Bitcoin Forum

So I've narrowed down the infinite list of coins (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=927144) to just these: BTC, DOGE, LTC, DRK, PPC, XRP, NXT, NMC, XMR as "probably not a scamcoin and possibly not a waste of your time". Now, I'd like to figure out the value proposition of each coin. I don't know much about altcoins -- please comment below with the pros and cons of each of these coins. (Date: 2015-01-28.)

BTC. No explanation needed. The first. With the bulk of the market cap. (85%? That's actually lower than I thought it was!)

DOGE.
- Great community. Is that worth anything? Any software they produce can be changed to use BTC.
- Technologically, it's just a clone, meaning it's worthless.
- Has the second highest volume after BTC, making it easy to trade. Maybe people who want to stay in crypto but want to get out of BTC get into DOGE? As pegged crypto (like bitUSD) spreads, this advantage of DOGE will diminish.

LTC.
- Worthless clone.
- Used to have second highest volume. (See DOGE, above.) Now, even that tiny advantage is gone.
- Dead?

DRK.
- OK, now we're getting to something different. Completely anonymous, untracable transactions. This is worth a lot. This is what people think bitcoin has but it doesn't. If bitcoin had this, it would be worth a lot more.
- How well does the anonymous transaction thing actually work? I'd love to hear people's experiences with using Darkcoin.
- Broken (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=939072.msg10291319#msg10291319) architecture (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=939072.msg10292207#msg10292207)?

PPC.
- The first Proof of Stake coin. First mover advantage. Most liquid PoS coin.
- What are your experiences with PPC? Does the wallet have to be open to mine?
- There are now other PoS coins. And there's an improvement on PoS - DPoS. I feel like if PoS will succeed, it will move in the direction of DPoS, meaning bitshares.

XRP.
- Ripple is a completely different approach to crypto than bitcoin.
- Frankly, I don't understand enough about it. Please educate me. Premining, centralization (how much centralization is there?) seem like big turnoffs. Yet, it's somehow got the second highest market cap and it's done pretty well versus BTC.

NXT.
- First(?) "bitcoin 2.0". Most liquid 2.0 coin. First mover advantage.
- PoS, wallet must be unlocked to mine?
- I'd love to hear people's experiences with this.
- How does it stack up against other 2.0 coins?
- People (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=939072.msg10292292#msg10292292) say (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=939072.msg10290507#msg10290507) good things about it.

NMC.
- Namecoin - oldie but goodie. Very innovative for its time.
- I can't believe it is still around. Does anyone actually use ".bit" domains? Is there other data stored in namecoin?
- How many domain registrations are needed to increase the price by some amount?

XMR.
- Anonymity. Does it work? What are your experiences with it?
- We already have Darkcoin, with 10x the volume.
- If Darkcoin is actually broken, then this is the anonymous coin winner.

Honorable mention (BTS).
- A few times while writing this, I was thinking that Bitshares does the same thing only better. BTS is not on my list because its volume is tiny. What do you think about BTS? Pros and cons? Is liquidity an issue? How do you trade a coin with $5k volume?
- Apparently, BTS/CNY (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=939072.msg10292464#msg10292464) has the volume. I was only looking at BTS/BTC before.
- Great 2.0 coin.
- Love the DPoS idea.
- If the pegged assets work, that will add value to BTS (and remove value from something like DOGE).
- Don't know much more about it. Please educate me.

Based on this quick and preliminary review, here are my conclusions. Again, please comment with pros and cons of each coin. I'm sure I missed something.

Value.
- Bitcoin
- Darkcoin or Monero?
- Bitshares?

Possible value.
- Peercoin
- Ripple
- Nxt
- Namecoin

No value.
- Dogecoin
- Litecoin

I really love Gemz, for the first time i have the feeling we have finally something which we can share and explain easily to others and especially the barrier of getting users into the network is broken because its ease of use and practical purposes, everything just makes sense. At this moment i don't really care about other coins, just Bitcoin and Gemz cover what i need as an average user.

Hi,

I can only answer for Nxt, as it's the system I am most familiar with.

- I am not a huge believer in "first mover advantage". It also means you get most of the flack, because chances are you are also the first mover on problems.
- Yes, to forge, you need to have your account (brainwallet) unlocked
- I'm interested in this, too. I'm an old-timer in Nxt, so probably have a lot of blind spots here that should be much more obvious to newcomers.
- I commissioned this chart a few weeks ago, and it's at least checked by the Bitshares community, too. Other communities are welcome to critique, but it seems mostly accurate: http://i.cubeupload.com/J02n9J.jpg

As to the "value proposition": one of the large advantages of Nxt is that it supports a host of transaction types (standard coin transactions, data transfer, "alias" transactions, colored coins etc) that can be used in combination with each other to create entire systems. Taken by themselves they are useful, but the true power lies in being able to use them by easy API calls, so they can be integrated into websites, 3rd party apps etc.

What also appeals to me is that it is not dependent on a 3rd party blockchain, but is self-contained.

Not sure where you got your volume figures for BitShares.  
From coinmarketcap.com we see that most of the time volume is over $200,000 with occasional peaks above $500,000.

Volume so far today is
BTS 103,000 vs
NXT   21,000

Lol at your volume analysis.  Also, you should look at hash rates and total work on the chain as those things are verifiable as opposed to other stats which can be manipulated easily.    

Maybe Nxt is just seen as "wet" ;)

I was surprised by that statement, too.

Good bounties paid for exploits/vulnerabilities found in DRK.  Prove yourself and contact the lead dev and explain how the anonymity doesn't work.  If you're right, you'll make some money.

On the BTC-38 BTS/CNY market alone I could instantly sell $24,000 worth of BTS before I moved the price 10%.

monero has a decent name but i dont think it will last

I was drawn to Nxt because of it's ambitious development road map (nxttechnologytree.com). Another reason I invested was because of the founder BCNext. He released the coin for 21BTC, which was just a symbolic # for him.  He was not about profit and thus his plans for distribution were limited.  People often criticize Nxt because of limited distribution, but to me this was one of the only "fair" distributions in crypto.  Nxt didn't have hundreds of BTC raised for marketing and development.  So it's growth was completely natural, much like BTC.

what is your reference for trade volumes?

Doge trading volume is still 4th or 5th i think
LTC despite being dead is the second

p.s. nice list, it is short but contains most of the info needed

It uses a fundamentally broken architecture, and there is no way to fix that except abandon the architecture. Here's a quote from a post I made the other day:


Those #bitcoin-wizards logs are particularly telling. If cryptocurrency researchers can even see the gaping flaws in the architecture then you have a "looks like a duck" scenario. No amount of talking around it will make the fundamentally flawed architecture disappear, and layering complexity on top of the architecture is just going to create a false sense of security, "security through obscurity" as it were.

The Darkcoin developer may be a real nice guy, but he's obviously not a cryptographer. Finding flaws in the actual code is largely irrelevant when the architecture is fundamentally flawed. And if any masternode operator thinks they're somehow impervious, need I point to yesterday's GHOST bug as revealed by Qualys Labs (https://community.qualys.com/blogs/laws-of-vulnerabilities/2015/01/27/the-ghost-vulnerability). To quote: "During our testing, we developed a proof-of-concept in which we send a specially created e-mail to a mail server and can get a remote shell to the Linux machine. This bypasses all existing protections (like ASLR, PIE and NX) on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems." Incidentally, this bug has existed since 2000! So we have to start at the assumption that all masternodes are trivially compromised or knocked offline, which means that the architecture is fundamentally broken.

