Bitcoin Forum

Achilles' heel : a weakness or vulnerable point.

You Can Link Monero Transactions – But Which? And What's the Impact?
http://www.coindesk.com/monero-link-transactions-debate/

From what I've read it affects only the very old transactions, which were made back then with mix in 0-3. There were plenty of warnings about such transactions in the past.
Also even Coindesk agrees that the new transactions, since RingCT is in use, are safe.

While it's an interesting tool and warning, it's a little late (RingCT is on since January) so I see it as an attempt to attract the investors to another anon coins.
Monero is still under active development, so the "hackers" are still one or more steps behind.

Transactions before January 2017 does not sound very old ... it could almost be read as : "only transactions from the last 4 months are fully secure now""

January 2017 is the point RingCT came live. From that point the transactions are much more secure.

Before January 2017 some 62% of transactions can be "read". There are 2 directions here:
* in the early days the mixin was not enforced and many used 0-1 mixin on the daily basis.
* that was decided at some point to be "not good enough" and the default was changed (to 4), the minimum being also changed to 2.

However, anybody wanted to really hide the transaction could have used a big mixin even in the early days.

Again, all this brings nothing new for the ones with the tiniest interest in Monero.

Thank you for the clarification.

Monero was more anonymous in 2014 then DASH will ever be. And more then 99.99% coins today is. But Monero is work in progress. With Ring CT it gained huge step forward, but this is not the end.   Monero will be more anonymous after Autumn when there will be minimum mixing.  and even more after Kovri will be added.

Anonymity is least to worry about with Monero. 2 years ago now or 2 years from now.

If they had a GUI wallet then I think that Monero's popularity would increase dramatically (a wallet that could be installed and was not command line based). Until then, I can't see many users of coins such as Bitcoin, who are used to using simple wallets, to change. Privacy is important, but how many ordinary people want to use command line?

I don't think that a GUI wallet is one of their priority, they should and have to focus on providing an annonymous environment because if they fail, their existence is pointless.
And prior to provide a GUI wallet, they should work on integration, because XMR is one of the harders coins when it comes to integration. because they lack of methods that ease this process. Especially the wallet management but i guess it is mandatory for privacy.
They might have a future, if they decide to work on all these sides, sooner is better.

On the other side, DASH is doing great about integration, and the update looks primising, and they have a long advance on XMR regarding merchants integration and many other stuff, like light wallets, light nodes, web wallets (with update) and many other features.

I would like people to stop comparing these two coins because they are totally different, each one provides different features, it is pointless to compare them.

And don't forget that DASH is more mature in development then XMR because it is a fork of Bitcoin, so they have an enormous advance compared to XMR who is a new cryptocurrency, building from scratch (except the cryptonote thing).

You have a point, but I think you're not understanding something. Why is Monero's price not increasing? Because the market does not believe it is worth more than its current price. While a GUI would make no difference to many supporters, it would interest a large amount of Bitcoin users. In order for it to become more widely adopted, it needs to attract many people, not just the diehard anonymity supporters who don't mind using something inconvenient like command prompt.

I dont know where you 2 guys live but Monero have GUI for almost half a year.  And is far best GUI any coin have. Why dont you test it yourself?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/62e1mc/mandatory_upgrade_monero_01031_wolfram/


Or just check one video of how to install and use previous version. Now is already v2 like a month old.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2uFPZjz5Xw



Monero is silently making huge jumps. Other coins hype every tiny step they do, Monero dont.



One huge jump is a full Monero node on android: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/651un2/monero_v01031_cli_for_android_arm64/  Not sure if any other coin have this. Where is a will there is way.

Just tested, the GUI is nice, but i haven't managed to connect to the testnet. So they made a wrapper who calls the different binaries, like monerod, RPc, Wallet ...
I checked the log and it is full of fatal errors, especially from the peers files, so i cannot connect to the network, it may require more work but it s great. Maybe they are waiting to get a stable GUI wallet and then they will talk about it.

