assume that in 48 months X 200,000 ZEC = ~100,000,000 ZEC with 20,000,000 ZEC belongin…

> prices were hovering around 2 Ferrari 458

What does this part mean?

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#142

Post by dagw »

kzrdude wrote: post #141
brilliantcode wrote: post #18

Consider that after by end of this month there will be 200,000 ZEC released following every month with 20% going to the founder's coffers after 4 years. Extreme inflation will continue sending prices crashing. Recall early this month prices were hovering around 2 Ferrari 458 and now it's tanked to under a 100 dollars. If we were to assume that in 48 months X 200,000 ZEC = ~100,000,000 ZEC with 20,000,000 ZEC belongin…

> prices were hovering around 2 Ferrari 458 What does this part mean?

Just like how some people like to report areas in terms of football fields or Belgiums and weight in terms of busses and whales instead of SI units.

In cases they seem to be reporting a price in terms of random objects instead of currency. For reference the price converts into roughly 1.5 pints (US) of gold

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#143

Post by petertodd »

daira wrote: post #138
petertodd wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The concern in that last sentence seems misplaced; there is no relation between proportion of monetary base held by an attacker, and proportion of mining power held by an attacker.

The problem is that it reduces the cost for an attacker; why do you think monetary base has anything to do with it?

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#144

Post by petertodd »

daira wrote: post #140
petertodd wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lon…

There are ways to significantly reduce the cost of zk proof verification by batching (that are compatible with the existing Zcash protocol without a fork).

Prove it first by actually implementing those ways and having them survive peer review; this is highly experimental crypto so it's not clear what's actually possible.

Again, I don't think it's very responsible to knowingly release design a protocol that in its current form would collapse if heavily used due to a lack of safety limits.

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#146

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

plasticmachine wrote: post #93
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, but you're both talking about different things. It may be 20% for the next few years, but it's also 10% overall. You're both right, why even try to nitpick over these details or correct anyone?

You're some random on HN. Peter Todd is a core developer who works on software that runs a billion Dollar economy (Bitcoin), and is also one of the 6 people involved in the ZCash trusted setup. I think you need to stop talking and start listening, because the economics at play and the framing of the founder's reward is critical. Downplaying the 20%, when it is a massive sum that could be used to significantly bolster…

> You're some random on HN.

> I think you need to stop talking and start listening

That's not really an appropriate way to approach a conversation on HN. I'm surprised this comment hasn't been flagged.

Personally, I think you would benefit from incorporating non-violent communication strategies. It's fine that you respect someone's work. It's not okay to open with "You're some random on HN" and then tell them to shut up, just because they were questioning the person you admire. Especially since I wasn't telling them they were wrong, but rather that the disagreement was one of scope and context, not one side being right while the other being wrong.

http://qz.com/838321/nonviolent-communication-the-scientific...

By dismissing people's entire existence and expertise right out of the gate, you destroy any possibility of a constructive conversation that could follow.

If you'll notice: Until now, I mostly asked people questions. Regardless of whatever background I may have with cryptography, my interest in these discussions is to learn. Probably not the ideal target to call a nobody and to shut up if you're interested in the strength of a community.

Just some food for thought.

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#147

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

petertodd wrote: post #91
CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, but you're both talking about different things. It may be 20% for the next few years, but it's also 10% overall. You're both right, why even try to nitpick over these details or correct anyone?

Since this is an investment we're talking about, I think we should strongly lean towards the interpretation of the facts that more conservative rather than less; 20% vs. 10% is a big difference to Zcash as an investment for the first few years, which could easily be longer than the lifespan of the currency.

That's a fair point, and I don't really disagree with your priority here now that it's spelled out. I just think that people would be better served with both facts simultaneously rather than demanding one at a time.

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#149

Post by CiPHPerCoder »

plasticmachine wrote: post #92
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 )

Linking to that GitHub issue is pretty embarrassing for you. Not only can it not be practically exploited, per the author of that issue, but it looks like it's just using Keccak as a stream cipher of sorts (but seeding it from /dev/urandom). That's pretty ok, and if we don't trust stream ciphers to produce pseudorandom numbers we have much bigger issues. But more importantly, the contributors acknowledged the issue,…

> it looks like it's just using Keccak as a stream cipher of sorts (but seeding it from /dev/urandom). That's pretty ok, and if we don't trust stream ciphers to produce pseudorandom numbers we have much bigger issues.

I very strongly disagree with userspace RNGs being used instead of the kernel's CSPRNG being "pretty ok".

Don't "seed a userspace RNG from urandom". Just use urandom.

Re: Keybase chooses Zcash

#150

Post by aminorex »

valarauca1 wrote: post #120
elif wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

>I'm sticking to bitcoin and ethereum You don't trust ZCash but you trust Ethereum? The coin that's had it's network hard forked and invalidated... what 4 times now?

Bounded rationality.
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