Monero, on the other hand, needs no peers to be online to be able to obscure your transaction. You can completely disconnect from the Internet, and you'll have a utxoset that you can use for mixing the inputs on your transaction. This is apples and pears we're talking about, and I mean that without being disrespectful to the work that has gone in to Darkcoin.

i think dark and XRP are next after bitcoin, with some innovation and new technology behind them
dark is good because of anonymity and limited supply using DGW
and XMR is also performing good they recently raised $30M for their project

We...did...? I don't remember raising a cent, last I recall we are significantly behind on donations:)

Darkcoin's masternodes are it's biggest points of failure, so Monero's ringsignatures wins.

Did GEMZ just start trading on Jan 10? One criteria for my list was that a coin has traded for more than 200 days. Until then, I consider it to be really unproven.

I'll note that as a "+1" on the list. Though I'm not completely sure that doing everything at once is the winning strategy. Only time will tell.

I'm on the BTC38 website now. The 24 hour volume for BTS/BTC is 6.107 BTC / 134,659 BTS, which is tiny. For BTS/CNY, the volume is 6,746,522 BTS, which a lot more.

In my original volume analysis (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=927144), I only looked at the volume of Alt/BTC and converted it to USD. Should I have also considered the Alt/Fiat volume?

Why is the BTS/CNY volume so much more than BTS/BTC? I would trade BTS for BTC or maybe for USD. Is trading it for CNY make sense? How do you get the CNY off the exchange (if you are not Chinese)? Why is the CNY volume so high? What's going on? I'd like to understand this more.

For each Alt/BTC, I pulled data from lots of different exchanges. For each day, if Alt/BTC is traded on multiple exchanges, I take the exchange with the highest volume.

Great analysis. Thanks. This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted to see here. Will change what I wrote for DRK.

OK guys, just updated the list. Darkcoin, Nxt, Monero, Bitshares. Let me know what you think.

Is bitshares a coin? I don't think so buddy. As far as I heard Darkcoin masternode anonymity wasn't fully developed and has issue for True Anonymity. Darkcoin is really valuable because speculators and its name. Monero has already implemented ring signatures and therefore already has established true anonymity rather than a theoretical anonymity(Darkcoin). As far as trusting which coin for true anonymous transactions, I rather go with Monero.  

NXT is very well developed but my issue is the POS bag holders situation. Everyone wants to stake large amounts of NXT, yet there is little incentive to spend NXT. The alternative to NXT IMO is NEM, built from the ground up like NXT, but with PoI (Proof of Importance) algorithm oppose to Proof of Stake. NEM incentives users to regularly trade NEMs rather than hoarding and staking. Real economies are only productive if there is a circulation of money. In a NXT economy, people are incentive to hoard not spend and likely to fail as real economy. In NEM economy, users are encouraged to actively received and send NEMS to other accounts to raise the Importance to harvest more NEM, therefore has a better chance as a real economy.      

Bitshares: BitShares is a family of DACs that implement the business model of a bank and exchange. BitShares X offers a bank account where funds can be transferred in seconds anywhere in the world with more privacy and security than a Swiss bank account and the account can never be frozen, funds cannot be seized, and the bank can never face collapse. Unlike existing banks, account balance can be denominated in gold, silver, oil, or other commodities in addition to national currencies. *Its not a coin, its a platform for commodities.

Just my 2 cents.

They have implemented wonderful 1:1 direct conversion between CNY and BitCNY so it draws a lot of market depth to this pair.  Market depth breeds market depth and tightens the peg. Recommend your volume comparisons either use at least the biggest market or a sum of all markets.  :)

I often go BTS to CNY then CNY to BTC just to enjoy the deeper markets.  Eventually the more direct markets will catch up.

But the point is, that BTS should definitely be on your list.  :)

How does Bitshares compare with Monero? I know that Bitshares has lots of extra "2.0" features. Besides these, how do they compare? How does anonymity compare?

Actually, you can think of BitShares as a coin backed by the value of a business.  

Some view it as a coin that contains a decentralized exchange business that produces stabilized currencies (BitUSD, BitSilver...BitBTC) as it's products.

So it's a "smart coin" you can configure to implement your own basket of currencies that spread your risk out over a mix of fiat and commodities.

But only the technically inclined need to know all that.

You can trade BTS right next to BTC and LTC as a volatile cryptocurrency at #4 on coinmarketcap.
Or you can trade BitUSD as a stabilized second-generation cryptocurrency at #32 on coinmarketcap.

So, your would be more correct to say:  "BitShares is a coin that contains a company which produces a variety of independently tradable stabilized coins as its financial product."

And its built-in exchange lets you move between all of these: (BTS, BitBTC, BitUSD, BitCNY, BitGold, BitSilver, and BitEUR) in ten seconds at pennies per transaction.

While you are on this decentralized exchange, there is no counterparty risk.  So you can mix your exposure to a whole lot of asset types and adjust that mix every 10 seconds no matter what the centralized exchanges of the world may be forced to do to you.  When the time comes to cash out, you exit through whichever centralized exchange seems most trustworthy to you at that moment - reducing your fiat world exposure to minutes.

Like I said before, Bitshares is a platform not currency. Monero is designed to be a anonymous currency as e-cash using ring signatures.

Like I said before, Bitshares is a platform AND a currency AND a family of useful smart currencies that track the value of other things.

The key word is "AND".  :)

Originally, Bitshares was the name of the platform and Bitshares X was the name of one particular implementation of that platform, which was a currency. IIUC, for marketing reason, they renamed "Bitshares X" to just plain "Bitshares".

This actually caused me some headaches when pulling coin data from exchanges. The symbol changed too from BTSX to BTS. But it's the same coin.

Relatively true, but I can't see "BitShares" being traded as a currency by the mainstream.  

The problem with this analysis is that it is too myopic and loaded to be instructive about how either of these technologies (DRK / Cryptonote) will play out ultimately.

There are loads of modern day services that the NSA can theoretically "snoop" which don't detract from their practical or market value. The best you can say is that there is unlikely to be any anonymous technology which is guaranteed 100% to be "unstoppable" - neither the cryptonote approach or the 2-tier one.

But that's not the point anyway. Most people are not terrorists on the run from the NSA. The NSA are unlikely to be spending zillions of dollars on capturing masternode logs (because they'd need EVERY last one - ALL of them to have a remote chance) and then another few million plus several weeks pouring over them attempting to trace a solitary few transactions.

Even if that were theoretically possible (which I don't accept it is) it's well beyond a practical level of financial privacy which is what the goal is here.

In fact, I picked DRK *because* of its 2-tier approach, not in spite of it. Once you accept that both technologies work "within a reasonable level of practical anonymity" then practical considerations have far more impact on value than the thinking up of hypothetical vulnerabilities.

This is where DRK scores many more points than Monero and is the reason why it's maintained and grown its 5x marketcap lead.

Firstly, redundancy. Whatever disparities exist between the quality of the 2 anonymity algos, these are blown away by the fact that Darkcoin supports a pre-emptive, multiple redundancy approach to anonymisation. Cryptonote has 1 shot at it and has to work EVERY TIME. That means that you've no way of mitigating the effect of statistics as time goes on. The Darkcoin methodology is consistent with, say, painting a room where you use 16 thin coats rather than 1 thick one that leaves blank patches. This is both a huge security advantage and a practical advantage because at the point of use, Darkcoin can work like any other currency and doesn't need any exceptions to regular APIs which support it.

