I agree it is safer than Samourai. But, safe in general? Depends on how people use it. If effective coinjoin plugins were developed, and everyone who coinjoined in whirlpool migrated to Electrum, then I expect authorities to address them.

Well, you can't cut a loaf of bread with whirlpool or with coinjoin plugins, so this analogy does not apply. Certain software is simply written to enhance your privacy, there is no other utility.

Whirlpool has been removed in v1.9.0: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases.

Δε θα έλεγα ελαφρώς... Εφιάλτης του scalability θα έλεγα. Δεν είναι μόνο ότι είναι πολύ μεγαλύτερες σε μέγεθος. Το βασικό πρόβλημα είναι πως δεν υπάρχει UTXO set, επειδή δε γνωρίζεις πότε ένα output γίνεται spent. Οπότε πρέπει να ψάχνεις από όλο το TXO set συνέχεια για κάθε key image που λαμβάνεις (δηλαδή για κάθε output που γίνεται spent).

Το πόσο ζημιά κάνει στο scalability μπορεί να μην είναι αισθητό αυτή τη στιγμή, αλλά σκέψου πως όσο αυξάνονται τα outputs, τόσο αυξάνεται και το TXO set. Δηλαδή όσο προχωράει το chain, τόσο και μεγαλύτερη αναζήτηση πρέπει να κάνει για να τσεκάρει ότι δεν κάνεις double-spend. Άλλο ένα μεγάλο attack vector... Σκέψου να μη μπορείς να φτάσεις chain tip επειδή το blockchain μεγαλώνει με ταχύτερους ρυθμούς απ' ότι εσύ προλαβαίνεις να κάνεις verify...

Σε αυτό το λινκ κάνει μια ωραία σύγκριση μεταξύ Bitcoin, Monero, Grin: https://phyro.github.io/grinvestigation/why_grin.html.

Fun fact: Δε μπορείς να στείλεις συναλλαγή 1 input / 1 output, αυτόματα θα σου φτιάξει δεύτερο output με XMR value=0. Βέβαια απ' ότι διαβάζω δεν είναι ενάντια των consensus rules, απλά είναι non-standard. Φαντάζομαι για έξτρα ανωνυμία (να μην μπορεί να πει κανείς ότι ξοδεύεις όλο το input σε ένα προορισμό).

Το CryptoNight δεν ευνοούσε κι αυτό modern CPUs λόγω L3 cache; Φτιάχτηκε ASIC με fast memory access και το αχρήστεψε;

Αν είναι έτσι όπως τα λες τότε μάλλον δε συμφέρει. Επίσης, νομίζω το RandomX είναι φτιαγμένο για general-purpose computing, κι άρα εξ ορισμού δε βγάζει νόημα να φτιάξεις application-specific circuit, αλλά επειδή δεν το έχω μελετήσει ιδιαίτερα κρατώ μια πισινή.

Δεν έχει κάποιο fixed ανώτατο όριο. Έχει να κάνει με το median size των προηγούμενων 100 blocks. Αν ο miner λύσει block με size > 60 kb, τρώει penalty: https://monero.stackexchange.com/a/1074. Το penalty είναι έτσι διαμορφωμένο ώστε ο miner να ενθαρρύνεται να διαλέξει συναλλαγές που πληρώνουν κάποιο fee απ' το λίγο block subsidy που χάνει. Νομίζω αυτός είναι και ο λόγος που δε μπορείς να στείλεις συναλλαγή με λιγότερο από 10-20 piconero/byte όταν το median size είναι μεγαλύτερο του 60 kb (σχεδόν πάντα δηλαδή).

Το whirlpool ήταν πολύ καλό. Βασικά ήταν το μόνο coinjoin non-custodial service που δεν το είχε σπάσει κανείς απ' όσο ξέρω. (Και είχε το περισσότερο liquidity, ~10k BTC)

Το Monero είναι έτσι σχεδιασμένο για να μην ανεβαίνουν τα fees όπως και στο Bitcoin, αλλά δεν έχει και ιδιαίτερη σημασία. Αν κάνεις broadcast ένα εκατομμύριο συναλλαγές με 20 piconero/byte, να πληρώσεις μαξ μερικές χιλιάδες ευρώ. Σε καμία περίπτωση δεν θεωρείται αυτό whale.

