Well for example https://shapeshift.io/ just added ShadowCash recently.  They have not added Monero probably because it doesn't plug in easy with their system.  Also Cryptsy has not added Monero probably for the same reason.

Interesting, thanks for the insight.  So it seems the main differences between the two, is that Shadow is on a bitcoin blockchain, which gives it some advantages.  For example it can plug in better with existing infrastructure, and have benefits of both transparent chain and anonymous chain. Also since only about 1% of transactions are used for anonymity, it will have less blockchain bloat than Monero where 100% of the transactions are done using ring sigs. Also Shadow's system is slightly different because the destruction of SDC, and then the minting of new SDC, which is not happening with cryptonote.  I believe the SDCDev had highlighted this fact before when comparing the two systems.  I wonder if this destruction and reminting gives it any privacy advantages.  I am really interested to see the review and how these systems compare to each other.

Thanks smooth, I didn't realize that.  You seem to be right from what I saw in the cryptonote whitepaper: https://cryptonote.org/whitepaper.pdf

So does Monero also use these dual-key stealth addresses? Also is Monero completely a trustless setup?

I saw that negative review when looking into Isidor also.  It made me think twice for a bit too, but I don't think its fair to judge on one person's comments.  

When looking further into him, I read his posts on the bitcoin developer mailing list.  I saw he was active there and many times commenting on anonymity.  This made me feel much better about him doing the review.  Here is the link, you can search his posts on the bitcoin dev mailing list if you like: https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/

Here are a couple examples of his posts having to do with anonymity and Tor:

https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg06525.html

https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg03712.html

Ring sigs are only one part of the Shadow system.  They serve as an added layer of obfuscation and are just one piece of the puzzle.  The other pieces of the puzzle are dual-key stealth addresses, and non-interactive zero knowledge proofs. If you don't know what those are you should look into them, its cutting edge tech. Its a unique system, and its better than cryptonote imho.  Please study this slide show and captions for a complete understanding of how the Shadow System works: http://www.slideshare.net/shadowcash/presentation3-43827434

Also here is a good article to better understand how the system works: http://www.deepdotweb.com/2015/01/28/shadowcash-zero-knowledge-anonymity/

Yay, L&S is back    You are much missed in this community my friend.  Even ryno himself said he misses you and everyone wishes you were more active in the community again.  You seem super smart and I'm glad to have you on team Shadow.  I really appreciate your criticisms.  Its like a sporting team sometimes needs a nice kick in the rear by their coach to get moving.

I agree with much of your post, there is much truth in your words.  But I would like to raise some counter points to provide a little balance and more info into the situation.  For one, ShadyBay was overwhelmingly voted on as the next project by the devs, from what I read by ryno's posts.  It seems like it was an agreed upon decision by the devs.  Maybe they did bite off more than they can chew.  I would think its a tall task for most dev teams, but I have seen results already in this project, which gives me more confidence in their ability to deliver.  Ryno did mention he was finding it harder to get back in the groove of things, and I'm sure the devs are somewhat burnt out.  Seems like CRZ for one has been working super hard on the marketplace design.  On top of that many bugs have cropped up, which are acting as a bit of a roadblock.  I agree its hard to move on, until the foundation is secured.  But these delays happen, bugs happen with any new software.  Its going to take time, and a lot of traders want it to happen overnight, which is definitely a little annoying.  I think we can mostly all agree on these points.

One point I would like to make is that you said we should be focusing on attracting dev talent.  I am not too knowledgeable about the entire dev team, but it sort of seems like different devs have different specialties.  CRZ for example is doing great work on design.  Other devs probably have their own specialties. Tecno is the cryptographer, etc. But I'm guessing possibly if there was no marketplace in the works then some of these devs would have nothing much to work on. They may even leave and find something else to do.  So there is something to say for always having work on the table. Also maybe there are some other devs out there that could specialize in the skills needed for the marketplace.  Well they will see Shadow already has the ball rolling, and be more likely to join the team than if the project was just shelved.  I know that ryno mentioned they did take on at least one new dev recently.  I think he said something about having to train them, so I would definitely agree with your point about the review helping to on ramp devs into the project. The further documentation being done on the system as mentioned by ryno, and requested by Isidor will also help in this regard.

