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68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

blog.cyber.fund

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Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#21

Post by dahdum »

Nition wrote: post #17
dahdum wrote: post #15

Aren't these the temporary deposit addresses that exchanges give out? You deposit and then they sweep the balance to their hot/cold wallets as necessary? Also the ReplaySafeSplit and related contracts were due to the ETH/ETC split, you had to move your coins to be safe. I see no evidence of a "mixer" being the cause.

I was wondering that too. I know at least some exchanges (maybe even all the major ones?) use temporary addresses like that. I wonder when they started doing that. There's the huge spike in "mixer" activity from March this year onward, but that's also when Ethereum gained a lot of value. Maybe it's just a lot more trading started happening on the exchanges?

They have as long as I can remember, but the volume has skyrocketed over the past year along with more exchanges.

I don't understand how the author could group all temporary addresses, see the top inputs/outputs as all exchanges, and then claim some nefarious mixer was responsible.

Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#22

Post by darawk »

dahdum wrote: post #15

Aren't these the temporary deposit addresses that exchanges give out? You deposit and then they sweep the balance to their hot/cold wallets as necessary? Also the ReplaySafeSplit and related contracts were due to the ETH/ETC split, you had to move your coins to be safe. I see no evidence of a "mixer" being the cause.

That was my first thought. Everything they describe sounds exactly like temporary exchange deposit addresses. And the transaction volume associated with them sounds about like what i'd expect.

Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#23

Post by imaginenore »

cgb223 wrote: post #9
seibelj wrote: post #4

It's an ETH mixer, it helps you obfuscate ETH, the same exists in BTC and all other crypto currency systems without inherent privacy.

But since its still on a permanent immutable blockchain, couldn't someone still trace Bitcoin/Eth transactions with perfect accuracy?

No. If wallets A and B send 1ETH each to Z, and then Z sends 1ETH to X and 1ETH to Y, you already can't tell whose money is where.

Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#24

Post by lawn »

cgb223 wrote: post #9
seibelj wrote: post #4

It's an ETH mixer, it helps you obfuscate ETH, the same exists in BTC and all other crypto currency systems without inherent privacy.

But since its still on a permanent immutable blockchain, couldn't someone still trace Bitcoin/Eth transactions with perfect accuracy?

Yes. Here's a paper claiming to trace through various mixing services.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1709.02489.pdf

Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#25

Post by the_stc »

XR0CSWV3h3kZWg wrote: post #8
k__ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate? (I'm a n00b) Are there alternatives to BTC and ETH that have inherent privacy? How do Feds not crack down on these "mixers"?

zcash, monero and dash are the biggest that have inherent privacy.

ZCash is ideal, theoretically. If they get the performance amped up so that private transactions don't take forever, it could really work cause they could make privacy mandatory. Though a 10% tax of all coins is rather questionable. The CEO of the company did say he felt zcash could be made traceable enough to be uninteresting to money launderers, whatever that means. Sounds like the opposite of fungible.

Monero's less theoretically secure, and indeed, there's no info on how to safely "launder" coins through Monero. Ringsize is very small, at 5. But it seems to be a proper community effort and probably the best contender right now.

Dash is mired in mishaps, from its inception and instamine as Darkcoin. A single user or group of users hold magical keys that can undo 24 hours of blocks. They have centralized nodes and the mixing scheme isn't even theoretically secure.

Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#26

Post by the_stc »

dijit wrote: post #7
k__ wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate? (I'm a n00b) Are there alternatives to BTC and ETH that have inherent privacy? How do Feds not crack down on these "mixers"?

RE: your question about inherent privacy, there is Monero (XMR) and ZCash which implement transactional privacy in different ways. In my opinion XMR/Monero are the only implementation to do it all the way through, so it's what I prefer but as with all things, you should research what the differences are and which is better for you. ZCash has a higher value per coin right now and is probably more accepted than XMR/Mon…

Except no large systems support receiving shielded zcash transactions because of the CPU and RAM involved. They recently made some improvements, but it still takes many seconds of solid CPU time. Maybe in the future it'll be fast enough to be practical and they can make it the default.

Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#27

Post by dsp1234 »

cgb223 wrote: post #9
seibelj wrote: post #4

It's an ETH mixer, it helps you obfuscate ETH, the same exists in BTC and all other crypto currency systems without inherent privacy.

But since its still on a permanent immutable blockchain, couldn't someone still trace Bitcoin/Eth transactions with perfect accuracy?

Let's say you hand me a $100 bill, and that you have marked that bill. I then take that bill to a bank and ask for 3 $20 bills and 4 $10 bills. The bank takes that $100 and puts into the vault, and takes out the bills I asked for out of the vault. Later, someone comes in with $100 worth of bills, and asks for a $100 bill. The bank goes to the vault and gets the marked $100 and gives it to that customer.

Tracking the bill doesn't help, because as soon as it's in the bank, what happens to it (and how it's exchanged), is hidden from you. Mixers work the same way.

Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#28

Post by NwmG »

dahdum wrote: post #15

Aren't these the temporary deposit addresses that exchanges give out? You deposit and then they sweep the balance to their hot/cold wallets as necessary? Also the ReplaySafeSplit and related contracts were due to the ETH/ETC split, you had to move your coins to be safe. I see no evidence of a "mixer" being the cause.

Yeah, this was my thought as well. 67% of all ETH transaction volume in a mixer seems pretty high, particularly when you consider the volume traded on each of the exchanges

Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#29

Post by NwmG »

Animats wrote: post #13

This mixing ramped up around the same time as the price did. Etherium was around $8 at the beginning of 2017, where it had been for years. By midyear it was in the $300-$400 range. Is this mixing somehow involved with a scheme to pump the price?

I would say it is not actually a mixer. The point you are making actually points more towards them being temp addresses for exchanges. More people entering the market on exchanges, higher volume in exchanges, higher volume in this tempwallet "mixer"

Re: 68% of total Ethereum transaction value controlled by one system

#30

Post by ve55 »

Why is the link at the top of this article ('cyber•Fund') to https://cyber.fund/system/Paragon, a page for 'Paragon', a very shifty high-budget ICO?

Given the other things Paragon has paid big bucks for (anything you can imagine, from paying Youtubers 5 figures per video to get their subscribers to 'invest' in them to paying for mass reddit vote manipulation to buying very expensive ads and sponsorship programs to lying about their company model, CEO, etc), it seems really out of place to me that this article links to them as the first link.

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