XMR vs DRK

[majamina]

My Dash is going to be sold over the next few days. I refuse to a cryptocurrency where the fanboys imagine that cryptography is uneccessary. What a stupid thing to say.

So you think these fanboy guys are stupid, then base your investment decisions on what they say. Seems a bit strange...

I never said they are stupid, I said that what they said was stupid.

It's like the run-up to an election, you support a candidate and you think he's not entirely stupid. In a debate just before the election his supporters make signs and go on interviews saying that they don't think the opinion of the people is important, and they fully support the presidential candidate making all the decisions. The candidate keeps quiet. Eventually former presidents come forward to point out how disconnected this thinking is from reality and how dangerously close it is to supporting a dictator.

Would you keep the faith, and just ignore what is becoming more and more apparent?

OK well whatever. I still can't understand why you'd sell your coins because someone else who has the coins says something stupid. If it was the lead dev then maybe, but some guy on a forum?

[toknormal]

By stuck you know that it means it's not on the market available to trade. No matter how easy it can become "un-stuck" is irrelevant.

Well thats got nothing to do with masternodes. Bitcoin in a cold wallet is also not "available to trade". Loose change sitting in my pocket is also "not available to trade". The balance of my offset mortgage account is also "not available to trade". None of this has anything to do with liquidity which is a measure of how much the price moves for a given trade which will generally be less for higher marketcap assets.

Even if we use your narrow "how much is in the market" definition, if I right this minute buy 20 BTC worth of XMR I'll move the market by 3.36% according to Bitcoinwisdom whereas in the Dash/BTC market it'll only move 1.58%. So there's your argument blown out of the water right there.

I also find this odd: " Why dont you go and ask Evan/Dash developer why he didn't relaunch Dash/DRK after the instamine scam where he and a few others mined over 2million Dash/DRKs on a linux only release, then cut the block reward and coin supply by over half to instantly make those instamined coins more valuable, all while at that time, Dash/DRK had no future goals was just a random Bitcoin clone? You should maybe do that instead of trolling."

Because I've already read his account, your account and every other critic that trolls the Dash thread to kingdom come and made up my mind about what impact that period has on the value of the project. Contrary to what your trying to promote, I'm of the opinion that the current value of that cryptocurrency has far more to do with amount of work he put into it over the last year than the fact he tweaked the block reward back then. You make up your own mind about it but I've sure seen nothing to convince me of anything other than Dash is probably the most investable in the whole market right now.

[DeboraMeeks]

Tok said cryptography 'wasn't a significant part' of cryptocurrencies.  He didn't say they don't require them, so what was your point?

Can you (or Tok) point to a part of a cryptocurrency which isn't cryptography?

the dev team, the website, any part of the wallet not doing a cryptographic function, the buyers, the masternode operators, the network transport, whatever isn't going into a cryptographic function.

...but i see what you mean.  (I think) Tok was coming from a business point of view to try to rebalance the fact that on the XMR thread devs like Fluffy keep banging on about XMR is secure due to cryptographic proof and even sites examples like Tor and SSH - which forgets the other half of cryptocurrency security which is the implementation (heartbleed etc)

The dev team, the website, the buyers are all unecessary. The network "transport" heavily relies on cryptography when it is authenticating to a node during a handshake.

Maybe I can help with an example. Bitcoin is like a highway, large sections of concrete and bitumen painted with guidelines and reflective cats-eyes. The Monero developers see this design and decide to make a similar transport system, maybe a high-speed railway line in this example. The Bitcoin and Monero developers don't care what vehicle (GUI wallet) you choose to ride, as long as it obeys the rules of the road or rail. They also do not pretend that their transport system prevents accidents, because that would be silly.

On the other hand I am starting to see that Dash is like a rickety school bus. It is built on top of Bitcoin's code and all the hard work developers like gmaxwell have done, and so it is appropriate to view it as riding on Bitcoin's 'highway' in our minds. It doesn't matter if there is one rickety school bus (Bitcoin Fog!) or 2,000 of them (Dash) you still have to hope that the driver of the rickety school bus isn't suicidal and has actually serviced his engine. You might ride with some good bus drivers today, but what about next week or next month? I'm understanding now for the first time that I don't need to trust the driver of the bus when I can take a step to the left and use my own train on the high-speed railway.

