XMR vs DRK

[Swandeli]

So after 14 pages of discussion, I think a conclusion can be drawn now. I'm a bitcoiner, and this is one of the few times I will have posted in the altsection(Yes this is a newbie because I don't want to be involved with such things on my main account). This thread and the "war" between the alts drk and xmr has caught my attention and below are my conclusions.

Monero: A coin with a pretty damn sophisticated dev team, they are practically geniuses. fair, and hardworking. The coin has drawn attention not just from other alternative cryptocurrenncy enthusiasts, but from those in the main bitcoin community and outside the crypto community as well. It offers the haven between transparency and anonymity with it's Ring Signatures, which is a time tested, highly secure way to send and receive anonymous transactions, and is one of the most practical cryptocurrencies to use for such reasons.

Monero gets 5/5 stars.

Dash/Darkcoin: A coin with a very disturbing instamine where those who mined within the very first few hours attained a absolutely massive amount of coins illegitimately. That issue has never been fixed even though the opportunity presented itself for Dash/Darkcoin's developer to simply "restart" the coin, leading to the conclusions that the instamine was done on purpose by the developer of Dash/Darckoin, or comes from extreme incompetence by the developer of Dash/Darkcoin. Instamine aside, the masternode scheme itself presents a new problem, where masternodes are PoS nodes that receive coins for hardly contributing to Dash/Darkcoin's network, unlike mining where miners verify transactions and secure the hashrate. Then there is the centralization issue from the developer of Dash/Darkcoin where he possesses a "switch" to revoke or implement forks without the community's consent should he ever wish to. Ultimately, Darkcoin is vaporware, it's implementation of gmaxwell's coinjoin is snotty at best and lacks the integrity through it's instamine and Masternodes to be considered a "decent" coin.

Dash/Darkcoin gets 2/5 stars(Would be 1/5 but I have to give credit for the coding that has been done so far).

[1714468856]

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[majamina]

I want to say my sincerest congratulations on drk community for orchestrating a massive pump. It was fast. Very good pick, man! However, the profits are not yours unless you do not succeed to sell at right time and buy something undervalued and build it up, too. I am suggesting Monero.

what a silly post...how has a pump been orchestrated?

[majamina]

you admit xmr team is building rock solid stuff. I am suggesting for you now as drk prise has risen significiantly to cash some (not all) of your drk and diversifying into xmr. After all the crypto is like a raffle and it is good to have some variety in portfolio in case some coin rises significiantly.

I do have an XMR position, but only like 10% of my DRK holdings so barely a hedge.

What I'm questioning about XMR is time-to-market and the real-world necessity of the ultra-robust tech. If DRK is fit-for-purpose in the majority of real-world use cases and gets over the line first in terms of adoption and scalability, where does that leave XMR?

For which real world cases is Darksend not secure enough?

I don't know...anyone?

[majamina]

So after 14 pages of discussion, I think a conclusion can be drawn now.

Monero: A coin with a pretty damn sophisticated dev team, they are practically geniuses. fair, and hardworking. The coin has drawn attention not just from other alternative cryptocurrenncy enthusiasts, but from those in the main bitcoin community and outside the crypto community as well. It offers the haven between transparency and anonymity with it's Ring Signatures, which is a time tested, highly secure way to send and receive anonymous transactions, and is one of the most practical cryptocurrencies to use for such reasons.

Monero gets 5/5 stars.

Dash/Darkcoin: A coin with a very disturbing instamine where those who mined within the very first few hours attained a absolutely massive amount of coins illegitimately. That issue has never been fixed even though the opportunity presented itself for Dash/Darkcoin's developer to simply "restart" the coin, leading to the conclusions that the instamine was done on purpose by the developer of Dash/Darckoin, or comes from extreme incompetence by the developer of Dash/Darkcoin. Instamine aside, the masternode scheme itself presents a new problem, where masternodes are PoS nodes that receive coins for hardly contributing to Dash/Darkcoin's network, unlike mining where miners verify transactions and secure the hashrate. Then there is the centralization issue from the developer of Dash/Darkcoin where he possesses a "switch" to revoke or implement forks without the community's consent should he ever wish to. Ultimately, Darkcoin is vaporware, it's implementation of gmaxwell's coinjoin is snotty at best and lacks the integrity through it's instamine and Masternodes to be considered a "decent" coin.