How about the integration ? they still lack methods to integrate, and wrappers for the other languages.

There has been security flaws in all the crypto-currencies, even Bitcoin ! Now that Monero is safe, I think that these problems are from the past. What matters if there is a problem is if you are brave enough to solve it instead of running away. And Monero did it brillantly.

I've told the monero fanboys a couple of times back in 2015 and 2016 that XMR can be the best coin, it can cure cancer and do miracles but it not going to gain widespread support and adoption, until the client isn't easy to handle even for my grandmother, and only a few fans and a bunch of stoners knows about it's existence.
Two things made Microsoft big (however Windows always been a trash): 1. easy to use GUI, 2. Tons of marketing. ...and that's why DASH is doing better than XMR now, despite the clunky technology and all the questionable activities around the launch. Back then they never listened, nowadays as I see at least they put together a good client.

Totally right, that's what i always say about XMR, having to work with multiple binaries isn't convenient, even if you are a good programmer and could use scripts to manage them, yet it is annoying.
I like to compare the actual XMR to ETH, it was like that when they started, we had two binaries, eth and GETH and had to run both. now you just need Geth, and XMR should focus on this, a single binary to run the daemon, RPC interface, Wallet ... it will easy the development a lot, especially for the GUI who is actually messy at some points.

Every anonymous coin heel is new coin, with better solutions for existing problems, and while we speaking some new kids developing something completely new.

Second, money invested in it is crucial. If you spend some money for fuders you can bring down any coin. Also we all know how good PR can be eficient.

Third there is no such thing like unbreakable code or total security..Evrithing can be compromised.

Now you can see how actually they are very vulnerable! :-X

GUI works perfectly fine to me. I really have no ideas what dont work on your side.  Sync it and get few XMR and you can send them fast secure and if you want also anonymously.

If you have questions best is to look here: https://monero.stackexchange.com/   If your question dont exist ask it.

Oh, i can get it to work, it is not the problem, just tried like an unexperienced user. It is not the first time i use XMR, usually i work with the binaries.
by the way, i tried to connect to the testnet, so maybe it is still not functional. I will try later with clearnet.

You're welcome.
You could close the thread, since it became a battleground like most threads about Monero.
Quite a shame, since it started nice. Maybe too nice :D

Moneros Achilles' heel is the constant shilling and spam it got in the past. There are a lot of traders and crypto user who avoid it just because of it's past.

You guys are missing the point. There is no altcoin today that is more anonymous than Monero. Read the response (https://github.com/SamsungGalaxyPlayer/monero-site/blob/1634b0d8014d5172be74d420a15385aeaa29ecca/_posts/2017-04-19-an-unofficial-response-to-an-empirical-analysis-of-linkability.md) put up on GitHub. Monero price is depressed because of the FUD and traders are pumping other coins like Litecoin right now. But that will change and bitcoin will flow back into Monero so buy while you can get a bargain. Monero is a long term hold because bitcoin mixers no longer work and Monero is the best way to anonymize bitcoin.

It would not be too shocking if we find out that this is part of a misinformation strategy to discredit Monero. Andrew Miller is a consultant of Zcash just in case none of you know. Fluffypony himself does not believe the purpose of the paper is for research purposes as mentioned in this article.

Fluffy Pony ensures the research is not the issue. The problem is the paper was portrayed as alleging that Monero is not capable of providing anonymity. It was published just an hour prior to the hardfork. One of the authors even praised the paper as proving the grave secrecy weakness of this virtual currency. They were not researchers striving to improve the environment but paid by ZCash and its associates to malign Monero.

I read it from here https://www.crypto-news.net/monero-transactions-history-could-be-revealed-and-exposed/

That article offers a simple and newbie friendly explanation.

