Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Edward Snowden: Zcash Is 'Most Interesting Bitcoin Alternative'

coindesk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 150 posts

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

#41

Post by the_stc »

neuro_imager wrote: post #29

Just FYI for anyone not aware - Snowden dismissed Monero on the basis of a bug that was resolved several months ago.

Yet ignores the founders of zCash saying they can make a backdoor for police and make it too traceable for criminals.

>Green says that he and his fellow researchers are not interested in facilitating criminal activity with Zerocoin. "Zerocoin would give you this incredible privacy guarantee, then we could add on some features which let the police, for instance, to be able to track money laundering. A back door."

https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2013/03/bitcoi...

That alone scares me off of it, and why we're suggesting people use Monero to invest with us. I know that was a while ago, and zerocoin isn't zCash but combined with Zooko's tweets about making zCash too traceable for criminals, no thanks. The crypto is too new, so who knows how they could go about hiding a backdoor.

It's so odd anyone would ever work with these guys given their attitude and statements.

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

#42

Post by geofft »

bogomipz wrote: post #26
wlesieutre wrote: post #11

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?

I thought it was reasonably widely believed that he took the job at the NSA specifically so he could figure out what they were doing wrong and leak it.

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

#43

Post by knocte »

kobeya wrote: post #36
EGreg wrote: 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…

> 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.

> 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.

Already invented. It's called MimbleWimble.

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

#44

Post by ewillbefull »

steeleduncan wrote: post #38
EGreg wrote: 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…

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".

There is a tradeoff here that keeps being missed.

Ring signatures with small anonymity sets have very serious privacy drawbacks, but they have more sensible assumptions for protecting the monetary base integrity.

zk-SNARKs are the opposite: they don't compromise on privacy at all, but require stronger assumptions to protect the monetary base.

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

#45

Post by geofft »

the_stc wrote: post #41
neuro_imager wrote: post #29

Just FYI for anyone not aware - Snowden dismissed Monero on the basis of a bug that was resolved several months ago.

Yet ignores the founders of zCash saying they can make a backdoor for police and make it too traceable for criminals. >Green says that he and his fellow researchers are not interested in facilitating criminal activity with Zerocoin. "Zerocoin would give you this incredible privacy guarantee, then we could add on some features which let the police, for instance, to be able to track money laundering. A back door." http…

That's a very weird statement, and I wish there were some more context behind it in the article - is this a cryptographic or protocol-level back door, or is this just the idea that you can start with an anonymous system and add tracing (but you can't start with a visible system and add anonymity)? It could be either, and I'm not sure how to read it.

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

#46

Post by kobeya »

knocte wrote: post #43
kobeya wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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. Already invented. It's called MimbleWimble.

... that's a system with entirely different properties.

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

#47

Post by kristianov »

lawn wrote: post #19

Labeling Monero as "amateur crypto" detracts from his credibility a lot. The crypto Monero uses is older and more tested than the new crypto in Zcash and the development in Monero seems very professional. It's not perfect of course but it's far from amateurish.

Don't buy Monero though.

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

#49

Post by acover »

krapp wrote: post #24
Jordanpomeroy wrote: post #7

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.

To be fair, Snowden wasn't endorsing Zcash based on his own cryptographic or security expertise, he was responding in agreement to a tweet regarding the cryptographic background of the Zcash developers with a general statement that privacy is important with regard to cryptocurrencies[0]. The primary reason anyone cares what Snowden thinks is his celebrity - it should be a non-story, although the Twitter thread is an…

Integrity, principles and more domain expertise than the general public

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

#50

Post by jMyles »

kristianov wrote: post #47
lawn wrote: post #19

Labeling Monero as "amateur crypto" detracts from his credibility a lot. The crypto Monero uses is older and more tested than the new crypto in Zcash and the development in Monero seems very professional. It's not perfect of course but it's far from amateurish.

Don't buy Monero though.

Why? (feel free to link me an informative discourse on the matter)
Post reply on HN