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Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

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Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#31
post #9

Why does anyone care what Snowden thinks about crypto currency? He was a SharePoint administrator. I don't understand why his opinion is relevant. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for his sacrifice, and I think he deserves to be pardoned.

He was a coder and a lot of other things too.

That describes me, probably you, and most other people here.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist who helped teach people about cryptography. It's not totally unrelated, especially since Zcash's selling point is that it offers more privacy than Bitcoin. https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one...

ZCash is only as secure as you trust 9 people and their ceremony. There's gotta be a way to do consensus about zero-knowledge proofs that's a little more... you know ... decentralized. https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust... https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/6a26rh/peter_todd_h... Before you guys start saying, banks don't trust Bitcoin either because transactions are controlled by like…

«ZCash is only as secure as you trust 9 people and their ceremony»

No. You only need to trust 1 of 9 persons. The cryptographic algorithm works so that if 1 honest and 8 malicious persons participate, then the output can be 100% trusted. I do think it would have been interesting to allow hundreds of random participants to take part in the ceremony. But I'm not sure what the technical hurdles would have been (eg. what if one person abandons the process in the middle, does the whole ceremony has to be restarted?)

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#33
post #14

Why does anyone care what Snowden thinks about crypto currency? He was a SharePoint administrator. I don't understand why his opinion is relevant. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for his sacrifice, and I think he deserves to be pardoned.

He knows a thing or two about, you know, privacy . And Zcash's main feature is, you know, privacy :) For the crowd, Zcash obfuscates the sending address, the receiving address, and even the amount transacted, using zero-knowledge proofs.

Only when you opt-in to using shielded transactions. Which up until the recent upgrade took a ton of CPU power and RAM to do.

Combine that with two of the founders saying they're OK with backdoors (Green) and making it too traceable for criminals (Zooko) plus a 20% cut of all the currency for years and it starts looking sort of bad. (Yes it's 10% overall, but instead of showing long-term trust in their project, they decided to grab 20% really quick.)

Monero is far from perfect. Their ringsize is pitiful. But it works well, doesn't require heavy hardware, and privacy is mandatory. Plus it feels like a real community effort, not commandeered by a group that's open to making things traceable or demanding a huge cut.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist who helped teach people about cryptography. It's not totally unrelated, especially since Zcash's selling point is that it offers more privacy than Bitcoin. https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one...

>"Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist ..." So he was a privacy activist while he worked at the NSA? Isn't this a bit like being a healthcare activist and working for McDonalds?

Yes, he led some GPG training meetups where he taught best practices for securing yourself while he was stationed in Hawai'i, at the very least.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#35

Why does anyone care what Snowden thinks about crypto currency? He was a SharePoint administrator. I don't understand why his opinion is relevant. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for his sacrifice, and I think he deserves to be pardoned.

He's an expert in privacy and security and has gobs of time to research and think about these things. Plus he's famous, so there's that.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#36
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist who helped teach people about cryptography. It's not totally unrelated, especially since Zcash's selling point is that it offers more privacy than Bitcoin. https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one...

ZCash is only as secure as you trust 9 people and their ceremony. There's gotta be a way to do consensus about zero-knowledge proofs that's a little more... you know ... decentralized. https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust... https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/6a26rh/peter_todd_h... Before you guys start saying, banks don't trust Bitcoin either because transactions are controlled by like…

> There's gotta be a way to do consensus about zero-knowledge proofs that's a little more... you know ... decentralized.

Not really, no. There is no known scheme that has similar properties but non-trusted setup. There's not a proof that it's impossible either, so something might get invented. But at the moment, no.

That said I share the criticism. Even with trusted setup it could have been done much better.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#37

Why does anyone care what Snowden thinks about crypto currency? He was a SharePoint administrator. I don't understand why his opinion is relevant. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for his sacrifice, and I think he deserves to be pardoned.

As of November, 2016, Snowden's opinions have altogether stopped being relevant, and I no longer have any confidence that he acts in good faith. The guy almost certainly lives in an FSB safe-house in Moscow, the very same FSB that just helped to launch a brazen attack on our electoral process. This is not a coincidence. Snowden and like-minded people (Assange, Greenwald, Manning) were very deliberately used as Russian pawns to help divide the left and libertarians against themselves, making them unable to form a functional democratic coalition. They've also helped the FSB demonize - and attempted to neuter - the US Intelligence Community charged with defending us against this aggression while cozying up to one of the most autocratic and corrupt regimes in the world. Why anyone here takes Snowden seriously is beyond me. You can be privacy-conscious without cozying up to someone who continues to betray his country to the benefit of a corrupt dictator.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#38
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist who helped teach people about cryptography. It's not totally unrelated, especially since Zcash's selling point is that it offers more privacy than Bitcoin. https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one...

ZCash is only as secure as you trust 9 people and their ceremony. There's gotta be a way to do consensus about zero-knowledge proofs that's a little more... you know ... decentralized. https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust... https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/6a26rh/peter_todd_h... Before you guys start saying, banks don't trust Bitcoin either because transactions are controlled by like…

Yes, as interesting a development as zcash is, you need more trust in the 9 people at that one-off ceremony than you do in a central bank.

Monero's ring signatures have their drawbacks, but they don't require trust. It is hard to see his rationale for referring to it as an "amateur effort".

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#39
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before he was known for the NSA leaks he was still a privacy activist who helped teach people about cryptography. It's not totally unrelated, especially since Zcash's selling point is that it offers more privacy than Bitcoin. https://www.forbes.com/sites/runasandvik/2014/05/27/that-one...

ZCash is only as secure as you trust 9 people and their ceremony. There's gotta be a way to do consensus about zero-knowledge proofs that's a little more... you know ... decentralized. https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust... https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/6a26rh/peter_todd_h... Before you guys start saying, banks don't trust Bitcoin either because transactions are controlled by like…

Zcash's zk-SNARKs are totally private even if that ceremony failed and even if the cryptographic assumptions underlying zk-SNARKs fall apart.

I find the comparison with Bitcoin perfect. The same people trusting PoW cartels to keep their system operational are complaining that zk-SNARKs require a parameter setup for proof soundness? That doesn't really make sense to me.

Re: Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

#40
post #32
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ZCash is only as secure as you trust 9 people and their ceremony. There's gotta be a way to do consensus about zero-knowledge proofs that's a little more... you know ... decentralized. https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust... https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/6a26rh/peter_todd_h... Before you guys start saying, banks don't trust Bitcoin either because transactions are controlled by like…

« ZCash is only as secure as you trust 9 people and their ceremony » No. You only need to trust 1 of 9 persons. The cryptographic algorithm works so that if 1 honest and 8 malicious persons participate, then the output can be 100% trusted. I do think it would have been interesting to allow hundreds of random participants to take part in the ceremony. But I'm not sure what the technical hurdles would have been (eg. wh…

I believe there's a hardfork planned to add more features (like light client support) that will need another ceremony and the Zcash team is planning on there being hundreds of participants.
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