Sure, I could elaborate a lot more, but am not inclined to do so here and now for reasons that should be obvious.

I can only speak for myself, but with what I have seen so far, I am very pleased with what BCX's game may ultimately produce, win or lose.
Personally, I see the threat as a serious one, and treat it like an unexpected red-team exercise.  Been there done that, from both sides of the keyboard.  
All new coins with this modern design are vulnerable in the early days in this same way.  The game has encouraged me to look deeper at some old ideas and to learn things some things that I didn't know previously.
And so I've given what I learned to the XMR devs because I am grateful to the work they have done so far in this effort.  I am hopeful that they will have the opportunity to make use if it in the time they have, but I know they are very busy.

What I won't do is publish anything more broadly.  At least not until this game has fully concluded.  The devs however may do what they please.

I'm old and slow and my coding skilz are as well.  I was kicked upstairs into design and management years ago but I was not content to remain completely idle during this game.  If these devs are able to do something amazing, they should get all the credit along with all the rest that are helping them (more folks than you might think).  Other than this little contribution I don't have a lot to give, I'm just here along with the rest of you in the peanut gallery with a couple months salary at stake, but from where I stand, my little bit of XMR looks to be in very good hands.  

MEW - Monero Economy Workgroup communication

This has been a busy day. The taskforce of crypto_zoidberg, AnonyMint, jl777 and some Monero developers and MEW members has diligently worked on the code and is implementing fixes to possible exploits that might give the attacker the upper hand. The code is evaluated so that we can say with certainty that no coinkiller exploit can be used against us, and this makes me thankful for the original coders of CryptoNote. It is too often forgotten that without this unique technology there would be no Monero that has taken the torch, determined to carry it beyond the current limits of cryptoworld.

Although I cannot personally evaluate all the work that has been done, I would like to thank everybody who have been working on the issue. There are many unique contributions that together make sure that we are able to withstand the attack. I feel that the situation is similar to the attack that we had to thwart only two weeks ago, as we now again stand united.

The MEW will be officially inaugurated tomorrow with 18 members. We will open the membership as soon as possible for everyone who is interested in contributing to Monero's success. The minimum membership fee will be set to 10 XMR to ensure that everybody has an opportunity to join. Our organization is minimal because the activities will be carried out by members themselves, in groups of their choosing. David Latapie serves as Members Executive, I have been selected to be the Operational Executive, and NewLiberty will be our Judge. For practical matters, you will have to contact David, and he will tell when we are ready to take new members.

The attack has served in tightening our ranks and we are now in front of several fundamental decisions. These will be discussed and voted upon by the community in MEW. In a way I even feel grateful that this opportunity to make things straight has fallen upon us. We now have more confidence on the code, and on the developers. The community is unified and I have been inundated with PM's offering help and support. From the quantity of troll posts one would believe that there is some general animosity towards Monero, but the PM's alone speak volumes about the support.

In the end, a coin's value is upheld by people who trust it and decide to own it. The people who do not trust it and do now own it, also do not have a say concerning the value. Monero will be developed for its users, not for the ones who do not use it. I believe the strengthening of the code and the community is very positive for Monero's future.

Hashpower is very very helpful, but I understand they also have something more in mind.
Something new.  
Something that may end this sort of TW threat for all nascent coins, forever, if they follow XMR's lead on it.
I don't want to say much about it yet as it is still in review, and discussion on feasibility.
Occasionally necessity is the mother of invention after all... when he father is dedicated brilliance.

If this comes to fruition, I may end up thanking BCX for this game, once all is said and done.
It has led me to look at things in a different way, and maybe there is a solution to a problem that has plagued crypto since 2011.

Somebody's not happy that XMR hasn't dropped more so, put up a big sell wall /150 btc / , dump a bunch and buy back lower. cause a stampede if possible.

Monero is very strong  

Thanks for that.

Now back to being curious, how could have the patch been done without alerting the Monero team? I am very interested in the way it could be done.

Ok, I have actual genuine curiosity as to how Boolberry would push out the change without the Monero team knowing, I was being sincere and want to know how that could be done.

MEW - Monero Economy Workgroup communication

A taskforce is set up to address the issue of a possible "BCX exploit", and an ultimatum by BCX to find and fix it in 72 hours lest a serious attack is launched upon Monero.

The taskforce consists of several Monero developers, AnonyMint, CZ, jl777 and me.

There are differing opinions in the taskforce concerning the severity of the threat. No coinkiller is yet found and several avenues are probed. The members who have technical competence are talking about their views themselves.

Regardless of the outcome in the technical side, this is a serious economic attack on Monero - about 15% of the pre-ultimatum value is lost, and there is a great information asymmetry plaguing traders currently. It is notable that nobody has offered to borrow XMR for shorting (which I could provide against full guarantee deposit of BTC). Neither has anyone bought the PUT options. This means that the downside speculation has so far been limited to selling out from a trader's own stash. An economically motivated player who knows for sure about a lethal attack might decide to take leverage for personal gain.