Darkcoin gets 2/5 stars.

haha yes, obviously a fair and unbiased appraisal of the debate....

[othe]

you admit xmr team is building rock solid stuff. I am suggesting for you now as drk prise has risen significiantly to cash some (not all) of your drk and diversifying into xmr. After all the crypto is like a raffle and it is good to have some variety in portfolio in case some coin rises significiantly.

I do have an XMR position, but only like 10% of my DRK holdings so barely a hedge.

What I'm questioning about XMR is time-to-market and the real-world necessity of the ultra-robust tech. If DRK is fit-for-purpose in the majority of real-world use cases and gets over the line first in terms of adoption and scalability, where does that leave XMR?

Again,
what are you talking about? You can use XMR today to send anonymous transactions which get confirmed within minutes even on your mobile phone.


You cannot and prolly will never be able to send fast transactions through darksend for a variety of reasons. Mixing with 2 lousy rounds of darkcoin takes half a day and after every transaction you have to mix again to at least gain a bit of privacy.


How will you ever fix this giant usability flaw? Oh and in the last step where the Drk have been forwarded after "darksending" the whole privacy has been destroyed again; pretty damn easy to link those transactions.

For which real world cases is Darksend not secure enough?

Why not ask for which real world case is Bitcoin not secure enough or a Bankwire or a VISA payment?

[Swandeli]

So after 14 pages of discussion, I think a conclusion can be drawn now.

Monero: A coin with a pretty damn sophisticated dev team, they are practically geniuses. fair, and hardworking. The coin has drawn attention not just from other alternative cryptocurrenncy enthusiasts, but from those in the main bitcoin community and outside the crypto community as well. It offers the haven between transparency and anonymity with it's Ring Signatures, which is a time tested, highly secure way to send and receive anonymous transactions, and is one of the most practical cryptocurrencies to use for such reasons.

Monero gets 5/5 stars.

Dash/Darkcoin: A coin with a very disturbing instamine where those who mined within the very first few hours attained a absolutely massive amount of coins illegitimately. That issue has never been fixed even though the opportunity presented itself for Dash/Darkcoin's developer to simply "restart" the coin, leading to the conclusions that the instamine was done on purpose by the developer of Dash/Darckoin, or comes from extreme incompetence by the developer of Dash/Darkcoin. Instamine aside, the masternode scheme itself presents a new problem, where masternodes are PoS nodes that receive coins for hardly contributing to Dash/Darkcoin's network, unlike mining where miners verify transactions and secure the hashrate. Then there is the centralization issue from the developer of Dash/Darkcoin where he possesses a "switch" to revoke or implement forks without the community's consent should he ever wish to. Ultimately, Darkcoin is vaporware, it's implementation of gmaxwell's coinjoin is snotty at best and lacks the integrity through it's instamine and Masternodes to be considered a "decent" coin.

Darkcoin gets 2/5 stars.

haha yes, obviously a fair and unbiased appraisal of the debate....

I have read all 14 pages of this thread to give those conclusions. I hold neither monero or dash/darkcoin. Face reality, I don't give 2 "fucks" about altcoins, but if I had absolutely had to I would probably choose just monero out of the sea of garbage that is altcoins. Darkcoin got the shit instamined out of it during it's release. There's no excuses for that crap to happen and then its passed off as "no big deal", not even the infamous auroracoin scam had that happen. Its so funny seeing "darkcoiners" rallying behind a coin with a fricking Instamine. That crap isn't going anywhere. Stick to bitcoin kids.

[majamina]

Again,
what are you talking about? You can use XMR today to send anonymous transactions which get confirmed within minutes even on your mobile phone.

Send them where? Poloniex? Other XMR holders?

Does anyone accept XMR for goods/services? Can you place bets with XMR? I'm not being disingenuous, I honestly don't know.

You cannot and prolly will never be able to send fast transactions through darksend for a variety of reasons. Mixing with 2 lousy rounds of darkcoin takes half a day and after every transaction you have to mix again to at least gain a bit of privacy.

How will you ever fix this giant usability flaw? Oh and in the last step where the Drk have been forwarded after "darksending" the whole privacy has been destroyed again; pretty damn easy to link those transactions.

eh? you mix the funds in advance and then can send them instantly whenever you need to...please explain the 'mix again' part of your statement?

