Monero, Zano and the State of CryptoNote Coins as We Approach 2021

[OrsonJ]

For a while I've been under the impression that the Zano-Monero relationship was like the CryptoNote equivalent of Litecoin-Bitcoin. CryptoNote silver to CryptoNote gold as it were, with the chance that Zano may edge ahead (at least on a technical level) if they implement log-size ring sigs first. I won't go on too much about Zano (intro for those interested) or Monero here, but here's a link to the papers for their respective log-size ring signature schemes:

Zano:  Lin2-Xor Lemma and Log-size Linkable RingSignature
Monero: Triptych: logarithmic-sized linkable ring signatures with applications

But I realized I really don't have enough information to make such a strong claim, as I don't know much about the other actively developed CryptoNote coins.



There's a whole mess of forks from the original ByteCoin code, but most are probably long gone now.

What's the current state of affairs? Who's innovating and what're the most important CryptoNote projects we should be watching right now?

[RussianEnglishTranslation]

I think the take away here is that Moneo is just an overvalued fork of Bytecoin. There are dozens of cryptos that utilize the same technology and are not tracked by government agencies like Monero is. If I wanted to send funds privately, cheap, and fast using cyrptonote I would use Loki or turtle. That said, I think the future of privacy is on Ethereum and that is why I invested in 0xMR and PRV. Ethereum transactions are anonymous by default as long as you use a VPN, do not interact with KYC platforms, and do not use ENS. Ethereum is account based, not UTXO based, there is no coin data to RingCT, Bulletproof etc. UTXO based cryptos like Bitcoin carry a history of everywhere they have been and are very easy to trace. If you send an Ethereum token to another wallet the transaction is visible if zkSNARKs isn't used but the wallets are anonymous and since the tokens exist on the EVM, they have no identifying information. It's quite possible that one day UTXO privacy coins can be cracked and all transactions will be visible by authorities (they probably already are now). With account based cryptos and tokens, if you send tokens to another wallet that holds the same type of toke for example, there is no way to blacklist the tokens that come from a criminal and identify them from tokens that are already held in a wallet, there is no identifying data. Not many people realize it but account based cryptos are private by nature as long as you use a VPN and do not complete KYC as stated.

[Stanlo]

I don't have a lot to share about this but I was a fan of cryptonote coins, I've spent over 4 years mining cryptonote coins and majority are Monero forks but today only very few are alive, some don't have any volume left and some are dead already, it was a bad experience for me because if I was mining only Monero at the time I would have make more money instead of mining different new cryptonote coins because of low mining difficulty, there are few cryptonote coins that are still alive today

1. Dero
2. Aeon
3. Karbowanec
4. Loki
5. BLOC
6. Electronero
7. Graft
8. Haven XHV

Honestly the only cryptonote coins that makes sense is XMR and Bytecoin, the cryptonote algorithm is fading away as many new developers don't care about POW algo anymore

[RussianEnglishTranslation]

I think the take away here is that Moneo is just an overvalued fork of Bytecoin. There are dozens of cryptos that utilize the same technology and are not tracked by government agencies like Monero is. If I wanted to send funds privately, cheap, and fast using cyrptonote I would use Loki or turtle. That said, I think the future of privacy is on Ethereum and that is why I invested in 0xMR and PRV. Ethereum transactions are anonymous by default as long as you use a VPN, do not interact with KYC platforms, and do not use ENS. Ethereum is account based, not UTXO based, there is no coin data to RingCT, Bulletproof etc. UTXO based cryptos like Bitcoin carry a history of everywhere they have been and are very easy to trace. If you send an Ethereum token to another wallet the transaction is visible if zkSNARKs isn't used but the wallets are anonymous and since the tokens exist on the EVM, they have no identifying information. It's quite possible that one day UTXO privacy coins can be cracked and all transactions will be visible by authorities (they probably already are now). With account based cryptos and tokens, if you send tokens to another wallet that holds the same type of toke for example, there is no way to blacklist the tokens that come from a criminal and identify them from tokens that are already held in a wallet, there is no identifying data. Not many people realize it but account based cryptos are private by nature as long as you use a VPN and do not complete KYC as stated.

For example, if you sent a coin to an exchange and another person bought it and withdrew it, on an UTXO blockchain someone could see who mined and held the coin previously. If you sent an account based crypto to an exchange, like Ethereum or 0xMR, and someone purchased it from the exchange, if the exchange is centralized you would never be able to identify where the Ethereum or 0xMR came from.

[OrsonJ]

I think the take away here is that Moneo is just an overvalued fork of Bytecoin. There are dozens of cryptos that utilize the same technology and are not tracked by government agencies like Monero is. If I wanted to send funds privately, cheap, and fast using cyrptonote I would use Loki or turtle. That said, I think the future of privacy is on Ethereum and that is why I invested in 0xMR and PRV. Ethereum transactions are anonymous by default as long as you use a VPN, do not interact with KYC platforms, and do not use ENS. Ethereum is account based, not UTXO based, there is no coin data to RingCT, Bulletproof etc. UTXO based cryptos like Bitcoin carry a history of everywhere they have been and are very easy to trace. If you send an Ethereum token to another wallet the transaction is visible if zkSNARKs isn't used but the wallets are anonymous and since the tokens exist on the EVM, they have no identifying information. It's quite possible that one day UTXO privacy coins can be cracked and all transactions will be visible by authorities (they probably already are now). With account based cryptos and tokens, if you send tokens to another wallet that holds the same type of toke for example, there is no way to blacklist the tokens that come from a criminal and identify them from tokens that are already held in a wallet, there is no identifying data. Not many people realize it but account based cryptos are private by nature as long as you use a VPN and do not complete KYC as stated.

Whether or not an equal level of privacy can be achieved with something built on Ethereum is an interesting topic, but one for another thread. Here I want to discuss CryptoNote coins.

I think that a good part of Monero's value comes from the size of the userbase and ecosystem it has built. Why would you say that using Loki or Turtle would be cheaper? Are Monero transaction fees high?