[majamina]

It seems like all that's happening here now is the monero supporters are correcting the dash supporters on the lies and inaccurate statements they constantly make. Wow...

From my point of view we have a lot of potshots, market manipulation hearsay, ad hominem attacks, irrelevant discussion about whether cryptocurrencies contain cryptography and all sorts of other crap.

Still missing are answers to some critical technical questions and any conclusion on whether the coins are fit-for-purpose.

I just tried to answer it for you, in the post where I deanonymized my own transaction by taking note of the unique number of denominated inputs and outputs I created when I used darksend.

Sure, that was a great post and I thanked you for it. It's the other technical questions I'm talking about....see my post a little way up the thread - it has the three unanswered questions.

[DeboraMeeks]

OK well whatever. I still can't understand why you'd sell your coins because someone else who has the coins says something stupid. If it was the lead dev then maybe, but some guy on a forum?

Because their ongoing stupidity has highlighted my own stupidity in buying into this in the first place.

I wanted to buy a MasterNode because I calculated that my Dash would be safe in cold storage and that I would be able to double my Dash over 3 or 4 years. I can see now that Dash won't be around in 3 or 4 years because it is being propped up by people with no knowledge or sense (I don't mean you this is just a general observation).

[BlockaFett]

Tok said cryptography 'wasn't a significant part' of cryptocurrencies.  He didn't say they don't require them, so what was your point?

Can you (or Tok) point to a part of a cryptocurrency which isn't cryptography?

the dev team, the website, any part of the wallet not doing a cryptographic function, the buyers, the masternode operators, the network transport, whatever isn't going into a cryptographic function.

...but i see what you mean.  (I think) Tok was coming from a business point of view to try to rebalance the fact that on the XMR thread devs like Fluffy keep banging on about XMR is secure due to cryptographic proof and even sites examples like Tor and SSH - which forgets the other half of cryptocurrency security which is the implementation (heartbleed etc)

The dev team, the website, the buyers are all unecessary. The network "transport" heavily relies on cryptography when it is authenticating to a node during a handshake.

Maybe I can help with an example. Bitcoin is like a highway, large sections of concrete and bitumen painted with guidelines and reflective cats-eyes. The Monero developers see this design and decide to make a similar transport system, maybe a high-speed railway line in this example. The Bitcoin and Monero developers don't care what vehicle (GUI wallet) you choose to ride, as long as it obeys the rules of the road or rail. They also do not pretend that their transport system prevents accidents, because that would be silly.

On the other hand I am starting to see that Dash is like a rickety school bus. It is built on top of Bitcoin's code and all the hard work developers like gmaxwell have done, and so it is appropriate to view it as riding on Bitcoin's 'highway' in our minds. It doesn't matter if there is one rickety school bus (Bitcoin Fog!) or 2,000 of them (Dash) you still have to hope that the driver of the rickety school bus isn't suicidal and has actually serviced his engine. You might ride with some good bus drivers today, but what about next week or next month? I'm understanding now for the first time that I don't need to trust the driver of the bus when I can take a step to the left and use my own train on the high-speed railway.

no offense, really bored of arguing with XMR people and reading Bitcion analogies at this stage.  If I answer your post there will be 10 others spinning in all kinds of fabulous directions and then tomorrow the same questions come back. Most XMR people start their post with 'are you stupid?' so you seem nicer than most.  Anyway yeh, this is a big waste of time i have to get on with real work

[majamina]

OK well whatever. I still can't understand why you'd sell your coins because someone else who has the coins says something stupid. If it was the lead dev then maybe, but some guy on a forum?

Because their ongoing stupidity has highlighted my own stupidity in buying into this in the first place.

I wanted to buy a MasterNode because I calculated that my Dash would be safe in cold storage and that I would be able to double my Dash over 3 or 4 years. I can see now that Dash won't be around in 3 or 4 years because it is being propped up by people with no knowledge or sense (I don't mean you this is just a general observation).

I wouldn't take the posts of a couple of guys to be indicative of the entire Dash community, or indeed the fundamentals of the coin.

Head over to dashtalk.org and read some of the more considered views there.

[Joshuar]

By stuck you know that it means it's not on the market available to trade. No matter how easy it can become "un-stuck" is irrelevant.

