Right now it's indeterminable. There have been no specifics given to us, and given the contradictory and nonsensical nature of the breadcrumbs we're leaning towards it not being real until demonstrated otherwise or given technical details we can follow.

Icebreaker - the core team's time notwithstanding, typical devs in this space with the requisite skills are $30 to $50 an hour, which works out to ~$5500 to ~$9000 a month per developer. You can extrapolate out from there.

It's one I take too. And note that we're specific about it being credible - the means that a purchased forum account won't do, and if you're paying off a public figure you'd best make sure his buddies won't nab on him.

No thanks. Perhaps you could get some actual cryptanalysis done and then we can talk.

So instead of choosing to remain ignorant (and I know a lot of people that earn significantly more than 50 BTC a month and similarly choose not to remain ignorant) I clicked on the XUC link. It is a cryptocurrency barwizi is hoping to launch next month to provide a "common" currency between cryptocurrencies. Monero is one of the coins he has selected to participate. Stealthcoin, unfortunately, is not. But I'm sure if you vacate our thread and go back to shilling elsewhere you can beg him to include it. All the best with that, chum, I'm sure your tech advisor can assist you and your 50 BTC a month to beg barwizi for inclusion.

Oh good, you're leaving. See you in 2 days!

Yes - if you want to run a full node then all you have to do is run the daemon:)

We don't have investors. We're not a company.

Go troll elsewhere, ok? Thanks.

Deemed to be flawed by nobody important.

Don't you have another thread to go be annoying in?

"Investors" do not pay my salary. In fact, in spite of the smattering of donations, I (and the rest of the core team) spend significantly more money than we receive, and that doesn't even account for our time. We are not a company, we do not have investors. We are just a group of multi-skilled, multi-faceted people trying to see if we can bring Monero to a point where it is a secure, safe, easy-to-use, and fully decentralised cryptocurrency.

Also, there are 7 of us. If I take a break for an hour on a Sunday to choose not to neglect my wife but to go walk on the beach with her you can bet that work doesn't stop, nor do the cogs turning inside my head. So I guess you could say I, too, worked during that hour. And I'm sorry if you disagree, but my family (even though it only consists of my wife) comes first and foremost in my life.

Just wait till you see the pics of me drinking whisky...so scandalous!

How do you get that? There's been a claim with virtually no details, that we can neither refute or accept. So what are we meant to fix, exactly?

Would you prefer it if I feverishly read through every line of code in an abject panic?

Until BCX either provides some more technical details, or he just carries out his attack in 2 days time, we don't know *if* there is an exploit, what its nature is, or where to even start looking. So we carry on as normal, investing plenty of time in Monero, without needlessly panicking, because if we panic we will accomplish nothing.

Ring signatures are in which other non-CryptoNote coin again? I mean actually implemented and working, not just "promised". And does it have stealth addresses as well?

If you're pulling 50 BTC a month in income why are you chatting on an Internet forum on a Sunday? Don't you have a life that you should be living?

You talk as if we are incapable of changing from Franklin / Zhang ring signatures to Chandran signatures. We are absolutely able to do that, but the research from Microsoft Research is still in its infancy. It will require a lot of review, forethought, and testing. As and when the time comes, the Monero Research Lab will put out a publication to cover this, but we will not rush it, nor will we make a promise to implement it at this stage. We don't make impossible promises to pump the price, we only talk about something when it's practical and possible and in-progress.

You're being obtuse - that publication presents an edge case that is not going to happen any time soon, and presents a fix for it.

The reference code is not "written like shit". There are parts that are obfuscated, and parts where the design decisions are not clear because the code is not commented. That does not mean it's terrible and must be thrown away, it means that the code should be incrementally refactored and documented.

Please go back to your thread if you have nothing useful or correct to say.

I doubt that very much. The respected members of this community who we all look up to are known cryptographers and experts such as gmaxwell, andytoshi, wumpus, gavinandresen, and so on.

That's from weeks ago.

Also, Chandran signatures *ARE* ring signatures.

https://ssd.eff.org/wire/protect/sms - "Avoid SMS Text Messages If You Can", a guide from the EFF that you really should read

Also, the mechanism may be obfuscated, but the transaction is still on the blockchain. In the example, if I know Carol's XST address I can see who paid her. One of those payments will be from Bob, and I can discover who he is through multiple means (rubberhose cryptanalysis, he put his address on a forum once, etc. etc.)

Obscuring the transaction broadcast really isn't a necessary component, as even with Bitcoin transactions are relayed, and thus the IP address attached to a transaction is merely the IP address of the node that first relayed it. This system provides no improvement over Bitcoin's pseudonymous transaction relay system.

What are his credentials, cryptographically speaking? Has he published anything cryptographically relevant that we can read? I mean, since he's advising you on cryptocurrencies I would imagine it's a prerequisite for him to have an extremely strong crypto background.