Secondly, the 2-tier approach leads to a far more productive and secure development cycle because the legacy API layer that's compatible with the Bitcoin retail interface can be supported independently of changes to the anonymisation algos. We've already seen this where Darkcoin went from realtime anonymisation at the point of use (like Monero) to pre-emptive - a huge revision to the philosophy - with no disruption at all to the retail interface.

Thirdly - Darkcoin is fully compatible with Bitcoin. It basically IS bitcoin and can be deployed with most bitcoin infrastructure. This was a design priority right from the start and has been maintained ever since. Again, this is only possible due to the 2-tier architecture.

Fourthly - the flexibility that Darkcoin's architecture brings in terms of design options is immense compared to a coin who's transmission and anonymising properties are so inflexibly coupled into a single lump of code.

So I don't remotely agree with you that this represents a "Broken Architecture". That's the kind of antagonistic, emotive language that people use when they have an axe to grind and want to appeal to an audience who don't have the technical depth to make a proper appraisal of the criticism. If you really want to have it taken seriously then put your point to the Darkcoin development team and have them post an appropriate response.

As for your Prisoner's Dilemma, that again is another piece of highly selective theorising. In fact the evidence in no way, shape or form supports your contention that it applies in this case. As you probably already know, there are few cases in any crypto-community of such high levels of constructive co-operation amongst peers. Masternode holders are not in "competition" with each other - they all share equally in a portion of the mining supply. Yes - their share goes up as the masternode population reduces, but it doesn't automatically follow that they'll start carrying out suicidal attacks on their own cryptocurrency network just to garner some hundredth of a percentage more yield. The loss in terms of market value from such behaviour would infinitely offset any marginal gain in coin share.

So the phrase "architecturally broken" is unjustified and I hereby request that the OP remove it from the citation at the start of the thread. Some of your points may be fair in the context of "vulnerabilities" but all advanced technologies have those. It's not a question of possessing or not posessing vulnerabilities, it's a question of what has the optimal balance of vulnerabilities against practical advantages.

Here's one for Monero which I won't do it the injustice of calling it "broken", simply a "vulnerability"....

.....if Darkcoin's algo ever gets "hacked", i.e. if a successful trace back to a sender of an anonymised transaction occurs, then only that one transaction is affected. The rest of the entire blockchain history is still safe.

On the other hand, if a solution is ever found for cryptonote encryption algorithm then the ENTIRE BLOCKCHAIN can be sprung with that one can opener. Cryptonote is therefore a timebomb. Your transaction might be anonymous today but not in 5 years time.

Be careful what you refer to as "architecturally broken".

Staking NXT is not as profitable as people imagine it to be. There is just as much incentive to spend
NXT as any other crypto-currency, in fact, million NXT deals take place every day privately and
on the NXT Asset Exchange.

The Top 40 assets on the DECENTRALIZED Nxt AE trade 50-100 BTC/day...
Only one order of magnitude below the mid-tier exchanges like Cryptsy, Bittrex and Polo.

Such an amazing thing exists...
Only because NXT founders had the foresight to follow the Pareto 80-20 principle or "law of the vital few"...
Where 80% of virtually any successful economic system is owned by 20% of the investors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Pareto calculated that in 19th century Italy... 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the people...
And, not surprisingly, 200 years later 80% of the world's GDP is controlled by 20% of the population.

Over the past year that's changed dramatically... the Top 50 accounts own only about 6% on NXT.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As for NEM, after one year those guys are running an alpha that does not even do transactions...
And their Roadmap has not been updated in months (it looks like a China-based operation)...
And this alpha seems horribly overpriced at about $3,000,000... WHICH GOES TO THE HOLIER-THAN-THOUGH FOUNDERS.

It's hard to see how the Nxt forks are a serious threat at this point...
Though I love the fact that NEM is gonna FOCUS on XEM the currency....
And throw a lot of resources and the PoI algo to make XEM a strong, liquid cuurreny.

This is in contrast to the NXT Pooh-Bahs...
Who all seem to be closeted, bearded Marxist-Leninists that think NXT and money and profit = dirty...
And can't be bothered with a Windows installer = massive security risks for newbies...
And know far more about coding/Star Trek/Star Wars than finance or promotion.

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The one thing I like about BitShares is they ONLY care about making money...
They will say anything... and do anything... and make anything... whether it's brilliant or nonsense...
To make piles of MOOLAH for themselves and their investors... NO FUCKING APOLOGIES, baby...
At least they know what their job is... and I can respect that.

Interesting, because almost right after Darkcoin was open sourced, a bug was found that allowed you to see past Darkcoin's supposed Anonymity. There isn't much of a point in dwelling on this further, as anyone who even can use logic would know that Darkcoin's masternodes are it's biggest weakness.

Masternodes must be hosted by an external source, take that down and Darkcoin's anonymity goes down. I believe the majority of nodes are hosted on Amazon, of all places, so I wouldn't take Darkcoin's anonymity seriously... Relying on an external source like masternodes to provide anonymity is futile, I'm sorry but it is.

You seem to entirely miss my point.

1. Gaming masternodes is, in fact, within the reach of an ordinary script kiddy or an MNC. Besides the obvious risk of masternodes being taken offline by a DDoS, there is absolutely no chance that even the bulk of the operators are getting security right.

2. You don't need to be a terrorist or have the NSA after you. Agencies like the FBI, Europol, Scotland Yard, or Interpol will have no problem gaining access to masternodes completely surreptitiously.

Operational security and netsec are laborious and ongoing procedures. It requires an incredible amount of effort just to keep a small infrastructure set secure. My maintenance window to patch all glibc-bug affected components on 3 servers yesterday was ~12 hours - how many masternode operators do you know that took their servers offline for hours yesterday to make sure there were no glibc-statically-compiled nigglies lying around?


Monero offers actual privacy, with completely optional per-transaction or per-account transparency. Darkcoin offers obfuscation. Those are two different things.


There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to begin. First off: CryptoNote does have redundancy. If all our current knowledge of cryptography is somehow broken and there is a way to crack stealth addresses...well that's ok, you still have ring signatures to protect you. Secondly: layering complexity has never proven to be an effective approach to cryptographic security. To use your paint analogy:all that someone needs to do is strip away the base coat, and the other 15 are pointless. When you have interdependence (as you do with Darkcoin's various "methods") you're not creating redundancy, you're creating failure points.


I fail to see how Monero couldn't change or improve its underlying privacy without touching the API? The JSON RPC API has nothing to do with the DH key exchange or ring signatures or anything. Also, Monero's "realtime anonymisation" uses the entire blockchain as a source to mix with. Every previous transaction is a candidate!


Oh good, then you recognise that it has exactly the same block size scalability issues as Bitcoin. Monero's dynamic block sizing, on the other hand, does not have that problem.


Ah I see what this conversation is. You're talking about the extended object-oriented instruction set of the optimised non-volatile adapter. We should consider synergies between the fully-configurable discrete structure and the assimilated dedicated hardware of the right-sized eco-centric framework. That way we can bring about managed neutral artificial intelligence all while streamlining customer loyalty in a reactive coherent installation. I do agree we need a paradigm-shift for an object-based reciprocal approach to work in the context of a persistent national data-warehouse, but should our focus not be on creating automated modular installation systems that interoperate with fully-configurable intangible projections? Ultimately this comes down to a discussion of which multi-tiered scalable open architecture has a better decentralised heuristic portal, and that, really, is all about their respective ameliorated background flexibility.


