Zerocoin: making Bitcoin anonymous

Post by anonymoushn » Fri, Apr 12, 2013, 4:41 AM UTC

waps wrote: post #42

jerf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is the restriction that in the uniform distribution the probability density must be the same at all points, and if it covers infinity, it can be neither 0 nor anything greater than 0 if it's going to sum to 1. It's perfectly legal to have a probability distribution across all the reals. In fact most if not all of the well-known ones are; the Gaussian/normal distribution is defined on all reals, for instance.…

Why isn't the answer P = { Inf -> 1, otherwise 0 } ? Axiom 1: P(E) elem N => P(E) >= 0, for all E Trivially satisfied Axiom 2: P(Omega) = 1 Satisfied: Omega = N { Inf } elem N Axiom 3: Sigma additivity. Trivially satisfied since it either includes { Inf } or it doesn't, making the outcome 0 or 1. Where is the problem ? I think it's pretty clear that this is the only possible solution, because since N is not closed, t…

Post by davmre » Fri, Apr 12, 2013, 4:58 AM UTC

yk wrote: post #39

ezyang wrote: post #2

Here is a puzzle for HNers. Suppose that I am a user who wants to anonymize some Bitcoins, and I am willing to wait expected time N before redeeming my Zerocoins. What is the correct probability distribution for me to pick my wait time from?

As far as I understand the posting, this depends on the total minted Zerocoins. Since you can not tell with any certainty that a specific Zerocoin is already redeemed ( except if all are redeemed, more on that later), the probability that a specific Zerocoin belongs to you is 1/n, where n is the number of addresses which have ever generated Zerocoins. However, there are some assumptions in the argument, most importan…

Post by brianberns » Fri, Apr 12, 2013, 5:24 AM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #45

I like seeing proposals like this that use Bitcoin as essentially a protocol layer (and in this case value store). 40KB anything is not going anywhere near the blockchain soon; this is going to be a no-go for the dev team and miners. There are also a bunch of ancillary questions, like can these zero knowledge proofs (presumably non-interactive ones) be combined up with the rest of the blockchain to be turing-complete…

Post by corin_ » Fri, Apr 12, 2013, 7:32 AM UTC

dmix wrote: post #19

speeder wrote: post #10

I think that politically this is a awful time for that. Bitcoin is still largely unregulated, and this allow for all sorts of innovation, yet the media is already scaremongering around because it is "anonymous" and used for laundering and drug dealing. If Zerocoin attracts true media attention, then you will get a political firestorm of people claiming that someone is making Bitcoin even worse for nefarious purposes.…

Cryptography driven anonymity or subversion is not in need of PR sensitivity or timing. It is a technological progression that has been happening for decades and will continue on it's own rapid pace. In this context of Zerocoin, they released a technology research paper. It should be treated as such. Not a company PR dept.

Post by limmeau » Fri, Apr 12, 2013, 7:41 AM UTC

w-ll wrote: post #52

gizmo686 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, ZeroCoins are computationally easy to create. The concept is that you easily create a zerocoin, and then 'buy' it using bitcoins. When you buy the zerocoin, you create a bitcoin transaction, so you have to spend the corrosponding amount of bitcoins. When you want to redeem a zerocoin, you have to prove that you bought one. In this way, zerocoins are a lot like gold notes. They are cheap to create, but have value…

What stops me from 'minting' zerocoins by selling them to myself? exchanged with gold? what?