For which real world cases is Darksend not secure enough?

Why not ask for which real world case is Bitcoin not secure enough or a Bankwire or a VISA payment?

Seriously? Bitcoin doesn't have any privacy features and bankwire/visa are corporate trusted payment methods, obviously...

[majamina]

I have read all 14 pages of this thread to give those conclusions. I hold neither monero or dash/darkcoin. Face reality, I don't give 2 "fucks" about altcoins, but if I had absolutely had to I would probably choose just monero out of the sea of garbage that is altcoins. Darkcoin got the shit instamined out of it during it's release. There's no excuses for that crap to happen and then its passed off as "no big deal", not even the infamous auroracoin scam had that happen. Its so funny seeing "darkcoiners" rallying behind a coin with a fricking Instamine. That crap isn't going anywhere. Stick to bitcoin kids.

ok, you've formed your view, such as it is....good luck

[fluffypony]

It seems with XMR you are striving to build a super-robust anon coin, prioritising quality over time-to-market. Is that fair?

Kinda. We're applying the level of rigour that is generally accepted as necessary when every line of code can mean the wiping out of someone's saving or the end of a person's means of income. Beyond that, our focus is on expanding Monero's capabilities in a way that never sacrifices decentralisation, scalability, privacy, or robustness. Our research goals detail some of those efforts:

Meanwhile DRK seems to be focused on rapid development and implementation of headline-grabbing features with real-world utility. The privacy/anon falls short of XMR, but is it good enough? The masternode network presents an interesting attack surface, but are the security measures adequate versus realistic attacks?

Essentially, is DRK fit-for-purpose?

At this stage I've seen no evidence that there anything close to adequate security measures are in place or can be expected in the future. At a bare minimum every MasterNode operator would need to:

1. Own their own hardware hosted in a cage in a colocated rack with their own locks on, at non-USA datacenters that have demonstrated prior resistance to requests from LEA.

2. Practice the ongoing opsec required to completely protect their identity from being discovered.

3. Run OpenBSD or FreeBSD or a very hardened Linux setup, don't use packages for anything, build every dependency from source disabling any functionality not strictly required, run no exposed services beyond darkcoind and sshd, limit access via a VPN through routers you've purchased and reflashed and are under your control.

4. Have separate appliances to at least firewall that box off, having an IDPS appliance would be beneficial.

5. Regularly monitor the logs for suspicious activity and act accordingly.

6. Regularly visit the site to verify physical security.

7. Have appropriate offsite DR infrastructure to match the above.

It won't be perfect, but it would make it difficult, to the point of impossible, for any significant portion of the MasterNode network to be compromised.

It's great if you can make a better coin, but if DRK gets over the line for the majority of real-world use-cases and gets to market first....know what I mean?

I know what you mean, but any large company / MNC that performs due diligence on Darkcoin will choose not to use it because of the risks outlined earlier (I mean actual companies that can afford to conduct a due diligence study), which leads me to echo a quote from the Bible, of all places: "I returned to see under the sun that the swift do not have the race, nor the mighty ones the battle, nor do the wise also have the food, nor do the understanding ones also have the riches, nor do even those having knowledge have the favor" - King Solomon

[othe]

Again,
what are you talking about? You can use XMR today to send anonymous transactions which get confirmed within minutes even on your mobile phone.

Send them where? Poloniex? Other XMR holders?

Does anyone accept XMR for goods/services? Can you place bets with XMR? I'm not being disingenuous, I honestly don't know.

You cannot and prolly will never be able to send fast transactions through darksend for a variety of reasons. Mixing with 2 lousy rounds of darkcoin takes half a day and after every transaction you have to mix again to at least gain a bit of privacy.

How will you ever fix this giant usability flaw? Oh and in the last step where the Drk have been forwarded after "darksending" the whole privacy has been destroyed again; pretty damn easy to link those transactions.

eh? you mix the funds in advance and then can send them instantly whenever you need to...please explain the 'mix again' part of your statement?

For which real world cases is Darksend not secure enough?

Why not ask for which real world case is Bitcoin not secure enough or a Bankwire or a VISA payment?

Seriously? Bitcoin doesn't have any privacy features and bankwire/visa are corporate trusted payment methods, obviously...