Your flowery words don't change the fact that Darkcoin is a laughing stock among serious cryptographers. You're conflating me calling-a-spade-a-spade with some sort of personal vendetta. I don't care if Darkcoin succeeds or fails - if it succeeds it will only serve to validate Monero's use-case, and if it fails it won't be because of a lack of desire for transactional privacy. I do find it unconscionable that the fundamentally flawed architecture hasn't been abandoned, but I guess that's what you get when developers with no clue about cryptography try and invent a cryptographically sound system.


The "loss in terms of market value" is precisely why its a Prisoner's Dilemma. I suggest you study game theory if you want to get into that discussion.

Nonetheless, I linked to two papers that show how Bitcoin mining pools attack each other for the same reason. Have we not already seen the major damage done to Bitcoin when a mining pool approached the 50% mark? It is absolutely against the collective good for mining pools to be combative, and yet that is precisely what we are seeing.

Your argument that they are currently "constructively cooperating" is also laughable - it's just like with every major scam, there's always that person that gets interviewed that says: "but he was such a nice guy, I can't believe he would just steal from us!" Cooperating when the spoils are relatively worthless is inconsequential, true nature only reveals itself much later on.

But I guess, again, this is the difference between a fundamentally flawed architecture created by a developer and something created by an actual cryptographer. Do you know what the Longest Chain Rule is and why it was such an important creation of Satoshi's? Basically, in Bitcoin (as in Monero) there is not "one true chain", there are many chains. A node has to choose which one it deems to be the main one, and it does this by following the longest chain, all while still keeping the alternate chains. In the event an alternate chain develops that is longer (ie. more work, hence Proof of Work) then a blockchain reorganisation occurs, leading to that alternate chain being swapped in as the main one. Eventually dead alternate chains are orphaned and can be abandoned.

The reason this is critical, cryptographically speaking, is that it allows a Bitcoin node to assume that nearly all the nodes it is connected to are bad. Bitcoin and Monero start with the assumption that 99% of the actors in the system are trying to lie and cheat, and systems are developed accordingly. The only time a Bitcoin or Monero node will be unable to find the only true peer (and subsequently blacklist all the other false peers) is if it is completely segregated and isolated (in which case you're screwed no matter what you use). There's no need for "constructive cooperation" in a trustless consensus system. Ask yourself: can Darkcoin's anonymity function if 99% of the masternodes are bad actors?


Read the #bitcoin-wizards comments I linked to. This is not the opinion of one person, it's a common view among those who have enough knowledge to have an opinion.


If the cryptography behind ring signatures are cracked then everything using Schnorr signatures or EdDSA is in trouble. The same cryptography that protects Monero (Ed25519 (http://ianix.com/pub/ed25519-deployment.html)) is used by: OpenSSH, I2P, GnuPG, Google End-To-End, Core Secret for iOS, and mcrypt.

So yes, if Ed25519 is broken then Monero would have to rely on stealth addresses for protection. But hey, in that event all the masternodes could be accessed, as OpenSSH would be broken too:)

Except that everything you thought was anonymous in Monero up until that point all of a sudden is not anymore.

And if you anonymized your coins with Darkcoin before "all the masternodes are accessed", you're still safe transacting anonymously. And all your previous transactions are still private as well.

I think I'll let you answer you own point on that one.... ;)


First of all, a "cryptographer" is an academic who invents cryptographic algorithms and publishes papers such as this guy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chaum) on who's work Darkoin is based, not a cryptocurrency linux geek fanboy of one coin or another. As far as "laughing stocks" go I suspect your referring to the latter.

Secondly, someday the market may buy some of these hypothetical vulnerabilities that you've posed. But it's looking less likely by the month because, luckily for it, the market is in a position to "have its cake and eat it" and as such basically regards Monero as a backup policy for DRK. There just isn't enough mileage in any of your criticisms to justify a huge disinvestment and recapitalisation in another crypto currency asset.

In particular most of your case (as you yourself point out) rests on the competing approaches of anonymity vs cryptography.

For me, tossing a sand grain into the desert and shaking the entire desert up a few times is far more preferable to putting the sand grain in a box and locking it with a key. Yes, the sand grain is potentially still visible, the difference is it's never recognisable again. In other words, if we talk in terms of the monetary properties needed to make a currency work, Darkcoin makes *fungibility* the priority over detectability. That's the right way around from a monetary perspective which is why IMO it has most of the cap.

Also, in this regard, Darkcoin's mixing redundancy very much IS an advantage and the painting analogy very much DOES apply. The more times you tumble the desert sand the more anonymous it becomes and fungibility, not "running from the NSA", is the whole reason we're in this game.

Your other remarks revolve around geeky point scoring over the relative merits of masternodes and security. We'll see how that pans out because once again, the two tier architecture creates so many options for future proofing that I would not like to bet against it with my money. A cryptonote coin is basically no more than a cryptographic algo. That's it. There's no diversity or dimensionality to the concept that can support feature growth, performance enhancements, security enhancements, compatibility evolution or nurture community involvement the way the 2-tier approach does.

In that context, describing the architecture as "broken" is a bit desperate.

There are different ways of accomplishing the same thing, financial privacy. Whether being "NSA proof" is even possible, is another matter - they could probably simply just take over your personal computer and anything you try to do after that is irrelevant.

Just to talk about this. There is little incentive to hoard Nxt, forging fees are very small. It's actually very hard to hold onto Nxt, because of all the assets that are traded in the Nxt asset exchange, tempting holders to invest their Nxt. Most people who follow Nxt closely have invested in various assets. These assets issuers spend the Nxt, and hopefully create a product or service that generates money, then they return the profit to assetholders in the form of Nxt dividends. This Nxt economy is going strong with the assets on the Nxt exchange having a higher market cap that Nxt itself (similar to fiat stock exchanges). In this early stage, there is much more Nxt invested in assets than returning via dividends, which is why the Nxt market cap isn't increasing despite the big community and continuous development, but when some of the projects on the Nxt asset exchange succeed, then that will change. But Nxt is one of the only alts with a flourishing fiatless economy building around it.

It's apples and pears. Monero is a pure cryptocurrency that's concerned with cryptographic based privacy.

Bitshares is a market liquidity machine which is capable of responding dynamically to the needs of various different asset sectors. It does this in very elegant way by hosting a market for 2 mutually exclusive (but complimentary) types of investor:

[1] - risk investors who wish to hold and gain returns on their blockchain-based asset

[2] - currency investors who need a liquidity source with a stable exchange rate (e.g. the retail world)

i.e. bring together two types of people: those who want the value of their holding to go UP and those who seek a stable currency who's value stays exactly where it is.

The model allows the stable currency (e.g. BitUSD which tracks the value of the US dollar) to be borrowed into existence backed by collateral (BTS) which is locked in place by the blockchain.

The beauty of this system is that:

a) - the more liquidity demand / adoption there is (e.g. the more BitUSD is supplied into the economy) the more the underlying collateral accrues in value, thereby satisfying the requirements of both parties, the risk investor and the stable liquidity consumer

b) - it is a full reserve system as opposed to the "fractional reserve" approach of the fiat banking system. (In fact it's 2 x reserve). It is also self balancing and stable because the blockchain enforces reserve requirements by automatically selling the collateral and distributing it to holders of the backed asset (in this case BitUSD) it falls below reserve requirements

To me, Bitshares is one of the most promising ideas in crypto. It has a natural balance of offerings and a clearly targeted function in the cryptocurrency economy which / will be in in high demand. It more than merits its position in the top 5 marketcaps IMO.

NxT

NxT is not like Monero, DRK or Bitshares and does something else again. It has basically grown into a host for secondary asset trading and is garnering adoption as such very successfully. They have yet a different approach to "adoption" which is that you need to pay for your asset hosting and trading in NxT, thereby giving it value as a currency. To me, NXT is also one of the most promising 2.0 projects out there because it has a huge and very active community which is actually delivering powerful new features all the time.

