Vertcoin was listed on coinwarz...

I think the concept is about short messages attached to transactions (or transaction-less short messages for noise per the earlier poster).

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I meant that the idea was brought up a couple of years ago when Bitcoin (not Darkcoin) was in its first stages of development (so the question of why wasn't it implemented is for Bitcoin really in order that we can find the answer of why the Bitcoin devs didn't push it, did they have some issue or something?)

If I'm not mistaken the feature regarding encrypted messages over the network was discussed in the early days of bitcoin development (not in the "adding noise to darksend" context). I do not remember what was the reason for not implementing it though. Priorities? Some kind of problem like bloating? It'd be interesting if some old-timer remembers what happened and why that feature got "stuck".

Coinedup uses google login, so no registration there. Not anonymous though.

I'm just throwing ideas around, you can see them more as a thought experiment*, in order to bulletproof the coin.

I am neither a programming expert, nor a cryptography expert and I'm really at a handicap to properly analyze what is going on under the hood. I'm just using algorithmic logic to check whether hints can be assembled to show input/output and pin it down to addresses/individual.

* A coin designer who is more familiar with their coin should ask themselves: If I wanted to track the transactions that go through DarkSend, what would I do? What hints would I use? What automation would I use to sort through all of those hints and make them transparent? If they want to make it NSA-proof like, then they'd have to ask a whole different set of questions, regarding pattern recognition, ip tracking, mass surveillance capabilities etc etc.


I think the reason why bitcoin is so transparent is elusive to pretty much everyone in the bitcoin world but I'll give it a go - with a warning attached that what you will read may be near impossible to believe.

Just like the ape evolved to the human by integrating a higher intellect, human will evolve into a new and better species (we are not the end of evolution - we are still evolving). Some say humans will evolve to a techno-organic hybrid (Kurzweil) like Borg but the reality is that humans will integrate their "soul" to become god-humans, making cyborg humans obsolete.

This is "destined" to happen near the end of this century. I say destined because the future is like a gravity center that "pulls" the past to itself (rather than the past building upon itself step-by-step to reach the future - which is how we view it in linear time). At the end (timeline-wise) of that gravity center is the "soul Internet". It is when humans will discover that they are all connected on a soul level where every human soul is a node and that their souls make up an internet, which is what we'd call God.

In order for humans to scientifically discover that internet, there must be some things, like concepts, that they can build upon. The order is something like that: Telegraph => Telephone => Modems => Technological Internet (what we have now) => Mental Internet (where we discover that our minds are interconnected) => Soul Internet (where we discover that our souls are interconnected).

For example, you have the telegraph and you say I discovered the phone, which is like the telegraph, but instead of signals it transmits voice. Then you have the modem which is like the phone but instead of voice, transmits data - and you've reached the internet. And then you'll say "humans are connected in their minds, just like the internet nodes". And when this is "known science" it will be easy to make the next step in understanding that humans are connected at a deeper level - comprising the ultimate network (which is the All-that-is-One). But it always requires prior concepts to build upon.

Every direction of society is building new concepts, in incremental steps, that are going towards this final realization. This includes entertainment, technology, economy, sciences, etc. In our case (Bitcoin) the decentralized/P2P model is the precise model for making people understand how the mental and soul network operate with everyone being a node. Decentralization and networks built through an equality of nodes that make up the "larger entity" is a key element. On the other hand, hierarchy/authority is against the protocol of equality which is necessary for people to understand what's coming next.

Transparency is another key element because there are no "secrets" in the "higher" networks that exist beyond the technological internet. So Bitcoin has been created as a conceptual platform / a reference for discovering things that operate based on the same "protocols" (p2p - power to the people / transparency).

Going against these protocols (in our case transparency) that build up our higher realizations as a species will be tricky. It's like trying to sail against the wind - and that ensures a hell of a bumpy raid for anyone who'll try to give it a shot in anonymity given that it is a fundamental rule of this reality that there is nothing hidden under the sun.

/"sci-fi mode" off


I like the speed of light analogy...


Yep... and that's why you can't have a "fund-Snowden"campaign, because if you don't have an NSA-proof anonymous solution, Snowden will laugh and decline your offer.



No such feeling of "anonymity competition" - don't worry.

I think the price is where it should be right now, given the market forces (buyers and sellers) no matter the 1-4% fluctuations by the bot. The whale buyers seem to have constant buying orders of ~5-10 BTC providing very strong support. After last time when I wrote that the buyers should move lower to make the dumping more costly for the one who dumps, they wisely re-positioned themselves from .0013 to 0.0012 and now to 0.00117. In this way the dumper whale will have to get the same BTC by losing more coins and that's good because his coin supply will run out earlier. No need for the buyers to buy their way up to 0.0014 when they can get 20% more coins.