Also I would like to make a point against the accusation that ShadowMarket is just a gimmick.  I can understand this perspective, especially considering the pump and dumps of other projects with false promises.  But this team has already delivered revolutionary tech proving they can deliver, and I think the value of a decentralized market in the wallet is hugely valuable to the Shadow economy.  I guess NXT has the only decentralized market right now, but I have never checked it out, so I don't know how usable it is.  I'm guessing not very usable as it has not gotten much attention.  Open Bazaar also does not seem near ready for primetime.  There seems like a real market need for this type of marketplace, and Shadow could be the first mover, with the added advantage of an anonymous token increasing the appeal to marketplace participants.  If they can get the I2P going, or the market to work over Tor, and be easy to use, we could see a huge influx of new Shadow users as well as new dev talent.

Well I guess thats all I have to say, I hope I added some valuable perspectives.  I am newer to this community, and L&S is a veteran, so much respect given.  Hope you will come around and be more active in the Shadow community again, we could really use you here.

Hey Blazin604, good to see you bro.  Hope the review will be soon.  Might be a while longer though, as rynomster (SDCDev) said he was in contact with Isidor, and Zeuner had requested some more documentation on the system. 

I saw on IRC, ryno said that Zeuner wanted something similar to this for Shadow: https://github.com/minium/Bitcoin-Spec

I guess it would help document things and make it easier to review.  Although the code is there for review, this extra documentation might make reviewing things a little more feasible I'm guessing.  Shadow does seem like a pretty complex and new system with a lot of code, so I'm guessing a review is no easy task.  I know a lot of people are hoping to see it soon, but I think it might take longer than people expect.

Anyways that is all the info I have on it, and I think nobody really knows when the full review will come out. I'm very interested to see how detailed it is going to be.

Saw this thread on ShadowTalk: http://shadowtalk.org/topic/352/shadowtalk-html-wallet-development

I think we should help out ffmad for hosting ShadowTalk and other dev work.  

Shadow didn't have the luxury of an instamine to support development like other coins, which is good for honest distribution.  But as a result, I think we as a community need to step up and support our devs.  I donated small amount, but would be nice if others can step up.  If everyone donates a small amount, it adds up.

Not sure, I tried looking into ducknote/darknote before but didn't gleam too much info about it. I think it is just a cryptonote clone.  Where Shadow is a unique system of itself.  Does ducknote really use zero knowledge? How do they implement it?


Ohhh I don't think its shilling though.  Its an honest question, because seems on the surface that Shadow blows these other coins away with their zero knowledge tech.  Maybe you see it as a threat to your favored coin?  I am looking for the best anon solution, not just to make profit off my holdings.

What about ShadowCash: http://www.slideshare.net/shadowcash/presentation3-43827434

If Shadow truly does what they say, then its the only coin to offer true anonymity with non-interactive zero knowledge proofs.  This along with dual-key stealth addresses, and ring signatures for further obfuscation means its an obvious winner does it not?  The dual key stealth addresses are also very important also for severing the link between transactions.

Monero uses ring signatures for obfuscation and its just another form of mixing, from what I understand.  DRK is also more mixing and coinjoin.  Shadow is the only coin using zero knowledge from what I have seen.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  What do you think of Shadow?  Am I just shilling?  Because to me it honestly seems like the best solution, but I am open to change my mind if someone can offer any insight, thanks.

Could be good to have both options.  There could be a button to press to put it into "automatic monkey" mode 

Anybody familiar with Darkwallet, or also myTrezor wallet and how they have different pockets or accounts within the wallet?  I think this would be very useful if implemented into the Shadow Wallet.  It would help you keep track of your Shadow and SDC.  If you wanted to keep your purchases private you could more easily clean coins or send them to Shadow in a new pocket.  Each pocket keeping the addresses separate as not to mix identities.  

I know there is a bit of a coin control feature, although I have not used it much, but pockets would make things much cleaner and easier.  But not sure how difficult that would be to implement.  Not sure if this is only possible with HD wallets. It may require some graphical reconfiguring as well.