So in summary: DRK, NXT, BTS are all worth investing in IMO because they each occupy very different market sectors. Although I was defending DRK against XMR above, I still wouldn't exclude XMR from the list (I have some) although it's a secondary holding for me in the anon stakes. Having said that, people should invest according to their own preference because we can't tell the future.

Of the list at the start of this thread, the ones I wouldn't invest in are:

LTC.....bitcoin does everything LTC does and has more adoption. If confirmation time is an issue, but DRK. It's about to confirm in a few seconds)
DOGE...anyone can buy loads of DOGE anytime. It's just pure liquidity.
PPC.....one of the all time greats. I have a couple of hundred of these "just in case"
XRP.....it's a private company and defies everything crypto is about. Not a monetary base.
NMC....nice in its day but old. Domain names. It's on BTCe, thats about it.

Sure, but let's be honest, secp256k1 (which is what Darkcoin uses) is considered unsafe by Bernstein & Lange (http://safecurves.cr.yp.to), whereas 25519 is not. In other words, if we're talking about compromising the cryptography on that level Darkcoin is at a greater risk than Monero.

I don't think it's possible to compare the two attacks (compromised masternodes vs. compromised 25519 cryptography), they're too dissimilar. Although one thing to bear in mind: if a TLA had to compromise either of those fully we wouldn't know about it until it's too late. Chances are we'd find out years later.

The -wizards crowd are Bitcoin core developers (all of them, including Gavin Andresen, Wladimir van der Laan, and Gregory Maxwell) and cryptocurrency academia (researchers, professors, etc.)

If you want to know how cryptographers really feel then a good starting point is the first answer on this StackExchange post (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/29471/are-there-any-true-anonymous-cryptocurrencies), which was originally on crypto.stackexchange.com and then eventually migrated to bitcoin.stackexchange.com. There's enough cryptographic research meat in there to justify the read.


I'm not suggesting anyone invest in Monero unless they are absolutely fine with holding for quite a while, maybe even several years, and they understand that it is an experiment, one with no guarantee of success. If there is a huge recapitalisation from Darkcoin to Monero it certainly won't be because I wrote an eloquent post on Bitcointalk:-P

nice list btw
still knowing that ltc is dead or dying dont now how is he on second place still but hopping for some big change in near future to coin.

Indeed.

https://i.imgur.com/G0lpUkc.png


....and that was 7 months ago. It's moved way ahead since then.

Surely you jest. Do you actually mean to imply we must trust what this guy says:

https://i.imgur.com/UrY8483.jpg

vs. this guy:

https://i.imgur.com/iVcksEi.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/qtApQKO.jpg

Everyone's moved on from the closed-source argument ages ago, yet the opinion of Poelstra (andytoshi on -wizards) and others hasn't changed. Instead of quoting some nobody, go and find a cryptographer or two (one who actually has papers on arXiv, please) that will vouch for Darkcoin. Consider it a challenge.

He says Darkcoin does not provide anonymity.
He says Darkcoin's implementation of Coinjoin is broken.

Is it true?

I think it's on Andrew Poelstra to prove his claims.

Funny alot of trash talking against litecoin in this section and well the market doesn't seem to think its a worthless clone, having greater marketcap and more traded then all other alts put together.

There's a reason for litecoins success.

It took the tried tested and trustworthy and improved on it. The first alt to be fairly launched and even today one of the rare few not premined or not designed for the financial benefit of the original dev.

You guys think just because some clown types some pseudo original code that its somehow innovative beyond btc/ltc?

The Winklevoss' had some major hurdles getting bitcoin approved by regulators for the upcoming ETF, you know though this forum may think satoshi' cool a mystery creator is a hard sell to regulators and even harder for joe public to trust.

All the trashing of it won't change the FACT that it is the leading alt and will remain so, because it has the network, the security and the money backing it.

You think this section of the forum would be proud of litecoins success and support it.

You can trust a war of credentials if more relevantly "credentialed' person has made an in depth as opposed to a superficial one. That isn't the case here.

To save some time I'll quote this remark which expresses it more concisely....

When all else fails pull out the dead horse and hope that noone notices the stench, eh?

Well if that's the class of individual Darkcoin attracts then I'm quite happy to have it stay that way.

I will not participate in this debate now that it's degraded to an ad hominem, so I bid you goodbye.

You're not leaving because of an "ad hominem" attack - there was none, your person was not attacked. You're leaving because your attempt to malign a perfectly good project with underhand emotive phrases like "broken architecture" hasn't washed and now there are too many valid arguments ranged against you.

Some of the points you raise are fair and in most contexts would probably have been constructively accepted. Feel free to draw your own conclusions as to their veracity  or severity, but if you're going to make posts bordering on propaganda dressed up as technical appraisals, don't be surprised if you get challenged over it.

Hi ilodin,

While this would be the case in an academic setting, or even a non-adversarial one, it's definitely not the case for amateur cryptography. The reasons haven't changed much from those written in the Cyphernomicon (2.4.19) (https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.txt) over 20 years ago: there is a massive amount of amateur crypto out there; it is extremely hard to analyze in general; few people are qualified to do so and their time is extremely limited. Cryptography is assumed broken until shown to be secure. Never the other way around. This means formal proof, years of cryptanalysis by many experts, and years of field-testing. Bitcoin adds a new twist to this: there is way more amateur crypto in the Bitcoin space than there ever was in the cypherpunk/sci.crypt/whatever communities. The result is a massive asymmetry: people promoting broken systems (a) are often paid to do so; (b) only have their own system to focus on; (c) aren't burdened by truth or honesty; (d) they don't have reputations that could be damaged by interacting with shifty projects (which often take criticism from experts as an invitation to put the experts' name on their website, sometimes even misinterpreting their words as promotion); (e) are able to change or obfuscate their project in subtle ways to evade specific criticism, rendering analysis moot without actually improving anything; (f) don't have massive demands on their time from legitimate projects.

There are very many people with all of these advantages. I have none. So I'm sorry that I'm not doing a detailed analysis of every iteration of Darkcoin for free. But this does not place any burden of proof on my shoulders.

Andrew

Crossposting from DRK thread

Dogecoin has the highest usage of any altcoin, including Litecoin (excluding off-chain tipping).

Dogecoin has more community support than all altcoins combined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

 :)

(Do you actually believe that "technological innovation" matters if there is no growing community that use it?)

I think what he meant was that just because you gave an opinion on a discussion thread doesn't make that opinion an authoritative conclusion, regardless of your background or credentials.

You seem to endorse that very point you your last remark.

wow, nice job. you should've invested a lot of time and energy

by the way how accurate are websites like coinmarketcap?

NEM as it stands right now is running the BETA not the alpha. As for the roadmap, you find as the information on the forum.nemcoin.com has the necessary updates and information. How does the alpha cost 3,000,000 dollars?    

this is true
they have more support then other
still this is good cuz if i read correctly on other topic halving is near for doge this can only influence more user in doge and hopping for price change

Lol, this is a laughable claim.   If true, why did doge move to being mergemined inside the litecoin chain?   

Learn what AuxPoW actually means.

Learn about Dogecoin:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=800004.0;all

 ;)

+1 i can't say it even better.. No healty community no stable coin 8)

Pretty good new article on NXT, specifically from an investor's perspective:

http://www.coinssource.com/marc-de-mesel-nxt-stage-cryptos/ (http://www.coinssource.com/marc-de-mesel-nxt-stage-cryptos/)

Maybe you can extract something from it for your consideration.

