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An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

vitalik.eth.limo

11–20 of 54 posts

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#11

This is already doable with most wallets today. Most wallets enable you to create 2^64 addresses from the same seed phrase. These are hardened and can't be linked together by just creating them. So if Alice wants to send Bob an NFT, Bob creates a new address (recoverable with the same seed phrase) and Alice sends it there. Bob can then fund the wallet with tornado cash to use the NFT. It's a stupidly complex way to a…

That seems different though, since Bob needs to give out a new address for each transfer.

With stealth addresses, once Bob published his public address, multiple senders can transfer to Bob without further interaction by Bob.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#12
post #7

Sounds like Monero/zcash being appropriated by Ethereum If appropriated is to harsh, how about integrated instead?

Monero uses ring signatures, which as far as I know haven't gotten much traction on Ethereum so far, since gas payments undermine their privacy.

Zcash uses zksnarks, which have advanced considerably since Zcash launched. Ethereum's zkrollups use more recent types of zksnarks.

Stealth addresses "using elliptic curve cryptography were originally introduced in the context of Bitcoin by Peter Todd in 2014," according to Vitalik's post.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#13

This is already doable with most wallets today. Most wallets enable you to create 2^64 addresses from the same seed phrase. These are hardened and can't be linked together by just creating them. So if Alice wants to send Bob an NFT, Bob creates a new address (recoverable with the same seed phrase) and Alice sends it there. Bob can then fund the wallet with tornado cash to use the NFT. It's a stupidly complex way to a…

Tornado cash is illegal for US citizens. Not illegal for anyone else. And a lawsuit against the overreach of the Treasury department will likely make it legal again.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#14

This is already doable with most wallets today. Most wallets enable you to create 2^64 addresses from the same seed phrase. These are hardened and can't be linked together by just creating them. So if Alice wants to send Bob an NFT, Bob creates a new address (recoverable with the same seed phrase) and Alice sends it there. Bob can then fund the wallet with tornado cash to use the NFT. It's a stupidly complex way to a…

Secret Network https://scrt.network/

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#15

This is already doable with most wallets today. Most wallets enable you to create 2^64 addresses from the same seed phrase. These are hardened and can't be linked together by just creating them. So if Alice wants to send Bob an NFT, Bob creates a new address (recoverable with the same seed phrase) and Alice sends it there. Bob can then fund the wallet with tornado cash to use the NFT. It's a stupidly complex way to a…

Tornado cash is illegal for US citizens. Not illegal for anyone else. And a lawsuit against the overreach of the Treasury department will likely make it legal again.

What exactly is the "overreach" argument? In terms of statutory authority, the Treasury hasn't done anything particularly unusual in adding a known money-laundering vehicle to the OFAC list.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tornado cash is illegal for US citizens. Not illegal for anyone else. And a lawsuit against the overreach of the Treasury department will likely make it legal again.

What exactly is the "overreach" argument? In terms of statutory authority, the Treasury hasn't done anything particularly unusual in adding a known money-laundering vehicle to the OFAC list.

All tornado notes generate a proof that you can use to show where it came from. It’s the same as monero, another privacy coin which is not illegal.

There is a long list of issues here but tornado is just a program. The users of that program can use it for good or bad. They sanctioned the creators and Tornado is still chugging along. It’s equivalent to banning cryptography because money launderers encrypt their messages.

Here is a good summary of the argument against Treasury by Coin Center

https://www.coincenter.org/coin-center-is-suing-ofac-over-it...

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is the "overreach" argument? In terms of statutory authority, the Treasury hasn't done anything particularly unusual in adding a known money-laundering vehicle to the OFAC list.

All tornado notes generate a proof that you can use to show where it came from. It’s the same as monero, another privacy coin which is not illegal. There is a long list of issues here but tornado is just a program. The users of that program can use it for good or bad. They sanctioned the creators and Tornado is still chugging along. It’s equivalent to banning cryptography because money launderers encrypt their messag…

None of this amounts to an "overreach" argument. Again: statutorily, where has the Treasury Department mis-stepped?

You'll note that all kinds of entities, including full banks, are on the OFAC list[1]. This doesn't amount to a blanket ban on banking, and "it's just a bank, there are others" is not an argument that anyone finds convincing.

[1]: https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#18
post #9
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money laundering is a crime that (ab)uses privacy. But privacy is not in itself a crime.

Given the uses for crypto in practice, it's a safe bet that the majority of use will be for illegal activities.

>Given the uses for crypto in practice, it's a safe bet that the majority of use will be for illegal activities.

For the moment, that appears to be a good bet.

I'm not aware of any current practical use case for cryptocurrency, that government-backed currencies don't provide, other than purchasing illegal goods and services.

That said, government-backed currencies are also used for doing so as well, except cash transactions require physical proximity while cryptocurrencies do not.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All tornado notes generate a proof that you can use to show where it came from. It’s the same as monero, another privacy coin which is not illegal. There is a long list of issues here but tornado is just a program. The users of that program can use it for good or bad. They sanctioned the creators and Tornado is still chugging along. It’s equivalent to banning cryptography because money launderers encrypt their messag…

None of this amounts to an "overreach" argument. Again: statutorily , where has the Treasury Department mis-stepped? You'll note that all kinds of entities, including full banks, are on the OFAC list[1]. This doesn't amount to a blanket ban on banking, and "it's just a bank, there are others" is not an argument that anyone finds convincing. [1]: https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/

The previously linked article makes 4 arguments but this is the one I find most compelling:

even Treasury’s own regulations and past executive orders limit the applicability of sanction controls to transactions with persons, entities, or their property. The Tornado Cash sanction was made without statutory and also without regulatory authority. It was made contrary to law.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All tornado notes generate a proof that you can use to show where it came from. It’s the same as monero, another privacy coin which is not illegal. There is a long list of issues here but tornado is just a program. The users of that program can use it for good or bad. They sanctioned the creators and Tornado is still chugging along. It’s equivalent to banning cryptography because money launderers encrypt their messag…

None of this amounts to an "overreach" argument. Again: statutorily , where has the Treasury Department mis-stepped? You'll note that all kinds of entities, including full banks, are on the OFAC list[1]. This doesn't amount to a blanket ban on banking, and "it's just a bank, there are others" is not an argument that anyone finds convincing. [1]: https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/

Pretty straightforward — Treasury said we couldn't use a particular computer program rather than interact with a particular entity, and that's outside their authority.
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