Well thats got nothing to do with masternodes. Bitcoin in a cold wallet is also not "available to trade". Loose change sitting in my pocket is also "not available to trade". The balance of my offset mortgage account is also "not available to trade". None of this has anything to do with liquidity which is a measure of how much the price moves for a given trade which will generally be less for higher marketcap assets.

Even if we use your narrow "how much is in the market" definition, if I right this minute buy 20 BTC worth of XMR I'll move the market by 3.36% according to Bitcoinwisdom whereas in the Dash/BTC market it'll only move 1.58%. So there's your argument blown out of the water right there.

I also find this odd: " Why dont you go and ask Evan/Dash developer why he didn't relaunch Dash/DRK after the instamine scam where he and a few others mined over 2million Dash/DRKs on a linux only release, then cut the block reward and coin supply by over half to instantly make those instamined coins more valuable, all while at that time, Dash/DRK had no future goals was just a random Bitcoin clone? You should maybe do that instead of trolling."

Because I've already read his account, your account and every other critic that trolls the Dash thread to kingdom come and made up my mind about what impact that period has on the value of the project. Contrary to what your trying to promote, I'm of the opinion that the current value of that cryptocurrency has far more to do with amount of work he put into it over the last year than the fact he tweaked the block reward back then. You make up your own mind about it but I've sure seen nothing to convince me of anything other than Dash is probably the most investable in the whole market right now.

You obviously do not know what liquidity is or you're somehow interpreting its definition wrong. Why not just admit you're clueless? You keep changing your arguments over and over again when proved wrong. You previously stated that volume had nothing to do with liquidity, which makes abolsutely no sense, but hey, that's what you said. You also lied and said that XMR's liquidity has never been as high as Dash's, to which I took one of your own posts to show your lie, and how XMR's liquidity was actually higher than Dash's before the pump, which is the point I was making in the first place. This is the definition of liquidity, we've gone over it before:  The degree to which an asset or security can be bought or sold in the market without affecting the asset's price. Therefore, the # of coins is the biggest determinator of liquidity for a cryptocurrency(Disregarding denominations since they almost never used outside daytrading), Dash keeping more than 50% of it's coins at any given time on masternodes is bad for liquidity. Simple as that, stop lying and trying to manipulate by changing your incorrect arguments, thank you.

I've read his account as well, and he puts it on as if it were a mistake. The problem with that is that if it were a mistake, why was it never owned up to? He could have relaunched the coin without an instamine, but as even your fellow Dash supporters have said, he himself instamined at least 300,000 Dash/DRK. It just comes down to money and greed then, no morals. And, given the extremely low chance that it was a mistake(Which it most likely isnt or he would have relaunched the coin), then thats no excuse for having an instamine where the actual block reward and coin max supply was cut after the fact, by more than half. No excuse.

[wpalczynski]

Tok said cryptography 'wasn't a significant part' of cryptocurrencies.  He didn't say they don't require them, so what was your point?

Can you (or Tok) point to a part of a cryptocurrency which isn't cryptography?

the dev team, the website, any part of the wallet not doing a cryptographic function, the buyers, the masternode operators, the network transport, whatever isn't going into a cryptographic function.

...but i see what you mean.  (I think) Tok was coming from a business point of view to try to rebalance the fact that on the XMR thread devs like Fluffy keep banging on about XMR is secure due to cryptographic proof and even sites examples like Tor and SSH - which forgets the other half of cryptocurrency security which is the implementation (heartbleed etc)

The dev team, the website, the buyers are all unecessary. The network "transport" heavily relies on cryptography when it is authenticating to a node during a handshake.

Maybe I can help with an example. Bitcoin is like a highway, large sections of concrete and bitumen painted with guidelines and reflective cats-eyes. The Monero developers see this design and decide to make a similar transport system, maybe a high-speed railway line in this example. The Bitcoin and Monero developers don't care what vehicle (GUI wallet) you choose to ride, as long as it obeys the rules of the road or rail. They also do not pretend that their transport system prevents accidents, because that would be silly.