I believe that the Monero devs are up to their task and can mitigate the potential exploit, and fix the code in preparation of the announced attack. I further believe that Monero will rise even stronger. Since I am not in possession of any knowledge that indicates that a realistic attack could take place, I can only estimate the probability that it exists unnoticed, and my estimate is 4-8%.

The MEW will be inaugurated on Tuesday, and also the devteam has important announcements (not related to the attack). Provided that our coin still exists, I am sure we have a great future ahead of us as a community with these new methods of organizing our activities for the mutual benefit.

MEW - Monero Economy Workgroup communication

A taskforce is set up to address the issue of a possible "BCX exploit", and an ultimatum by BCX to find and fix it in 72 hours lest a serious attack is launched upon Monero.

The taskforce consists of several Monero developers, AnonyMint, CZ, jl777 and me.

There are differing opinions in the taskforce concerning the severity of the threat. No coinkiller is yet found and several avenues are probed. The members who have technical competence are talking about their views themselves.

Regardless of the outcome in the technical side, this is a serious economic attack on Monero - about 15% of the pre-ultimatum value is lost, and there is a great information asymmetry plaguing traders currently. It is notable that nobody has offered to borrow XMR for shorting (which I could provide against full guarantee deposit of BTC). Neither has anyone bought the PUT options. This means that the downside speculation has so far been limited to selling out from a trader's own stash. An economically motivated player who knows for sure about a lethal attack might decide to take leverage for personal gain.

I believe that the Monero devs are up to their task and can mitigate the potential exploit, and fix the code in preparation of the announced attack. I further believe that Monero will rise even stronger. Since I am not in possession of any knowledge that indicates that a realistic attack could take place, I can only estimate the probability that it exists unnoticed, and my estimate is 4-8%.

The MEW will be inaugurated on Tuesday, and also the devteam has important announcements (not related to the attack). Provided that our coin still exists, I am sure we have a great future ahead of us as a community with these new methods of organizing our activities for the mutual benefit.

MEW - Monero Economy Workgroup communication

A taskforce is set up to address the issue of a possible "BCX exploit", and an ultimatum by BCX to find and fix it in 72 hours lest a serious attack is launched upon Monero.

The taskforce consists of several Monero developers, AnonyMint, CZ, jl777 and me.

There are differing opinions in the taskforce concerning the severity of the threat. No coinkiller is yet found and several avenues are probed. The members who have technical competence are talking about their views themselves.

Regardless of the outcome in the technical side, this is a serious economic attack on Monero - about 15% of the pre-ultimatum value is lost, and there is a great information asymmetry plaguing traders currently. It is notable that nobody has offered to borrow XMR for shorting (which I could provide against full guarantee deposit of BTC). Neither has anyone bought the PUT options. This means that the downside speculation has so far been limited to selling out from a trader's own stash. An economically motivated player who knows for sure about a lethal attack might decide to take leverage for personal gain.

I believe that the Monero devs are up to their task and can mitigate the potential exploit, and fix the code in preparation of the announced attack. I further believe that Monero will rise even stronger. Since I am not in possession of any knowledge that indicates that a realistic attack could take place, I can only estimate the probability that it exists unnoticed, and my estimate is 4-8%.

The MEW will be inaugurated on Tuesday, and also the devteam has important announcements (not related to the attack). Provided that our coin still exists, I am sure we have a great future ahead of us as a community with these new methods of organizing our activities for the mutual benefit.

MEW - Monero Economy Workgroup communication

A taskforce is set up to address the issue of a possible "BCX exploit", and an ultimatum by BCX to find and fix it in 72 hours lest a serious attack is launched upon Monero.

The taskforce consists of several Monero developers, AnonyMint, CZ, jl777 and me.

There are differing opinions in the taskforce concerning the severity of the threat. No coinkiller is yet found and several avenues are probed. The members who have technical competence are talking about their views themselves.

Regardless of the outcome in the technical side, this is a serious economic attack on Monero - about 15% of the pre-ultimatum value is lost, and there is a great information asymmetry plaguing traders currently. It is notable that nobody has offered to borrow XMR for shorting (which I could provide against full guarantee deposit of BTC). Neither has anyone bought the PUT options. This means that the downside speculation has so far been limited to selling out from a trader's own stash. An economically motivated player who knows for sure about a lethal attack might decide to take leverage for personal gain.

I believe that the Monero devs are up to their task and can mitigate the potential exploit, and fix the code in preparation of the announced attack. I further believe that Monero will rise even stronger. Since I am not in possession of any knowledge that indicates that a realistic attack could take place, I can only estimate the probability that it exists unnoticed, and my estimate is 4-8%.