Oh I see qwizzie, the dash-trash BCT PR is on 24h duty again creating threads against definitely better coins than his instamined multiple rebranded to hide the scam shitcoin.
I asked multiple times where is the dash trash used and I either get banned or ignored - but no answer. Here is a comparison of google trends between monero search and dashcoin. Only "dash" is on purpose not included:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=dashpay,monero,dash%20coin

Dash trash broken btc copy-paste has only PRs and hypes created by the easy to integrate copy-paste code, but no solid grounds to step on and build anything new and useful. Yes it is for now faster than monero like it is faster to get robbed in the ghetto ( and btw Monero instant transactions are being currently developped ).  Noone uses dash practically, just btc whales use it as a hedge because most dashcoins are locked in the centralization called masternodes who get a huge reward without doing anything and this will be as long as the btc whales manipulate the market with their huge pump and dump possibility of their massive deposits of the old overpriced and broken bitcoin.

The question is even, whether a coin, looking to serve privacy, needs to be "mass adopted".  I would think it is better if not.  Of course, you need some market cap for sure, but this is now largely sufficient for those needing to do private transactions amongst them I'd think.  And honestly, if you can't handle a CLI, then maybe "private transactions on the internet" is not something you should consider in the first place.

Of course, an opposite argument is, the more people use it, the more "anonymity set" you get.  But also the more attention you get, the more silly "demand for regulation" you get from disgruntled idiots using it not for matters of privacy, and, worst case, traders wanting it to be as regularized as possible in order for them to be able to use it as much in finance as a gamblers' token as they can.

Well, this topic is about Monero, not about DASH.



Some nice illustration above :). Indeed some monero supporters tend to be overzealous and that tend to be counterproductive.

Monero's Achilles' heel is that it uses encryption (hiding) as its basis for anonymity.

Encryption is an appropriate technology for transient payment systems where the information is just "passing through".

For an unbacked monetary store of value it's little more than a high-tech time bomb. (Particularly when it forms the sole basis of its value proposition).

https://i.imgur.com/xGNnKLp.png

That's great OP.  Now back to the Zcash/Dash threads like a good boy

As there is a steadily growing demand for privacy and the privacy of financial activities is an integral part of that, Monero could come handy. I do understand your concerns about idiots and demands for regulation, but do you really want to surrender most of the market to DASH and Zcash because of them? BTW idiots, business folks, lawyers and their demands can be easily kept at bay as long as the devs and most of the community stick to their principles.

I have to say I don't know.  On one hand, I'm tempted to say that too big a market is not a good thing, because it corrupts the basic ideas initially set out - look at how bitcoin is now a crabs bucket.  If the thing is too big, grows too much, becomes a lucrative "investment" (greater-fool betting game), then essentially it becomes a toy for "idiots, business folks and lawyers".  But I don't believe in the "devs and the community" either: I could just as well believe in state, people and government then, and if I do, I don't need crypto.  So these are arguments to remain "small".
On the other hand, and especially in monetary affairs, small is often, dead, so that's an argument not to be left behind.
So, I don't know.  I'm not very optimistic.

Monero had all of these before as well. I mean many people have tried to find a problem with Monero and failed, I agree that it will only go up in the long run, any coin that has this big of a community backing it up can’t go down that much, yeah there will be downs but it will only prepare for ups.

There's nothing wrong in looking for flaws in a coin. It just proves it's good or bad, really.
The bad part is that sometimes non-issues are presented in a bad light to trick the ones that don't know the things good enough.
I also try to understand that Dash owners suddenly god happy by these news (since they don't know and don't care if it's a real problem), although this Dash-Monero war is plain silly imho.

About the price, it's hard to tell. Since it's a coin under development it should have a bright future unless something really bad flaw is found and not fixed.
But the price is also the playground of the speculators and their play can make it grow fast, grow slow or even fall (at least temporarily).
My hope is that it'll grow. Why wouldn't both teams just prosper and be nice? Both Monero and Dash should grow as much as they deserve. And even more! (why not?)