On the other hand I am starting to see that Dash is like a rickety school bus. It is built on top of Bitcoin's code and all the hard work developers like gmaxwell have done, and so it is appropriate to view it as riding on Bitcoin's 'highway' in our minds. It doesn't matter if there is one rickety school bus (Bitcoin Fog!) or 2,000 of them (Dash) you still have to hope that the driver of the rickety school bus isn't suicidal and has actually serviced his engine. You might ride with some good bus drivers today, but what about next week or next month? I'm understanding now for the first time that I don't need to trust the driver of the bus when I can take a step to the left and use my own train on the high-speed railway.

What an amazing analogy.

[DeboraMeeks]

no offense, really bored of arguing with XMR people and reading Bitcion analogies at this stage.

You can check my post history and confirm that I have taken an interest in exactly zero altcoins. I recently started getting a little bit interested in Dash because I see Bitcoin's fungibility problems. Unfortunately Dash has the same fungibility problems no matter how much they try and hide it, and the sheer stupidity of the community members is not inspiring.

That does not mean I am interested in Monero, except maybe in the technology underlying it. I am not going to divest in Dash and invest in Monero. I am just going to divest in Dash and hold Bitcoin for the moment. Maybe in a few months or years I'll take another look at Monero, but saying that I'm "XMR people" is wrong.

[majamina]

Unfortunately Dash has the same fungibility problems no matter how much they try and hide it

How does it? I really want to know but nobody will tell me   

[vokain]

Unfortunately Dash has the same fungibility problems no matter how much they try and hide it

How does it? I really want to know but nobody will tell me   

It's not bad like Bitcoin, but the point of vulnerability where Dash can cross the "not fungible" threshold lies in the Masternode scheme. CryptoNote does not have this vulnerability.

[G2M]

Sure, that was a great post and I thanked you for it. It's the other technical questions I'm talking about....see my post a little way up the thread - it has the three unanswered questions.

Got it, as blinding is not in effect to date .. could you give me a rundown of what it's supposed to be like? Any links please?

I can try to simulate the effects, provided that the result is supposed to be equivalent to x or xx rounds of darksend. Just not sure what x or xx (or xxx? That would likely require something more)I should be aiming for?

[GingerAle]

Unfortunately Dash has the same fungibility problems no matter how much they try and hide it

How does it? I really want to know but nobody will tell me   

i was trying to find your unanswered questions. Can u repost?

Also, I was the proud recipient of the deleted post. Because I quoted something and replied "THIS"

[DeboraMeeks]

Unfortunately Dash has the same fungibility problems no matter how much they try and hide it

How does it? I really want to know but nobody will tell me   

Because if someone identifies outputs I own as being tainted then they can be blocked by merchants or exchanges or whatever.

"But you can just Darksend them!" is the reaction I have seen. Except that in Bitcoin you can send them to yourself and boom - new outputs. Does that make Bitcoin magically fungible? Or what if I mix the outputs using BitcoinFog, does that make Bitcoin perfectly fungible?

Fungibility is destroyed the minute you can trace transactions through the blockchain, it doesn't matter how you mix them and who is involved. Otherwise just use Bitcoin and send the funds back to yourself if they're tainted, no Dash needed!

[vokain]

Unfortunately Dash has the same fungibility problems no matter how much they try and hide it

How does it? I really want to know but nobody will tell me    

i was trying to find your unanswered questions. Can u repost?

OK so DASH is coming in for a lot of criticism here, but leaving all the instamine stuff and general potshots aside, there have been some important technical criticisms that have not been followed through.

XMR guys are very vocal about DASH being, well, shit, so should really back these claims up otherwise the criticism sounds unfair/uninformed.

First we have a criticism of DASH not being fungible. I posted this example earlier in response to these claims, no comeback so far:

- Of course it is; Only with encryption you can defeat the fungibility issue, DRK doesn't make it more fungible, you mix dirty coins with other dirty coins the same as a BTC mixer or darkwallet, after a while most coins will be tainted and you have the same problems as BTC or even worse.

That's a very interesting statement.

There are no dirty coins, right? Just inputs and outputs on dirty addresses? The fungibility in DRK comes from the mixing process, e.g.

- DirtyWallet has unspent inputs on address A.
- Inputs are spent via mixing with darksend rounds.
- Now DirtyWallet has unspent inputs on change addresses B,C,D.
- These are then spent via outputs to CleanWallet.

Due to the mixing process and the impossibility of re-assembling a complete transaction chain, there is no provable association in the blockchain between DirtyWallet's original inputs and the new unspent inputs in CleanWallet.