I like dogecoin too, and I know what AuxPOW is.  Sorry if my comment was out of order, I was referring to the "highest usage of any altcoin" claim. 
TX per day and exchange volume disagree with that claim, but to be fair those don't mean all that much as they are unverifiable as legitimate traffic.  The only metric that can't be faked is hash rate.   

https://bitinfocharts.com/charts.html

Dogecoin has the highest usage of any altcoin (active addresses), including Litecoin (excluding off-chain tipping).

I only look at data.

It seems LTC was born because of the problems of the first altcoins (Tenebrix, ixcoin)...



Darkcoin loves to change the rules. It's the king of hard forks. First they said it would be 100.000.000.000.000.000 coins (yes, 100 quadrillion) of coins. Now the limit is ~20 million (so, they turned the first 2 millions of coins generated in the first 2 days, when they didn't have a Windows wallet even more valuable). Also a lot of times they changed the reward blocks scheme. What happened?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg5830006#msg5830006
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg5823918#msg5823918
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525093.0;all

They also proposed a merge with ShadowCash, and to do this, they proposed to increase the number of DRK (they would create DRK out of thin air).
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HrGDKKtr5cKKE8Iu7aOw1vXbVTGk9078sQaWlprZYrs/edit

This is a nice thread.  I’ll summarize what is going on as quickly as possible which for me is not quickly.

BTC- no comment necessary

Doge and Litecoin – You dismissed these but you very well shouldn’t have.  Litecoin has by far the biggest marketcap despite going down like 90%.  There is a very real chance on the next BTC pump, that Litecoin will pump even harder.  In fact it almost doubled on the Coinbase news.  And for Doge, it has something that all these other coins listed don’t have, which is widely underestimated; it is cool.  Ultimately when you put a cool product next to a different product that is far superior, it is often times that the cool product wins.  Nobody wants to be a dork.

Darkcoin and Monero – I see a lot of arguments about which is better, and it really doesn’t matter.  In a year from now BTC will have its own anon options with projects such as Coinjoin or Darkwallet which will make theses alts obsolete and pointless.

Namecoin – forget about it

XRP – lots and lots of more people are coming over to Ripple.  It does what it does really well, but will that be enough? 

PPC – Was a great step, but we can gather that probably Bitcoin’s POW or other newer and more robust forms of POS will win out in the future, which leaves Peercoin left behind in either scenario.  To avoid this it would have to develop itself extensively, and to be fair lots of new development is coming out of the Peercoin team, but ultimately they are limited with their code and just what they can do.  A newer and more robust 2.0 system will just have so much more functionality. 


Now for the two more controversial coins because up until now, it has been pretty easy to discern.

Bitshares – Not really a coin as others have said but more of a 2.0 platform.  As stated earlier they will do anything to make a buck and don’t hide it. So at least you know where they stand. 

I agree that Bitshares will do anything to make money, and that includes lie and cheat.  When you look at the amount of money going in and out of Bitshares, it is almost nothing and has a terrible liquidity problem, so even if you did put a lot of money in (which would be very easy) you would have a really hard time taking it out.  If you look on the inside of Bitshares there is lots of liquidity.  One may suspect that there are just a few Bitshare’s holders holding a lot of shares and trading with each other to fake liquidity.  After all, they will do anything to make money.  Bitshares also has shills out in large numbers plugging this coin and that is evident on this thread too.

NXT – is the most advanced feature wise of all these coins by far (note what I said about Doge earlier because sometimes it doesn't matter.  In theory if features were more important NXT would have smashed Doge, but in reality it is the other way around).  It can’t be counted out but has had a really rocky start.  It’s platform is also quite splintered and as a first mover has had to forge into territory that was unknown and often didn’t do nearly as well as it could have.  All around some of the most exciting work being done in crypto is being done at NXT, and will continue to be done there, but the real question is "Can they pull it off?"   

My summary.

Value.
- Bitcoin

Probable Value.
- Dogecoin
- Litecoin

Possible value.
- Ripple
- Nxt
- Bitshares

No value.
- Namecoin
- Peercoin
- Darkcoin
- Monero

Missed platforms: Gems, Maidsafe, Storj, and NEM because each one of these will be bring new things to the market that no other platform has done before if they can pull it off. 

The only two coins that have successfully pulled off their niche is Litecoin and Doge.  Litecoin has achieved being the known trading pair to BTC and Doge has pulled off being cool.  Those factors might not carry them through, but at least they won a battle.  None of the other coins haven't really proven themselves enough to get into my "probable" category.   

And one last test is to look at market cap.  I feel like to be safe a coin needs to be over 10 million USD, and I also feel like anything under 1 million USD has utterly failed.

Absolutely horrid assessment. You have no clue about value. Go learn what makes a successful product or company, then compare it to the cryptospace. Silly gimmicks don't make a product a bestseller, as Doge has learned from it's falling hashrate and declining interest previous to mergemining with Litecoin, it's the technology that does.

Frankly, every coin you listed as having no value, are the top and only ones that do have value, while the one you listed as having probable value, is worthless. Coinjoin is trivial and a 3rd party application, not to mention that most of those coin shuffling websites have been scams, and Darkwallet is basically Coinjoin, which means Bitcoin doesn't/won't have anonymity at the protocol level, and that's needed.

Go learn a thing or two.

How about Reddcoin?

I suggest you learn a thing or two and read better.  I didn't say that a gimmick "will" win, I said often times it does.  Additionally a silly gimmick did and has made Doge very successful.  You say it doesn't, but it is very clear that it has for a fact.  Your imagined world where tech always wins over gimmicks is not better than the real world of facts that I can prove by looking at market cap.  For a fact Doge has a higher market cap, better liquidity and more transactions than Namecoin, Darkcoin, and Peercoin despite those being better tech wise.  And Litecoin which you dismiss is still doing better than Namecoin, Darkcoin, Peercoin, Monero, and NXT combined.   (full discloser, I own none of these coins)

Furthermore major corporations will often spend far more on advertising and marketing then they do or product development.  Why?  Because they know being cool and have a gimmick sells better than having good tech.  It doesn't matter which product is actually better, it only matters which product the consumer thinks is better and most consumers are simply not knowledgeable about a product to truly discern which product is superior.  This holds true with toothpaste, cell phones, jeans, sushi, cable packages, and prepackaged vacations. Gimmicks sell.  

Furthemore, if gimmicks are so powerless why do you have a gimmick username that is a blatant rip off?

And as for anonymity it doesn't matter if it is achieved wallet side or protocol side.  If you are anon then you are anon.

Go learn actual marketing and economics please. Mostly everything you've said is bullshit, I have no need to further discussion with you. Marketing places a huge role yes, but when it comes to these cryptocoins, such as Litecoin or Dogecoin, it's just blatant manipulation helping them. The majority of Litecoin's daily volume comes from 0% fee exchanges, so it's most likely that Litecoin's volume is just the same bots trading between themselves over and over to create the illusion of real volume. As for Dogecoin, if you've followed it's progess at all, you'd know that it's "AuxPoW' aka Mergemining is what saved it, no matter how much marketing they put in it's price and hashrate kept falling, so they decided to merge mine with Litecoin...

Solid Tech is what keep's users interested and coming back, especially in the world of cryptocurrencies. Marketing is what brings them in.

Again, your disputing my real world facts of numbers with your hypothetical world.

You've used no numbers so far if you mean statistics...so what??