1) Yes theres even a Psychiatrists in New York that takes Monero *hint*; You can also use xmr.to to spend your XMR to shops that support Bitcoin. So what awesome exclusive stuff can i buy with DRK atm? Not much either.
2) That doesn't provide real privacy, if you send the coins out again you combine your input again leaving a link...And then you have to resend them to darksend again before every new transaction, and oh how do that on your mobile phone on the go? Totally impracticle to do that stuff.
3) Yes seriously, Bitcoin has Darkwallet which unlike Darkcoin even supports Stealth Addressen + Bitcoin has a lot more mixing parties you can mix with (number of users and transactions) and thus  would provide you better anonymity.


TL;DR You either can't or you simply refuse to understand the problems.

[5w00p]

fluffypony comes off like a guru trying to express wisdom to a caffeinated preteen when he expounds on the technical in an attempt to honestly reply to BlockaFett.

Monero +1

[fluffypony]

you admit xmr team is building rock solid stuff. I am suggesting for you now as drk prise has risen significiantly to cash some (not all) of your drk and diversifying into xmr. After all the crypto is like a raffle and it is good to have some variety in portfolio in case some coin rises significiantly.

I do have an XMR position, but only like 10% of my DRK holdings so barely a hedge.

What I'm questioning about XMR is time-to-market and the real-world necessity of the ultra-robust tech. If DRK is fit-for-purpose in the majority of real-world use cases and gets over the line first in terms of adoption and scalability, where does that leave XMR?

For which real world cases is Darksend not secure enough?

Unless a person is mixing after every transaction they perform I'd say it's no more private than Bitcoin. If the level of privacy is solely dependent on the user acting in a sane and self-serving manner then they may as well use Bitcoin. For example: Bob has 100 DRK. He uses Darksend to pre-mix these. Now he takes these 100 DRK that are in address drkaaaa0001 and goes and buys something on SilkEvolutionReloaded3 for 20 DRK. The remaining 80 DRK come back into his wallet to address drkbbbb0002. A few days later he goes and buys a coffee at StarBucks for 1 DRK. Because LEA receive feeds from our proverbial StarBucks in this thought experiment they are immediately able to see that change from an illicit transaction has been used at StarBucks, and now they have video footage and the guy's car registration number.

Thus there is a dependency on the user exercising sufficient opsec, else they will compromise themselves as they are lulled into a false sense of privacy.

[fluffypony]

Send them where? Poloniex? Other XMR holders?

Does anyone accept XMR for goods/services? Can you place bets with XMR? I'm not being disingenuous, I honestly don't know.

You can use xmr.to to send them to any Bitcoin address, and they do so without compromising privacy by providing a temporal association to your XMR transaction to them.

[majamina]

Kinda. We're applying the level of rigour that is generally accepted as necessary when every line of code can mean the wiping out of someone's saving or the end of a person's means of income.

haha, I work in the finance sector, I know lots of devs....you'd be surprised...

I'm not sure why you list out all those enterprise security measures as necessary for Masternodes....DR infrsastructure! Come on give me a break....you seriously think masternodes need replication/clustering and a DR runbook? It's a distributed p2p network not MS SQL!

Your list of measures assumes that gaining control over a minimal count of nodes presents a problem. To justify this reasoning you need to explain how this compromises the network. You've already said you're not prepared to do that, but apply logic that expects you to have done so. Play fair

As for companies doing due-dil, again I think you'd be surprised...

[fluffypony]

Kinda. We're applying the level of rigour that is generally accepted as necessary when every line of code can mean the wiping out of someone's saving or the end of a person's means of income.

haha, I work in the finance sector, I know lots of devs....you'd be surprised...

I'm not sure why you list out all those enterprise security measures as necessary for Masternodes....DR infrsastructure! Come on give me a break....you seriously think masternodes need replication/clustering and a DR runbook? It's a distributed p2p network not MS SQL!

Your list of measures assumes that gaining control over a minimal count of nodes presents a problem. To justify this reasoning you need to explain how this compromises the network. You've already said you're not prepared to do that, but apply logic that expects you to have done so. Play fair

As for companies doing due-dil, again I think you'd be surprised...