Συνέβη πρόσφατα, κι απ' ότι φαίνεται έχει ονομασία αυτό το attack, λέγεται black marble flood: https://github.com/Rucknium/misc-research/tree/main/Monero-Black-Marble-Flood.

Έφτιαξα νέο νήμα για να μην εκτροχιάζουμε όλα τα άλλα περί Monero: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5495034.

Συζητήσεις, απορίες και speculation περί Monero εδώ.

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Το Μάρτιο, τα daily transactions έσπασαν all-time-high, 100 χιλιάδες: https://monero.observer/monero-daily-transaction-new-ath-100k/. Για μένα είναι ακόμα ασαφές το πόσο ασφαλές είναι το δίκτυο από de-anonymization επιθέσεις. Σίγουρα είναι πιο ανώνυμο απ' το Bitcoin, ακόμα και σε περίοδο επίθεσης λόγω stealth addresses και confidential transactions. Αλλά τα ring signatures είναι το ήμισυ (ανωνυμία του αποστολέα). Χωρίς αυτά, ναι μεν δεν υπάρχει linkability, αλλά μπορεί να υπάρχει traceability του κάθε output / coin.

Επίσης κάτι άλλο που δε μου αρέσει είναι ότι οι developers το έχουν κάνει σχεδόν ξεκάθαρο ότι θα υπάρξουν μελλοντικά hardforks, αν παράδειγμα σχεδιαστεί ASIC για Monero (για να αποθαρρύνει τους κατασκευαστές ASIC).

Newbies get discouraged because of the price fall. Experienced ones get encouraged, because of the opportunity to buy the dip. Honestly, that's exactly what I'm feeling right now. Cheap bitcoin coming out of the weak hands' wallets.

It happened in May 2020. Halving occurred in ~$9k, then for a couple of months it fluctuated in the $9k-$10k range, and then in July, it hit $12k and stayed there for two or three months, IIRC. In November it hit $15k, January $30k and the rest is history.

Because of two reasons.

• Working on a privacy service puts you in danger.
• It is very difficult to gain privacy in Bitcoin. No ring signatures and no confidential transactions, that's already a major disadvantage. Coinjoin can help, but since there are strong privacy technologies implemented elsewhere which can't be introduced in Bitcoin without a softfork, it discourages development further.

Laying in bed with the enemy is not worthy of respect. I don't get why it's so difficult to understand that.

And that's what I do. I no longer use mixers, mainly because I don't want to hand over custody. I have no problem directing to such services, if you're fine with putting some trust to the people behind it.

According to your reasoning, people should be forbidden from recommending VPNs, because they have said they use Tor to browse anonymously. According to my reasoning, people have the freedom to choose after they've studied the cons and pros of each.

And coin control enables manual control of which UTXO to spend when making a transaction, avoiding consolidating toxic change, making your tracing more difficult. 

Electrum doesn't directly offer you coinjoin service, but it allows you to install plugins, one of which allows you to join coins with other people. This means that it indirectly supports coinjoin.

It isn't advertised as privacy enhancing, but it does enhance your privacy if you know how to use it. Judging by the stance of the authorities right now in privacy, it will not surprise me if they start threatening Electrum developers.

Forget about the 5%. Privacy, just as every other human right, should not be invaded for "the sake of the children".

Coinjoining is also a natural thing for Bitcoin.

It definitely helps engaging in illegal activities, because it is untraceable, just like whirlpool was. BTW, from all whirlpool's coins, it is said that only 5% are used in criminal proceeds.

Coinjoining using whirlpool's coordinator was also perfectly legal, until recently.

If you want to accuse me for scamming, there's the Reputation and the Scam Accusations boards. What I have promoted in my signature is beyond the subject of this thread, so please stop resorting to it if you don't have anything to say in defense of Wasabi.