As for large investment interest mentioned earlier, that's natural: The "transparent" market cap of bitcoin and alts is 10 billion USD. The anonymous market is peanuts: 4mn USD (1mn anoncoin + 3mn darkcoin). When the anonymous market delivers, if even 1% of the transparent money move to privacy-centric coins, we are talking about 100mn marketcap to be shared between anonymous coins. You can't go wrong there, although from an investment perspective I doubt they are talking exclusively about DRK. It would probably be a portfolio of coins with unique anonymity characteristics. That would also serve as a hedge to a potential loss in the bitcoin and alt market which would seem as problematic for being transparent. This type of money involved as investment and hedging is more important for coin price than market adoption in commercial trades done with DarkSend, simply due to the enormous volume of USD that are involved. Adoption in transactions will be slow. Today you can't even buy things with Bitcoins (except 0.01% of the cases), so the issue of adoption of altcoins is in itself somewhat of an oxymoron. But there will be a day when this will change.

Yeah I mean the issuing institutions are REALLY backing their paper scam-money with ...well.... nothing.

Such graph. Much stable. Very dark. Wow

Two ideas:

A) Implement an agenda / tracker of minor issues that need fixing or enhancements that we want to see.

For example:

1. Change x-coin tray icon to darkcoin
2. Change block explorer logo
3. Change block explorer mention of XCO
4. Make a nice looking splash screen for the wallet (bounty?)
5. Fix the cpu miner links in the official website (1.2c is linked as AES/AVX) - proper links can be found in http://wiki.darkcoin.fr/index.php?title=Installer_Minage_CPU_Windows

etc, etc. And have it in some type of public document that can be tracked for outstanding issues so that some minor things can be ironed out.

B) Email coinwarz to add Darkcoin with the profit formula or to do it automatically as a rough estimation of scrypt hashrate times three, without adding the X11 formula. Now, this could be good for coin exposure (as it is usually near max profitability) but there is a drawback: Attracting miners & dumpers.

Not so easy, and not 100% (you still can't be certain if party A sends the money to party B or party C) but it's useful to brainstorm stuff to make it as bulletproof as it gets.

If I remember correctly Blackcoin isn't mineable anymore, so that's why they put miners elsewhere and then buying Blackcoin with the BTCs. However, Darkcoin is mineable and its profitability is usually compared with the top scrypt coins, not to mention that the mining involves far less energy. I doubt we could gain something out of it, unless scrypt profitability was much higher.

Anything that can be done manually can also be automated if it doesn't involve too much human judgement. What I mean by that is that if a determined attacker has a way to tell that A went to B after thorough "investigation" into a transaction, you can't be really certain that this is good enough for the average Joe either. It would seem that it is (using the rationale "ok, who will do this kind of thorough investigation, time after time, for every transaction") but it is not.

As I see it, if the analysis process can be done with a relative degree of confidence, then it's simply a matter of scripting to automate the procedure of understanding one transaction and do it with other transactions. And that will be done without the manual-effort cost concern which would otherwise protect most people, since it will be done automatically.

Once this is done, you'll have the obfuscated blockchain and another site which is running a script and analyzes, in somewhat-realtime (perhaps lagging a few blocks to allow for the mixing to occur), the blockchain transactions for what they really are, rather than their mixing or noise. Imagine the scenario of an alternative block explorer which is de-obfuscating stuff and then assigning a probability percentage for each transaction. If DRK is a smash and it has many transactions, I bet someone will make this kind of "service".

Your idea gave me a further idea, although I have no clue if it can be implemented:

What if people who did NOT want to send money to others, were given the incentive to send money to the "laundry buckets" by taking a small portion of the transaction fee as a reward for their contribution...

In a way, you could have 100 people that do not want to use darksend but simply to use their capital to add noise to the darksend buckets and get paid for it (instead of having their money on their wallet, producing nothing in terms of profit). And you could have 5-10 people who genuinely want to darksend money and use the other 100 for good noise.

These nodes will monitor DarkSend,when any misbehavior is detected they will “cash” the transaction by signing and broadcasting it.
=> These nodes will monitor DarkSend and when any misbehavior is detected they will “cash” the transaction by signing and broadcasting it.

using a sigScript to make them only valid for a given period of time.
=> using a sigScript to make them valid only for a given period of time.


These outputs are new addresses not connected to their identity. This implementation allows for amounts to be sent of any precision without reducing the quality of anonymity provided.
=>These outputs are new addresses that are not connected to a user's identity. This implementation allows for amounts of any precision to be sent without a negative impact in the quality of anonymity.

"there is no risk of lost money from the master node being a bad actor, a slave node would be elected to replace the master node and the collateral would be forfeit to the network.
=>
"there is no risk of lost money from the master node being a bad actor as a slave node would be elected to replace the master node and the collateral would be forfeited to the network.

(DarkSend paragraph)

"into a larger anonymous transactions" => into larger anonymous transactions.

"The DarkSend implementation uses multiple stages each session" => in each session

"broading finalized transaction" => broadcasting (?)
"and finally collateral collection or destruction" => ...and completes the operation with the final collection or destruction of collateral.