They don't need replication or clustering; the beauty of the blockchain is that the DR infrastructure never needs to know the main infrastructure exists. It merely has to exist as a fallback for a compromise of the main infrastructure.

The reason I list all that is because it's a "all-or-nothing" problem, there's no in-between. If every MasterNode operator practices the requisite level of opsec and builds out secure infrastructure for his MasterNode with a secure failover then we can say that the entire group of MasterNodes is true-ly secure. If we relax those requirements then the whole network has to be assumed to be insecure.

Put differently: there is a fine line between malice and mistake, but those screwed during the Evolution exit scam are no more or less affected than those screwed during the original SilkRoad bust (individual circumstances notwithstanding). Thus the net-effect of a malicious operator is the same as the net-effect of an operator that makes mistakes, which means they all have to behave perfectly, or else we have to assume that none of them are secure / not malicious.

[majamina]

Send them where? Poloniex? Other XMR holders?

Does anyone accept XMR for goods/services? Can you place bets with XMR? I'm not being disingenuous, I honestly don't know.

You can use xmr.to to send them to any Bitcoin address, and they do so without compromising privacy by providing a temporal association to your XMR transaction to them.

an intermediary who knows/records where lots of XMR is being spent? doesn't sound ideal

[5w00p]

Kinda. We're applying the level of rigour that is generally accepted as necessary when every line of code can mean the wiping out of someone's saving or the end of a person's means of income.

haha, I work in the finance sector, I know lots of devs....you'd be surprised...

I'm not sure why you list out all those enterprise security measures as necessary for Masternodes....DR infrsastructure! Come on give me a break....you seriously think masternodes need replication/clustering and a DR runbook? It's a distributed p2p network not MS SQL!

Your list of measures assumes that gaining control over a minimal count of nodes presents a problem. To justify this reasoning you need to explain how this compromises the network. You've already said you're not prepared to do that, but apply logic that expects you to have done so. Play fair

As for companies doing due-dil, again I think you'd be surprised...

So, basically, your response is:

"C'mon man! All that technical stuff is hard!"

"Like, I just use DRKSH 'cuz it's like, so easy and stuff!"

[majamina]

ation or clustering; the beauty of the blockchain is that the DR infrastructure never needs to know the main infrastructure exists. It merely has to exist as a fallback for a compromise of the main infrastructure.

The reason I list all that is because it's a "all-or-nothing" problem, there's no in-between. If every MasterNode operator practices the requisite level of opsec and builds out secure infrastructure for his MasterNode with a secure failover then we can say that the entire group of MasterNodes is true-ly secure. If we relax those requirements then the whole network has to be assumed to be insecure.

Put differently: there is a fine line between malice and mistake, but those screwed during the Evolution exit scam are no more or less affected than those screwed during the original SilkRoad bust (individual circumstances notwithstanding). Thus the net-effect of a malicious operator is the same as the net-effect of an operator that makes mistakes, which means they all have to behave perfectly, or else we have to assume that none of them are secure / not malicious.

Why is it all-or-nothing?

Why does a masternode need to failover? If my masternode fails today, nothing happens to the network other than masternode count is reduced by 1. Please explain this point before we move on...

[majamina]

Kinda. We're applying the level of rigour that is generally accepted as necessary when every line of code can mean the wiping out of someone's saving or the end of a person's means of income.

haha, I work in the finance sector, I know lots of devs....you'd be surprised...

I'm not sure why you list out all those enterprise security measures as necessary for Masternodes....DR infrsastructure! Come on give me a break....you seriously think masternodes need replication/clustering and a DR runbook? It's a distributed p2p network not MS SQL!

Your list of measures assumes that gaining control over a minimal count of nodes presents a problem. To justify this reasoning you need to explain how this compromises the network. You've already said you're not prepared to do that, but apply logic that expects you to have done so. Play fair

As for companies doing due-dil, again I think you'd be surprised...

So, basically, your response is:

"C'mon man! All that technical stuff is hard!"

"Like, I just use DRKSH 'cuz it's like, so easy and stuff!"

not at all, you've completely missed the point and posted a silly meme....

[5w00p]

I posted a silly meme in response to the silliness of your response to a technical dissection of the operational security that truly is necessary in the real world that we live in.

Re-read your own post. You basically said "I know devs. All that stuff is not really necessary because it is hard to do."