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ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#261

Post by murbard2 »

zekevermillion wrote: post #254
murbard2 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested in Tezos ( https://tezos.com , disclosure: I'm the lead dev), an upcoming distributed ledger and smart-contract platform with a decentralized governance model. It's not a clone of Ethereum, it's a fresh, from scratch implementation of a new protocol in pure OCaml (with the notable exception of a dependency on libsodium). It's two year in the making and we're hoping to launch in March. Governan…

I heard about your project via Doug Barnes at a lawyer party, of all places. Very interested in the meta protocol or governance model. A worthy experiment!

Glad to hear, we've been very lucky to have Doug advise us on the project!

For those reading this who don't know him, Doug has an impressive pedigree both as a lawyer and as a technologist / cypherpunk. He was, for instance, to president of "Evil geniuses for a better tomorrow"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnet_(peer-to-peer_network)

He now specializes in advising startups and I cannot recommend him enough. http://barneslegal.net/

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#262

Post by wslh »

chrispeel wrote: post #204
wslh wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to get it personal but it seems you are very shortsighted and need to see a specific keyword to understand the capabilities of the people. Please let me know what specific topic of zkSNARK you find challenging to explain and we can write a blog post about it.

Here are the topics I'd be happy to hear blog posts about a) the mechanics of the proof generation, including outlining the time for proof generation. b) How the trusted setup works; for extra credit describe in detail how zcash plans to do it. c) an ELI5 explanation of zkSNARKS d) a comparison of the Ben-sasson and Parno implementations.

Your request was routed internally and we hope to have an article in ~1 month.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#263

Post by [deleted] »

murbard2 wrote: post #233
bduerst wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't know much about ZCash ZCash has this ability to de-anonymize users through targeted blocks, and is a privately-held U.S.-based company that claims no liability for it's user's actions, meaning if subpoenaed they will [probably] turn over information. They're also privately cashing in on 20% of all transaction fees. Just because someone behind a project has credentials you respect doesn't mean we should ignor…

The privacy in ZCash is information theoretical. There just aren't enough bits in the transaction to identify you.

[deleted]

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#264

Post by bduerst »

murbard2 wrote: post #233
bduerst wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't know much about ZCash ZCash has this ability to de-anonymize users through targeted blocks, and is a privately-held U.S.-based company that claims no liability for it's user's actions, meaning if subpoenaed they will [probably] turn over information. They're also privately cashing in on 20% of all transaction fees. Just because someone behind a project has credentials you respect doesn't mean we should ignor…

The privacy in ZCash is information theoretical. There just aren't enough bits in the transaction to identify you.

>There just aren't enough bits in the transaction to identify you.

From the ZCash Whitepaper:

>A powerful attacker could potentially fabricate an additional block solely for a targeted user. Spending any coins with respect to the updated Merkle tree in this “poison-pill” block will uniquely identify the targeted user.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#265

Post by schoen »

jandrese wrote: post #257
schoen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that you went to a restaurant and the restaurant told you where to send a payment. Then they could confirm that you had done so. Now imagine that the restaurant didn't possess any information that it could use to identify you as a result of the payment, and that no payment intermediary possessed information that could be used to identify the parties to the transaction, and that when the restaurant later spent…

This is no different than Bitcoin.

In Bitcoin, the payer can see when the coins involved in a payment are spent, and see the recipient address, and see what other transactions were sources of coins that were spent in the same subsequent transaction. Also, anyone who gets paid by the restaurant can learn the transactions that were the origins of the coins that they were paid with. These are properties that Bitcoin has that I believe ZCash doesn't.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#266

Post by [deleted] »

bduerst wrote: post #228
tlrobinson wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another altcoin. The vast majority of "altcoins" are minor tweaks on Bitcoin and a couple others, they're not at all technically interesting, and I think it's an open secret they're pump-and-dump schemes. I don't know much about ZCash, but I know it's pretty unfair to dismiss it as "another altcoin". The people behind it are well respected [1][2] and it makes use of novel technology. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

>I don't know much about ZCash ZCash has this ability to de-anonymize users through targeted blocks, and is a privately-held U.S.-based company that claims no liability for it's user's actions, meaning if subpoenaed they will [probably] turn over information. They're also privately cashing in on 20% of all transaction fees. Just because someone behind a project has credentials you respect doesn't mean we should ignor…

[deleted]

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#267

Post by Ar-Curunir »

cloudjacker wrote: post #256
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CryptoNote doesn't look very scalable; if you want a large anonymity set, your transaction size grows linearly with the size of the set.

Scaling is a valid criticism of cryptonote Have you talked with the monero team on how they plan to address it? They might not have a good answer (cheaper storage, computers faster in the future), maybe they do have some solutions in mind This seems to be an issue with zcash too? Can you explain why it isn't? Given current information if seems like these problems won't become apparent till the year 2021

In ZCash each transaction is the same size, regardless of how large your anonymity set is.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#268

Post by murbard2 »

bduerst wrote: post #264
murbard2 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The privacy in ZCash is information theoretical. There just aren't enough bits in the transaction to identify you.

>There just aren't enough bits in the transaction to identify you. From the ZCash Whitepaper: >A powerful attacker could potentially fabricate an additional block solely for a targeted user. Spending any coins with respect to the updated Merkle tree in this “poison-pill” block will uniquely identify the targeted user.

That would only tell you that a given network participant is making a transaction. The inputs, outputs and amounts are all still private.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#269

Post by tlrobinson »

bduerst wrote: post #228
tlrobinson wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another altcoin. The vast majority of "altcoins" are minor tweaks on Bitcoin and a couple others, they're not at all technically interesting, and I think it's an open secret they're pump-and-dump schemes. I don't know much about ZCash, but I know it's pretty unfair to dismiss it as "another altcoin". The people behind it are well respected [1][2] and it makes use of novel technology. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

>I don't know much about ZCash ZCash has this ability to de-anonymize users through targeted blocks, and is a privately-held U.S.-based company that claims no liability for it's user's actions, meaning if subpoenaed they will [probably] turn over information. They're also privately cashing in on 20% of all transaction fees. Just because someone behind a project has credentials you respect doesn't mean we should ignor…

> Just because someone behind a project has credentials you respect doesn't mean we should ignore aspects of the project.

I agree. Good thing that's not what I did.

Regardless of any flaws, there has clearly been a lot of effort put into it by multiple smart people with good intentions (from what I can tell), therefore it is unfair to characterize it as just "another altcoin".

That's the only assertion I made.

Re: ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

#270

Post by cloudjacker »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #267
cloudjacker wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scaling is a valid criticism of cryptonote Have you talked with the monero team on how they plan to address it? They might not have a good answer (cheaper storage, computers faster in the future), maybe they do have some solutions in mind This seems to be an issue with zcash too? Can you explain why it isn't? Given current information if seems like these problems won't become apparent till the year 2021

In ZCash each transaction is the same size, regardless of how large your anonymity set is.

Okay, that is an interesting perk, where could I read about that and come to the same conclusion? For some reason I don't recall the white paper explicitly saying that but it wasn't comparing itself to cryptonote to begin with.
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