- Ripple is deflationary, where did you get 30% from? Weird.
- You can list 'assets' or anything of value on Ripple.
- Ripple has user registered accounts and names

Are all of those points about NXT in the core? As I know there is a lot of 3rd party services.

Yes. If not, it would be insecure. But there is a mechanism in development called "cold locked minting" (see below) that will allow riskless minting.

DPoS means that "little coin owners" lease their "voting power" (stake) to the big whales, so they don't need to be online all the time. The risk is that these whales can use this power to 51%-attack the coin. PPC 0.5 will have a mechanism a bit similar to DPoS called Cold storage minting, and NXT too has a similar mechanism, Leased Forging. The difference is that DPOS and Leased Forging are encouraging centralization, while PPC's Cold-locked minting does not, it tries to avoid the danger of having accounts with a too large stake.

PPC's cold-storage minting (see a technical description here (http://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=2783.0)) allows to delegate your stake to another account. This "minting account" must be online to mint, but doesn't need to have coins in it, so it's 100% safe to mint and you could do it even with your smartphone. But it does not allow the formation of "minting pools" or "big delegates" like in BTS and NXT, because there must be trust between both accounts. In my opinion, it's the best of all three "delegation" systems, but it's still in testing stage (but already implemented, so it's not vaporware).

That depends how you define "a 2.0 coin".

First with a own codebase, not being a clone? That was probably Timekoin (http://timekoin.org) or Bytecoin (http://bytecoin.org).
First coin not relying on proof-of-work? That was Timekoin, then came Peercoin, the first PoS coin.
First coin with coloured coins / asset exchange? That in fact was Bitcoin, with the Mastercoin "plugin" ;)
First coin with Java client? Not even this, because there's Bitcoin's Multibit ;D

But I like NXT, it is moving forward very fast and already has a lot of unique features.

You can lease your stake to a big whale (see above "Leased Forging"), so you must not be online.

it will be more correct :D

Digital-Payments Company Ripple Labs Finalizing $30 Million Funding Round
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/01/26/digital-payments-company-ripple-labs-finalizing-30-million-funding-round/ (http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2015/01/26/digital-payments-company-ripple-labs-finalizing-30-million-funding-round/)

Useful info
https://www.coingecko.com/en (https://www.coingecko.com/en)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=561516.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=561516.0)

Guys calm down. When Ethereum joins the game, almost all coins will be obsolete. So no sense in discussing wether LTC/DOGE or DRK/MON is better, they are all doomed.

Uh what? You clearly have no clue...Ethereum isn't a "coin", it's an application or platform.

to OP :

with regards to DRK :



- It works fast and it works very well, they increased the number to mix towards 16 rounds and pretty much streamlined the whole thing making it run more smoothly with better feedback towards end-users. They pretty much closed all vulnurabilities and bugs they found so far very fast (there may still be some lurking around as its a lot of new code but i have no doubt about darkcoin's developers capability to deal with those)

- They incorporated Bitcoin into Darkcoin (making Darkcoin a fork of Bitcoin instead of Litecoin) to make it more Bitcoin compatible, API / Merchant wise and they are now focussing on further developing InstantX and preparing it for the public Testnet. I have therefore no idea what you exactly mean with broken architecture. It all just works .. and it
works well.

* Next thing (after InstantX) will be implementing some form of two factor authorization on decentralised blockchain level, this will increase security drastically in my eyes.  http://newsbtc.com/2015/01/26/evan-duffield-proposes-2-factor-authentication-2fa-darkcoin/

* The Masternode network is yet another thing that seperates Darkcoin from any other cryptocurrency, its decentralised and its getting increasingly profitable to run masternodes or even share a masternode with some people :

https://i.imgur.com/kHW81Vc.png

http://www.darkcoin.cm/index/masternodes_map
http://www.darkcoin.cm/index/masternodes/

* Last but not least take a look at the price for these last few weeks, you will see a steady rise and some very very solid buying support walls (for some time now) on several exchanges, this means Darkcoin got some serious attention and has been given time to further develop its technologies without worrying about price too much.    

http://dc-charts.com/depth_drk.php?ex=9&cu=0&sw=2&tz=5&ar=0&dl=2&js=1&sc=0&ba=2&re=1
http://dc-charts.com/depth_drk.php?ex=2&cu=0&sw=2&tz=5&ar=0&dl=2&js=1&sc=0&ba=2&re=0

https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/cryptsy/drkbtc
https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/drkbtc

Come join the dark side :)




Links to Darkcoin's forums :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.0
https://darkcointalk.org/



 





  

LoL

+1 to that.

I think you've probably got that the wrong way around.

But if and this is a big if, Gavin Andresen and the Bitcoin Foundation get their way on the 1 MB blocksize issue Dark Wallet, can become a reality, regardless of their position on anonymity. If on the other hand the 1 MB blocksize limit remains in Bitcoin, Dark Wallet is doomed.

I really enjoy the asset exchange on NXT platform, it's really an asset in it self.
Also the speed the devs pump out new features is just ridiculous, pity they seem to lack the PR many of the other coins have, if they had it, I'd guess the value would increase drasticly.

is this coin still have some support

nice try to advertise ;)

Well they kind of have to. Everyone who ever wanted Ethereum bought as much as they could at the IPO, so when the markets open, we have an interesting situation. A lot of people with huge bags of Ether, and a lot of people who don't care about Ether.

With everything in your list, I still think only doge is worthwhile to hold on to. Yeah, it's a clone all right with nothing new in terms of technology but don't forget, crypto is all about the community. It's the support of the people that gives it value.

Nxt is a next big thing like BTC

You should add Stellar to the list.

As a Darkcoin Core developer I want to take the chance and comment on some claims made in this thread. First of all I agree with everyone claiming there is no perfect solution yet. Dark wallet, Shared coin, Coin shuffle, Monero and, no, not even Darkcoin are perfect yet. Everyone claiming his solution is perfect, is simply trying to catch investors. But let me comment on some technical claims which I can prove wrong.

"Coinjoin is proved broken."
> Yes and no. The origininal idea of coinjoin was flawed in finding other people who want to send coins, to mix them just-in-time and broadcast them to the network. This is indeed broken, as it is very simple to simply match inputs, outputs and timestemps to track back transactions through the blockchain.

"Darkcoin is implementing a broken Coinjoin."
> No. This statement is reaching back to a time in the beginning of 2014 where Darkcoin was using just-in-time-coinjoin to create Darksend transactions. This system was poor implemented, hard to use (hardly found people to mix with) and - indeed - broken. But in may 2014 evan duffield introduced a totally new approach by implementing ahead-of-time mixing. You simply leave your wallet open and mix with other clients coins, you can do that 2 times, 4 times, 16 times, just mix your coins as much as you want. And as soon as you wish to send a transaction, your coins are already completely premixed and untracable. This is no magic and working with the darkcoin core reference client for more than half a year now.

"Darkcoin is closed source."
> No. Darkcoin was open sourced in september 2014.

"Masternodes are centralized point of failure."
> No. Masternodes are equal nodes in a p2p network with a special dedicated purpose. They are as decentralized as any other p2p application. Everyone is able to set up a masternode anywhere he likes. All you need is a 1000 DRK input to start the node, this is required to avoid the network getting attacked by massive amounts of vulnerable nodes. Currently there are around 2000 darkcoin masternodes running and securing the network, they are operated by alot of different users all over the world. Its a decentralized p2p network within the main darkcoin p2p network.

"Darkcoin does not provide anonymity."
> Yes and no. Darkcoin on its own is no stand-alone application for perfect privacy. Use it with caution, combine it with TOR, I2P, use OTR and PGP, and most important, stop using Windows. If you want true anonymity you will have to turn your live upside down. Darkcoin is a good contribution for transaction obfuscation and blockchain based privacy, but its not the proposed general problem solver. It's important to keep that in mind.


