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An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

vitalik.eth.limo

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Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#31

Post by Gigachad »

zaroth wrote: post #10

Stealth addresses are super simple bit of crypto and also pretty easy to implement. When Peter Todd wrote a paper describing the technique for Bitcoin in Jan 2014 I wrote the first implementation. [1, 2] At the time I wanted to call them re-usable addresses, because the published address by the person wanting to receive funds is truly and privately re-usable. This is super useful for writing static addresses in place…

This reminds me of how bitmessage works. You'd not know if a message was for you without trying to decrypt it so you just attempt to decrypt every message. They reduced the burden by using "streams" where your address might be on "stream 7" and everyone could tell a message was for stream 7 but not who for on that stream. So you'd only have to decrypt everything on the stream your address is on. With the more users being on a stream, the more anonymous it is but the more network and cpu work it is.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#32

Post by alphanullmeric »

woodruffw wrote: post #15
monero-xmr wrote: post #13

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.

regurgitating anti encryption talking points to justify regulating other people’s wallets, I guess it’s only natural to oppose financial privacy when your economic policies depend on having the right to other people’s money.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#33

Post by [deleted] »

DennisP wrote: post #12
jcpham2 wrote: 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…

[deleted]

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#34

Post by woodruffw »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #32
woodruffw wrote: post #15

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.

regurgitating anti encryption talking points to justify regulating other people’s wallets, I guess it’s only natural to oppose financial privacy when your economic policies depend on having the right to other people’s money.

I'm very pro-encryption. I'm not convinced that sanctions against Tornado Cash pose a serious risk to E2EE or other civically important (necessary!) applications of encryption.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#35

Post by pcthrowaway »

mhluongo wrote: post #23
nobody9999 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 trans…

Sending money is a pretty clear use case. Ukraine received a bunch of international crypto donations last year, for example. Your lack of imagination doesn't mean something is just for "illegal activities".

I actually think there are plenty of legitimate uses of cryptocurrency, and that it is being used in those ways today.

But the Ukraine example is a strange one to me, only because I'm unclear on the legality of funding the war efforts of another country.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#36

Post by alphanullmeric »

woodruffw wrote: post #34
alphanullmeric wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

regurgitating anti encryption talking points to justify regulating other people’s wallets, I guess it’s only natural to oppose financial privacy when your economic policies depend on having the right to other people’s money.

I'm very pro-encryption. I'm not convinced that sanctions against Tornado Cash pose a serious risk to E2EE or other civically important (necessary!) applications of encryption.

I don’t need to justify my right to privacy to prevent you from violating it. Come up with a better defence than the redistribution of consequences, this not the EU.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#37

Post by woodruffw »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #36
woodruffw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very pro-encryption. I'm not convinced that sanctions against Tornado Cash pose a serious risk to E2EE or other civically important (necessary!) applications of encryption.

I don’t need to justify my right to privacy to prevent you from violating it. Come up with a better defence than the redistribution of consequences, this not the EU.

Okay! Take it up with the Treasury Department then, not me. I'm just your local Internet Commentariat Bureau delegate.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#38

Post by chc4 »

zaroth wrote: post #10

Stealth addresses are super simple bit of crypto and also pretty easy to implement. When Peter Todd wrote a paper describing the technique for Bitcoin in Jan 2014 I wrote the first implementation. [1, 2] At the time I wanted to call them re-usable addresses, because the published address by the person wanting to receive funds is truly and privately re-usable. This is super useful for writing static addresses in place…

Penumbra has a scheme for trustless 3rd party scanning that they use for private addresses that you might be interested in. It uses a "Fuzzy Massage Detection" cryptographic protocol that is analogous to a Bloom filter, so you can delegate the scanning to a full node and ask a stream of transactions, which include all the transactions you care about plus some other false positives. https://protocol.penumbra.zone/main/crypto/fmd.html

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#39

Post by treve »

monero-xmr wrote: post #30
woodruffw wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I genuinely don’t see any link between a bomb going off and a privacy protocol used to move financial assets. The link is explained in the post: in both instances, a human is the prime mover. No court in the world draws a distinction between "Joe kills Bob" and "Joe builds a Bob-killing robot that kills Bob." Similarly, no court in the world is likely to draw a distinction between "North Korea launders money" and "…

I philosophically disagree that something known to be used for a crime, or known to make crimes easier, ipso facto means that thing should be banned. I see a lot of benefits to society with privacy solutions like Tornado Cash. I also like paper cash, gold coins, and guns for that matter, all of which have been documented to be used in crimes and all of which are legal. I believe the law requires presumption of innoce…

The discussion you are participating in does not make any philosophical claims, but just states how the law works. A libertarian disagreeing with this on a philosophical is not just obvious, it's also uninteresting.

Re: An incomplete guide to stealth addresses

#40

Post by EGreg »

The EVM can actually check digital signatures, hashes, lamport signatures etc.

The problem is that once Bob actually spends something from this address, everyone knows that Bob controls the address. Because if Alice can calculate an address for Bob, so can anyone else.

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