Just because a company does not fund the enemy and sell out their users, it doesn't mean its development must be community oriented. Samourai Wallet is a good example of a company that respected the fundamentals of Bitcoin and privacy without laying in bed with a blockchain surveillance firm.

I believe I have the right to pinpoint where I see suspicious activity. If a privacy-proclaimed company starts going in the opposite direction, people will stop using it. So, it's a matter of time until it goes out of business.

(Even though, at the draconian times we live in, every privacy-enhancing company will eventually shut down; ethical or not)

They are targeted for the same reason unregistered centralized exchanges are targeted. They're non-licensed money transmitting services. Like, real money transmitters, not like the recent vague definition which can treat even this forum a money transmitter. For example, if you deposit lightning bitcoin in Wallet of Satoshi, they hold custody of your coins, and are therefore subjected to regulations.

With the recent turn of events in the US, expect a lot more than custodial lightning wallet providers to shut down within the next few years.

Besides the points made above regarding Wasabi funding blockchain surveillance company and turning evil, I wouldn't trust their anonymity score calculations. They are either invalid, or their software is faulty. Or perhaps both. According to this topic page, it is evident that either Wasabi does not display the correct score or that it wastes block space.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. The Wasabi shill I addressed to didn't convince me with their diplomatic replies. You can read that discussion and see yourself.

You either work for a privacy solution, or you don't. If you're afraid the governments will be hostile to you, then don't work on a privacy service, or do it anonymously (like Monero development). It'd be completely reasonable and respectable. But, you can't have the cake and eat it too. Wasabi should either be "unfairly private" or shut their operations down. The path Wasabi chose was to lie in bed with the enemy, turn pro-censorship, anti-fungibility and sell out their users in general. To me that is unethical for a business of that kind.

Electrum comes with coin control, lightning network, Tor, plugin support, custom Electrum server support-- all of which allow privacy enhancement. If you pass a legislation that treats Samourai Wallet as illicit based on the criterion that it enhances privacy, then you open the Pandora's box to ban everything that can help you enhance you privacy. Everything, even your Internet connection; it's that vague.

Oh, my bad then. I thought you can buy / sell / create an inscription at secret, or that this could have happened at secret anyways.

It makes a lot of sense if it was the miner, because then, they didn't pay 33 bitcoin. They paid a median-sized transaction in return for the "rarest" Ordinal or whatever-token. It makes no economic difference if the miner pays themselves 10 sat/vb or 1,000,000 sat/vb, but it apparently makes a significant difference if it's Ordinals.

This theory makes sense only if the miner mined it in secret, and didn't broadcast it. Not sure it's possible to verify this theory by checking some well-configured debug.log.

The problem with making governments illegal is that you need a government to do it. Sounds like trying to convince a person to kill themselves. 

Even free market advocates do not believe in a world with absolutely no government. Less intervention in the market is already a milestone, which we are far away from. Writing code has been proved to be particularly effective manner to resist, but it needs more than that.

That's why you should always verify the signatures of your software! The feds have not compromised the private key(s) used to sign software releases.

You can't do much with an IP address. It could be the IP address of a Tor exit node. Or perhaps another pro-anonymity protocol. Or VPN. Or maybe Satoshi just used to go on coffee-shops with free Wi-Fi to code or/and write forum posts. Or a combination of everything mentioned.

He probably just used Tor though. That's the safest approach.

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By the way, Satoshi is not the only person in the cryptographic community who's remained anonymous. Monero's core development team is mostly consisted of anonymous people, like van Saberhagen and thankful_for_today. Today's anonymity protocols probably provide sufficient anonymity.

We don't need to store a library on every computer running Bitcoin. If you want an unstoppable library, then check libgen and zlib*, both of which are probably the largest libraries in the world. For censorship-resistant browsing, we have Tor, we definitely don't need terabytes of data to store and verify forever.

* I would provide a link, but that'd probably result in a ban for reasons... 

Might be a wild conspiracy, but wouldn't it make a lot of sense of that guy was the miner?