And now back to topic. Here are my comments on other coins.

LTC
> It's technically indeed a worthless clone. I personally dont see any point in why the world needs yet another coin. And I stopped believing in LTC after the devs said they dont need any new innovation. Sorry to see this big community going down the drain. Positive is that the huge team of developers and the old and big community contributed a lot of things which are also valuable for Bitcoin and the whole cryptocoin scene.

DOGE
> Was bringing cryptocoins to the masses. Using common memes and implemented as micropayment system it was indeed innovative, not technically, but in the scope of applications it was aiming at and developing for. The community of DOGE was awesome, and I think it will last some more time. But I cant predict how long. Technically, Dogecoin core is worthless, but keep in mind all the applications outside the core implementation built by the community again contributed alot to the cryptocoin scene.

PPC
> The only Proof-of-Stake coin that really lasted on the markets. It was technically ahead of its time and innovative. Not sure what the future will bring. Never heard anything new from that community after the primecoin launch (shows how innovative the PPC guys are!).

NMC
> I loved the coin from the beginning, but not sure if it will ever take off with it concept of a decentralized domain system. Its a great, innovative concept and by far ahead of its time again. I hope it will succeed in the long run.

XMR provides not only anonymity but unlinkability as well.  I've used it; it works great.  The CLI is old school, but now there's a web wallet at MyMonero.

Unlike XMR, Darkcoin is not intrinsically anonymous or unlinkable.  Darkcoin isn't intrinsically anything; it's just a brand name for a constantly mutating project with nothing under the hood but lofty goals and high hopes.

XMR uses ring signatures and stealth addresses in a brilliant cryptographically proven schema that secures privacy at the protocol level.

Darkcoin relies on features external to its dated Bitcoin/Peercoin-based protocol, such as Masternodes, in various attempts to build a privacy-producing Rube Goldberg machine, complete with shell games and other gimmicks.

XMR has never radically changed its privacy technology, and will probably never need to (especially once I2P, which provides for network-level privacy, is in integrated).

Darkcoin is locked in an eternal arms race with better blockchain analysis constantly threatening to unravel its secrets and reveal all previous transactions.

Every computer security expert knows 'security in obscurity' is a bad idea.  Apparently the Dark devs (and fanboys) didn't get that memo, as they continue to design ever more complicated mixers in a futile attempt to attain the level of perfect obfuscation XMR has enjoyed all along!

the main reason its now got my support, prior i was a litecoin troll. finally devs that actually understand the 'currency' part of cryptos. equally shows their regard for maintaining the trustless system (but that'd be lost on most the alt 'innovation' to sell the latest pump n dump crowd).

-It does not take a few hours to go though all coins
-Etehreum will be highly inflationary, but applications on it will have real value

What a lot of unadulterated garbage.

You people seem incapable of participating in any discussion at all without throwing your toys out of the pram over Darkcoin.

As for the decentralized domain name feature (.bit) we expect wider adoption not before a useable light client is available. A server-independent 1-click-install solution for the full client wouldn't hurt either. (Developers and enthusiasts, any takers?)

However, Namecoin is already in use for decentralized id systems:

• NameID (https://nameid.org/)
• Bitmessage human-readable names (https://bitmessage.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=r662kr16b2b1ts1t717n4in2r7&topic=2563.msg4855#msg4855) (related to NameID)
• onename.io

Main development activity at this moment: transition to Namecoin Core, i.e. the reimplementation of Namecoin on top of the current Bitcoin Core codebase, see https://github.com/domob1812/namecore

How many times has Darkcoin ripped out its guts and replaced them with a New & Improved, This-Time-For-Sure version, when the existing tech proved to be trivial to de-obfuscate and therefore worthless?

Was it three or four times?  I lost count after the CoinJoin fiasco.  You do realize that the more complicated and convoluted the Dark network becomes, the more delicate it also is?

And where is DyslecticZombie?  He's been gone since one of his "upgraded" MadoffNodes ate a few thousand of his hapless investor's coins!  Those constant hard forks are such a bother.  Good thing we don't have them in Monero!

Don't be jealous that every Monero node can effortlessly accomplish what the entire silly MadoffNode mixing/shuffling/juggling/breakdancing network cannot!   Join us...  :-*

fundamental analysis don't apply in crypto-currencies.  not until warren buffet invests in them..  then maybe.

You're the first person I've ever come across to characterise DRK's evolution as directionless. You're entitled to your opinion obviously, but I don't share it. During 2 years of being in and out of a gazillion coins (including Monero) Darkcoin probably has the most focused development effort I've been associated with. I think your just characterising it this way because it suits your agenda.


Yes, except it isn't more "complicated and convoluted". The mixing technology has actually become more generalised and consistent with each successive release. In particular, with pre-emptive mixing the network has adopted a universal approach that decouples it from needing to 'piggy back' the transaction. That's a huge advantage.


w.t.f. are you talking about ? Why would I be jealous when it's 5 times easier for a Dark holder to hedge themselves against Monero than the other way around ? For each unit of DRK's marketcap I can have 5 of Monero's for the same cost.

Regarding your last remark, if you really think it's such a great idea to have the obfuscation technology welded to transmission code, wait to see how that pans out when it comes to adoption. Your arguments might be entertaining but they're also clueless IMO.

You ignored and danced around my very direct and pertinent question:

How many times has Darkcoin ripped out its guts and replaced them with a New & Improved, This-Time-For-Sure version?

I never said Dark is "directionless."  That's the wrong word to put in my mouth.

Like the Tower of Babel, Dark clearly has a direction and goal in mind.  But it can't get there from here.  That's why Evan said he will someday use ring signatures!

It is hubris to think that a better (*cough* messier *cough*) obfuscation mousetrap will ever reach the cryptographic nirvana of Monero's ring signatures and stealth addresses.

You still don't get my point, so I'll make it simple:  Monero doesn't use obfuscating mixers, and Darkcoin does.

Best of luck with that "pre-emptive mixing" bollocks.  You'll need it!  Occam's Razor will not be mocked.   ;)

What do you mean when referring to "obfuscation" exactly in this context?

DRK removes the link between the money you receive and the money you send. If you call that obfuscation, then ok I guess.

Guys stop going offtopic. Create a new thread if you want to discuss XMR vs DRK.

DRK doesn't remove the links, it just covers them up with more 'noise' links.  That's the definition of obfuscation.

Sure it does, what you're talking about?

If what you said was true, then it would mean that by inspecting the blockchain you could prove that the money you sent later after anonymization was the same money you received earlier. Which you can't. So again, what are you talking about?

The creator of SPR noticed a few holes in DRK and created a new coin. It's called Spreadcoin. It will not be long before InstantX and a masternodes program hit the mainnet. I would look into it and consider buying in now before everything hits mainnet.

^^ ^^
SPR will be huge.

Has your developer turned up yet?  I thought he went missing for four days during the middle of testing.

So is NXT (well a bit more but not a coin neither). NXT is the TCP/IP of what is done with it: assets (NXT altcoins, quite simply, although some like NXTP and MMNXT give dividends), subcoins (monetary system, sort of RAD for new coins) and other features. NXT is compost for something on top of it.

De nial is a river in ancient Egypt

Quoting for truth this Epic Domination Post by Fluffy.

In light of Dash's current pump, it's important for noobs get this information to counter their FOMO.

*CASTS THREAD NECROMANCY*