Funged?

Next we have the issue of Darksend, Masternode Blinding and the probabilities of tracing transactions. The numbers I posted were criticised as being misleading, since they only stand up for 1 round of Darksend. I couldn't make sense of this so asked more questions....again no comeback:

Let us say I face an attack that will work against 1 round of Darksend but will fail against 2 rounds of Darksend. This could be the Sybil example I quoted above. If the attacker has also partially compromised the masternode network, then I need a sequence of 2 un-compromised Darksend rounds for protection from this attack. In this example sequence 1 will not work

1) Honest Malicious Honest Malicious Honest Malicious

but sequence 2 will work

2) Malicious Honest Honest Malicious Malicious Honest

because of the bold part. So it is the probability of the sequence of n honest masternodes in the chain that matters, and this is much lower than the probability of a single honest masternode in the chain.

OK I've considered this and I'm not sure it's a fair representation of how Darksend works.

1 round of Darksend with blinding uses 20 random masternodes. With more than 1 round, round 2 uses a different set of 20 masternodes and so on, resulting in the astronomical probabilities.

Your example is showing 6 MNs and 50% of them are malicious, but we were talking about 15% of the network being compromised. Therefore only 3 of 20 nodes are likely to be malicious and your sequence doesn't work.

Forgive me if I've misunderstood your example.

Also, I'm not sure we have the full picture on masternode blinding here. See vague description from Evan below.


Masternode Blinding

Recently a paper by 3 researches at Saarland University came out describing a new technique, while there are some serious problems with the approach they take, the concept of blinding the users they use is novel. In CoinShuffle, each output is sent to the next peer in a circle, one at a time. The new peer adds an output, shuffles and then sends the list again. We can do this and actually improve upon it.

To implement blinding, each user would connect to one completely random masternode and say "Send masternode X this output/value for mix N" and pass a single output. That output would be passed to the leading masternode. It would take access to all masternodes used to know who did what, which is as solid as M rounds mathematically (M = number of outputs). This is great because all users can submit all inputs at once. So it's super fast compared to CoinShuffle and even more secure.

Finally, there is the issue of the Masternode network security and whether DASH, in general, is fit-for-purpose. DASH opponents are repeatedly saying that the Maternode network is flawed, has lots of attack vectors, means DASH is centralised etc. However, nobody has answered the simple question of whether ANY adversary short of NSA/guv could compromise the network, and therefore why is the network not fit-for-purpose?

So come on opponents, now's your chance to really press the advantage and convince me/others that DASH is fatally flawed.

bump for him
I suggest Moneroans ignore the low-hanging, irrelevant fruit (distractions) like Blocka and tok and only address those genuine i.e. majamina but be educated on respective subjects else please admit any ignorance/limitations of knowledge:)

[majamina]

Sure, that was a great post and I thanked you for it. It's the other technical questions I'm talking about....see my post a little way up the thread - it has the three unanswered questions.

Got it, as blinding is not in effect to date .. could you give me a rundown of what it's supposed to be like? Any links please?

I can try to simulate the effects, provided that the result is supposed to be equivalent to x or xx rounds of darksend. Just not sure what x or xx (or xxx? That would likely require something more)I should be aiming for?

Sorry, there isn't a whitepaper yet or even a detailed post about it, but it's described as using 20 random Masternodes for mixing with the process indicated in my earlier post to pass the transactions around the masternodes. Hopefully we will know more very soon, it's testing on testnet at the moment I believe.

I will ask some technical questions over at dashtalk.org if I have time tomorrow. Clarity on this subject would be of great interest to me.

[BlockaFett]

no offense, really bored of arguing with XMR people and reading Bitcion analogies at this stage.

You can check my post history and confirm that I have taken an interest in exactly zero altcoins. I recently started getting a little bit interested in Dash because I see Bitcoin's fungibility problems. Unfortunately Dash has the same fungibility problems no matter how much they try and hide it, and the sheer stupidity of the community members is not inspiring.

That does not mean I am interested in Monero, except maybe in the technology underlying it. I am not going to divest in Dash and invest in Monero. I am just going to divest in Dash and hold Bitcoin for the moment. Maybe in a few months or years I'll take another look at Monero, but saying that I'm "XMR people" is wrong.

ok you genuine so i will reply...

first thing is please bare in mind if you just read 1000 posts from XMR people it's like entering an alternate reality where there is this duel to the death between Dash and Monero - there isn't.