Also I kind of think SDW is a better acronym for "Shadow Tokens" than SDT.  I think maybe we should talk about "ShadowCoins" as being SDC, and "Shadow" or "Shadow Tokens" as being SDW.  But ShadowCash remain as the entire name of currency.  This might make it more clear to new users on how the system works.

Just throwin that out there.  

For anyone who has not seen it, they should definitely check out this slide presentation on how the ShadowSend anonymity system works.  This is really a beautiful explanation: http://www.slideshare.net/shadowcash/presentation3-43827434

For some reason the link changed, I'm not sure why: http://shadowtalk.org/topic/321/shadowcash-whitepaper-peer-review

Here is an interesting interview by epicenter bitcoin with Brian Hoffman of the Open Bazaar project.  They talk about peer-to-peer commerce and Ricardian contracts.  Some ideas may be relevant to ShadowMarket:  https://soundcloud.com/epicenterbitcoin/eb-067

I was checking out https://shapeshift.io/ after I heard they added ShadowCash to their list of coins.  They only have about 20 coins or so right now, so its a pretty big deal to have ShadowCash as one of them.

One cool feature I noticed on their site is under tools: https://shapeshift.io/tools.html

They have something called the "shifty button" which allows merchants to easily accept Shadow or other alt-coins and immediately convert them to Bitcoin.  This could help with merchant adoption.

They also have something called shapeshift lens, which is a browser plugin that allows you to pay bitcoin addresses with alt-coins like ShadowCash.

I will add my 2 rynoshis as well.

Its important to remember how small this market is.  The market cap is tiny, only about $300,000 right now.  You can become the Winklevoss' of ShadowCash and own 1% of all the coins in existence for about a dozen bitcoins. Also, 1% of all coins in circulation is only about 65,000 SDC.  Don't forget this coin is no longer mined either, and inflation is much lower than bitcoin for years to come.  

When the price dropped the other day, the daily volume was only about 30 btc.  The smaller the market cap a coin is, the higher the volatility.  Sure large holders/traders probably hold large % of SDC total supply.  As the price rises they will dump some, which is natural and good for distribution.  Some people complain that SDC distribution was done too fast in the first 3 weeks of POW stage.  But when you can buy 1% of the total SDC supply for a dozen bitcoins, its hard to justify the argument that its unfair distribution.  Anyone who can grasp the importance of this tech can get on board now very cheaply.

Just because someone decides they want to cash out 15 or 30 bitcoins worth of Shadow in one day, it does not effect the fundamental value of the coin.  The volatility also works both ways, and once people do find out about this coin, the price will likely skyrocket very very quickly.  A market buy of 50 btc sends the price above 30K satoshi right now.  There are a lot of Bitcoin early adopters who believe in privacy and freedom, and that is what Shadow is all about.  Once they find out about Shadow, expect a flood into this tiny coin and the dams to burst.

Interesting interview with Sam Patterson, developer for Open Bazaar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QikF1iwbrrc

Seems the questions he is asked about legal worries of creating a decentralized marketplace are relevant to the ShadowMarket project.

Woot...Shapeshift.io just added ShadowCash: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2whmn2/shapeshiftio_has_added_shadowcash_vericoin/

We should support these guys: https://shapeshift.io/

There has been suspicion of theft, and some talk about it on IRC.  I tend to also believe the theft theory is highly probable.  The reason being, it seems highly unlikely someone wouldn't make a backup of the wallet, especially during an update, and having custody of other people's money.  More evidence is that right around the time I noticed huge dumps on bittrex.  I suspected it was one person with 100s of thousands of coins dumping.  Anytime a decent size buy order was placed the whale would fill it.  The selling behavior was indicative of one person in my opinion.

Further evidence was seen from beta.bittrex where you can see the accounts of the largest holders on the site.  Some people posted screen shots in this thread and there was one account with over 200,000 SDC if I remember correctly, and it subsequently got dumped over the following several days.  I believe this is why the price crashed down from 40K satoshi to 20K and lower right after the Shadowsend release.  I guess its good that the thief dumped the coins already and is no longer a threat to the market. Perhaps some investigation into the blockchain could provide further insight into the truth of what happened.