(Defending Against Attack paragraph)

"A transactions for 0.1DRK" => A transaction of 0.1 DRK

"The decentralized nature of DarkSend requires that one node decide "
=>
"The decentralized nature of DarkSend requires that one node will decide"
or
"The decentralized nature of DarkSend requires that one node decides"
 

"Users that want to add to anonymity of the pools "
=> to add to the anonymity
or
=> to enhance the anonymity of the pools
or
=> to increase the anonymity of the pools


"Using this formula the reward will drop very steady over the following months and years, then provide a steady supply of 1M coins per year."
=>
"Using this formula the reward will gradually drop over the following months and years and then provide a steady supply of approximately 1 million coins per year."

"Darkcoins is set to 84 million, eventually though the lower cap will be " ...(empty)

Near the end I've rewritten it as follows:

"The use of X11 will prevent the use of ASIC miners for the short-term to mid-term future, being more complicated than a SHA-256 ASIC implementation. It will also allow for a longer period of mining for CPU/GPU users.
GPU miners that mine with the X11 alogirthm are currently experiencing reduced power usage (up to 50%) and reduced heat generation compared to scrypt."

(right now it mentions excess heat generation)

"X11, a chained ...." => needs better flow
"creates much slower advancement of mining technology" = a bit vague (?)
"to provide quick responses" => quick response to large mining power fluctuations
"This came at a cost" line, needs rephrasing for better flow.
"This thas implications"
"In 2014 we realized that we could make a crypto­currency that used a decentralized version of
CoinJoin as it’s implementation for anonymizing transactions, we have named this DarkSend. "
=>
"To solve this inherent problem of privacy, we created a new crypto-currency (DarkCoin) that used a decentralized version of CoinJoin in order to anonymize transactions. We gave this implementation the name DarkSend.

The algorithm was set to decrease block reward with increased difficulty, so less difficulty = more coins.

The financial aspect of the coin, ie the way the monetary base is distributed to the miners, is quite good right now to be honest and it is the prime reason why other altcoins have a diminishing market cap while DRK maintains its price and position.

If the inflation rate right now was high then DRK would not be able to maintain price and would suffer the consequences of requiring multiple times the BTCs that other coins like Vert require in order to absorb the new coins generated each day.

You can either have a constant high inflation, a diminishing curve that is still very inflationary or an accelerated diminishing curve that curbs the inflationary effect relatively early.

Bitcoin has been distributing coins for like 5 years and is still quite inflationary for its current price (3600 BTCs x 620$ = 2.23 mn USD are required each day to keep the price steady versus fiat, or half the miners have to hold their coins and just 1.1mn USD have to be invested each day to keep the price steady from half the coins dumped). That's ~400-800mn USD per year requirement, just to keep the price steady. Litecoin is like three years old and is more inflationary as it hasn't halved its reward yet.

And then you have coins that are like a few months old and have the need to distribute the monetary base but also not do so at a rate which is killing the price. Most altcoins fail in this regard due to the relatively fast issuing curve. Coin "designers" and copy/pasters that simply tweek a few parameters do not necessarily understand economics.

It's extremely difficult to emulate bitcoin's success, distribute a large number of coins, do it so that you can avoid any criticism whatsoever, avoid IPO and pre-distributed premines, keep the price at a good level etc etc. These are all conflicting with each other.


If DRK used a standard issuing algorithm it would be like Max and Vert (a constant dipping curve) - because it'd require tonz of BTC every day to maintain price. The fast initial curve and slower rate of production right now has solved the price-killing issue of most altcoins (proof of stake = junk solution IMO).

Regarding those who cash out etc, there were a lot of coins (hundreds of thousands) that changed hands when the price was between 0.000x and 0.0000x. So early miners did sell hundreds of thousands back then and the problem was then altered to "the investors who bought so cheap could dump later". We are talking about 50.000 coins orders or 100.000 coins sweeps on ccex, aside from "WTB XX.XXX DRK" people on the thread.

I remember the price between 0.000020 (buy side) and 0.000070 sell side (thousands of coins) and I was like "wtf, 0.000070?" - and I didn't buy because I thought the margin in favor of the sell side was enormous... If I bought back then I'd be like 20x on my investment. The opportunity was there, I can't say I didn't have it. The same is true for everyone that complains. And that's almost two weeks after launch. Then everything was sweeped up to 0.000180, and they were sweeped again up to 0.000500. So, again, who is to blame except those who didn't buy cheap (compared to current prices - which may be very cheap compared to a few years from now)?

Criticism of early-adopter advantage is a sign that a coin is doing good because everyone wanted in earlier and hitting their head on the wall. And, especially in the case of DRK, it's unfounded, because the price was very low for quite a while - and one could buy like 14k DRK for a single BTC. It's not like the early miners were asking 0.002 per coin.