Monero was a clone rushed out after DRK along with at least 13 other CryptoNote coins, all cut and paste some code that has very dubious origins - no actual innovation themselves.

DRK rejected Cryptonote in favour of own system based on coinjoin but transposed to a 2nd tier (fullnodes that also provide services), but was closed source so the clones had to use the best tech available at the time - Cryptonote, which they all did including Monero.  (and I think DRK rejected CN because main aspect of the architecture is that if any backdoor or shortcut is found in the cryptology or implementation, your whole history can be deanonimized anytime in the future just from the blockchain - in basic architectural terms your anonimity is at much higher risk than system like DRK whereby anonymization cannot be reversed without compromising nearly all masternodes at the time of the anonymisation. in the future if a whole is found in any cryptonote implementation, bang, the whole currency dies.  In drk, if wholes are found, they can be patched as they go along which they have been whenever they were found)

What's happening now is that DRK invented Instant transactions (which evolved out of the 2-tier innovation), which is obviously a lot bigger than just an 'anon coin' so the market is taking notice - my own opinion is that all alts are essentially proof of concept, they will nevere work in the full market because no one wants to wait 1-15 minutes to pay for something, espeically at point of sale.  Solving this makes first viable alt to Bitcion because it's something that will really help crypto get out of the underground and into Guy-on-the-street's wallet.

Then DRK price rises in accordance, and suddenly wave after wave of XMR post accusing of instamine, centralization, etc comes in day after day - so does XMR look like it's in a position of strength or that it's bitter that DRK is leaving it behind in an Anon coin space, which Drk created, without a paddle?

So (coupled with the other issues I said about XMR market situation which i won't go into) this is just all smoke and mirrors by XMR to try to show some symetry to boost XMR price and keep it relevant (with non-instant transactions and 'anon coin' branding).  But it's fatal mistake because XMR needs to fight to stay relevant by *developing new features the market wants* which is not something they appear to be doing quite the opposite.

For new investors to DASH if you are on this thread it comes down to if you buy the accusations of early emission being a deliberate scam and if masternodes are centralized (which for be being there from week 2 is just fluff).

[majamina]

Unfortunately Dash has the same fungibility problems no matter how much they try and hide it

How does it? I really want to know but nobody will tell me   

Because if someone identifies outputs I own as being tainted then they can be blocked by merchants or exchanges or whatever.

"But you can just Darksend them!" is the reaction I have seen. Except that in Bitcoin you can send them to yourself and boom - new outputs.

But that would be recorded in the blockchain and easily followed through..

Does that make Bitcoin magically fungible?

No, because your transaction is easily traceable through the blockchain.

Or what if I mix the outputs using BitcoinFog, does that make Bitcoin perfectly fungible?

Well, if you get away with it, then that transaction is 'funged' yes. But 'BitcoinFog' is a trusted mixing service that could be keeping logs, reporting up to your adversary or creating some other shitstorm that you might not care to weather.

Fungibility is destroyed the minute you can trace transactions through the blockchain, it doesn't matter how you mix them and who is involved.

yes it does, that is the critical point. If you can mix the coins at will, in a trustless and sufficiently secure manner then there's your fungibility.

Otherwise just use Bitcoin and send the funds back to yourself if they're tainted, no Dash needed!

Well, no. See above.

[majamina]

On the other hand I am starting to see that Dash is like a rickety school bus. It is built on top of Bitcoin's code and all the hard work developers like gmaxwell have done, and so it is appropriate to view it as riding on Bitcoin's 'highway' in our minds. It doesn't matter if there is one rickety school bus (Bitcoin Fog!) or 2,000 of them (Dash) you still have to hope that the driver of the rickety school bus isn't suicidal and has actually serviced his engine. You might ride with some good bus drivers today, but what about next week or next month? I'm understanding now for the first time that I don't need to trust the driver of the bus when I can take a step to the left and use my own train on the high-speed railway.

What an amazing analogy.

This amazes you? Comparing a network of 2,400 servers in 30+ countries running daemons forked off Bitcoin Core with open-source enhancements....to rickety school buses?