The MEW will be inaugurated on Tuesday, and also the devteam has important announcements (not related to the attack). Provided that our coin still exists, I am sure we have a great future ahead of us as a community with these new methods of organizing our activities for the mutual benefit.

I suppose you monitor every tx on the blockchain and sure all trades go through centralized exchanges.  


And you may not get any evidence. I am contemplating forsaking the 5 BTC and sending all my help to BBR only under the agreement they not release it to XMR under after the attack begins. I need to consult with BBR first and also waiting to see if your group can reign you in or not.


I am glad you believe in centralized crypto-currency.

I guess you missed the entire point that PoW is decentralized consensus and autonomous trading.



No shit Sherlock. That is the entire point.



Well ain't that nice. While I am slaving away and barely got any sleep in order to try to save YOUR INVESTORS, you are wiggling your toes in the sandbox.

There are nice beaches here too and many beautiful people to go hang out with. I am sacrificing that. But never mind.

Before the threat to attack the coin, the price was relatively calm (48 hours in 340-390, average 364). When the threat came, the price tanked to 281, which was a 22% fall in a few minutes. For those who don't remember the Bitcoin weekly 20-30% flashcrashes in for example March 2013, that may seem like dramatic, in fact it is not. But it is something that has not happened with Monero in the recent history, if ever.

If you take 360 or 364 as the baseline price from which to calculate the attack odds, the current market evaluation can be read from the following table:


If you check the price, and conclude the market has priced the risk wrongly, you should take action. Another approach is to try to swingtrade, but this leaves you holding the bag if the coinkiller attack materializes.

Just selling, without doing the math, is good if and only if you absolutely cannot take any risk that it dies. Because if it does, you can buy back at a loss. (There will be others wanting to buy back also in that situation.)

Just buying because it is cheap, without doing the math, is good if and only if you are prepared to lose 100% of the investment in less than 3 days, no matter how low the risk of this actually happening is perceived to be.

Happy trading! Also my options are operational, with skyhigh implied volatility of course.

Okay my hunch appears to be incorrect.

https://cryptonote.org/whitepaper.pdf#page=9

There is no additional information gained from each ring signature even if they all use the same Pi, because the qi and wi are chosen randomly.

So I didn't find any weakness in the math, unless it is something in the modular math.

So BCX may mean the "implementation" has an error not the math of the NIZKP, in which case after the attack it would be fixable and the anonymity going forward would be fixed. BCX may be implying (note he didn't exclude that) the exploit can only break the anonymity up to the point of a fix of the implementation.

I don't have time to go hunting in the implementation. Not even for 50 BTC.

Have we hit the low for the year yet?

No I don't, sorry

Also could you please explain the contradiction I quoted in the above post? Thanks

is crypto done??

Ah ok, so just to make sure everyone's on the same page, this is the screenshot from the Missive:



The idea was to make it "ticked" by default, and it's a per-wallet setting, but if people want to disable it or increase/decrease the percentage they can at any time. Before the GUI is even released, though, we wanted to add this in to simplewallet / rpcwallet - again, prompted during wallet creation, and configurable at any time.

Now I know this seems like a small amount, and it won't do much difference, and you're right. This is not going to satisfy the immediate and large funding requirements. Which is why this is more of a longer-term thing to make sure we always have budget for ongoing efforts / maintenance. It does not preclude fundraising for specific features / tasks.

Not possible. Once a transaction is mined its permanent. If you mean after broadcast and before its mined, then you need to follow the maths in the whitepaper. Individual *inputs* are ring-signed, not the whole tx. You can't change an input without mucking up the signature for the whole transaction.


How? In order for them to do this they'd need to own a massive portion of the utxoset. Maybe you need to read our research bulletin on chain reactions and traceability in the CryptoNote protocol, as it explains exactly why this is impossible without a huge amount of utxos under your private control: http://lab.monero.cc/pubs/MRL-0001.pdf


Because even though the inputs are ring signed (and thus you can (ostensibly) never know if an input was genuine or merely part of a group signature) the outputs are signed by you and you alone. Thus, verification is trivial - you merely need to reveal the one-time key for that transaction to verify it.


Again, you're conflating ring-signed inputs with individually-signed outputs. The trick here is the combination of stealth addresses and ring signatures, not one or the other. I'd suggest you start with the whitepaper and fully grok the maths behind it as a first step towards understanding.

how to get in there?


a third idea and that is basically how mike hear financed his project is to convince very rich anarchists/libertarians that this project has a lot of value. finding these guys in the bitcoin environment should be easy convincing them that there is place for a second major currency is hard. first because the person probably thinks it shoots its own leg, second because there needs to be an incentive for him. that said I think there are people who see besides their own profit, moral reasons to invest in a project like this.

i am  think  about to buy a large sum of xmr, what do you guys think could be the price in one year ?

it will not become 1 billion usd in 2 years.
i would bet my life on it. Something really strange should happen to whole world,  if i am wrong.