XMR vs DRK

[Brilliantrocket]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

Buddy, I have more XMR than you, I guran-fucking-tee it. And I'm actively bringing new investors in, so please stfu about concern trolling. It's true that I have Dash as well, but my only concern is to see the development of the best technology. I just think that devs should be coding, not arguing with idiots on a forum.

[wpalczynski]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

... I guran-fucking-tee it. ..............

Its confirmed. :p

[generalizethis]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

Buddy, I have more XMR than you, I guran-fucking-tee it. And I'm actively bringing new investors in, so please stfu about concern trolling. It's true that I have Dash as well, but my only concern is to see the development of the best technology. I just think that devs should be coding, not arguing with idiots on a forum.

Then donate some of the xmr to the devs or learn to code. Criticizing the devs is doing what? You think they're all beholden to your opinion? Like your a shareholder? They are volunteers! With lives! Opinions! And have every right to do what they want they aren't working on the project. Fluffy alone has donated over $300K in manpower hours to Monero. Have you donated a single hour?

[lyth0s]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

Buddy, I have more XMR than you, I guran-fucking-tee it. And I'm actively bringing new investors in, so please stfu about concern trolling. It's true that I have Dash as well, but my only concern is to see the development of the best technology. I just think that devs should be coding, not arguing with idiots on a forum.

Unless you are certain how much XMR he has, how can you guarantee it? Statements like these are used much too frequently without the evidence/knowledge to back them up imo. You would have appeared more educated had you simply stated that you own a lot of xx and are actively "bringing new investors in".

[smooth]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

Buddy, I have more XMR than you, I guran-fucking-tee it. And I'm actively bringing new investors in, so please stfu about concern trolling. It's true that I have Dash as well, but my only concern is to see the development of the best technology. I just think that devs should be coding, not arguing with idiots on a forum.

Unless you are certain how much XMR he has, how can you guarantee it? Statements like these are used much too frequently without the evidence/knowledge to back them up imo. You would have appeared more educated had you simply stated that you own a lot of xx and are actively "bringing new investors in".

Maybe Brilliantrocket has more than half of all the XMR?

[Brilliantrocket]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

... I guran-fucking-tee it. ..............

Its confirmed.

Look at my post history and confirm when I got involved with Darkcoin   I got my coins at a rate of around 5000 per BTC   And I believe in diversification.

[wpalczynski]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

Buddy, I have more XMR than you, I guran-fucking-tee it. And I'm actively bringing new investors in, so please stfu about concern trolling. It's true that I have Dash as well, but my only concern is to see the development of the best technology. I just think that devs should be coding, not arguing with idiots on a forum.

Unless you are certain how much XMR he has, how can you guarantee it? Statements like these are used much too frequently without the evidence/knowledge to back them up imo. You would have appeared more educated had you simply stated that you own a lot of xx and are actively "bringing new investors in".

Maybe Brilliantrocket has more than half of all the XMR?

Is it true?

[Brilliantrocket]

Then donate some of the xmr to the devs or learn to code. Criticizing the devs is doing what? You think they're all beholden to your opinion? Like your a shareholder? They are volunteers! With lives! Opinions! And have every right to do what they want they aren't working on the project. Fluffy alone has donated over $300K in manpower hours to Monero. Have you donated a single hour?

I can still gain all the benefits, even if I choose not to share.

[othe]

Then donate some of the xmr to the devs or learn to code. Criticizing the devs is doing what? You think they're all beholden to your opinion? Like your a shareholder? They are volunteers! With lives! Opinions! And have every right to do what they want they aren't working on the project. Fluffy alone has donated over $300K in manpower hours to Monero. Have you donated a single hour?

I can still gain all the benefits, even if I choose not to share.

Nah you aren't a Bat, just a full blown retard Darkcoiner.

[xxxgoodgirls]

^ Priceless. Even XMR has got retards amongst its community.

[vokain]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

Buddy, I have more XMR than you, I guran-fucking-tee it. And I'm actively bringing new investors in, so please stfu about concern trolling. It's true that I have Dash as well, but my only concern is to see the development of the best technology. I just think that devs should be coding, not arguing with idiots on a forum.

Then donate some of the xmr to the devs or learn to code. Criticizing the devs is doing what? You think they're all beholden to your opinion? Like your a shareholder? They are volunteers! With lives! Opinions! And have every right to do what they want they aren't working on the project. Fluffy alone has donated over $300K in manpower hours to Monero. Have you donated a single hour?

Can I please see a citation, if this is information he chose to make public? The one summer undergraduate accounting class part of me is curious as to how it was calculated.

[generalizethis]

Then donate some of the xmr to the devs or learn to code. Criticizing the devs is doing what? You think they're all beholden to your opinion? Like your a shareholder? They are volunteers! With lives! Opinions! And have every right to do what they want they aren't working on the project. Fluffy alone has donated over $300K in manpower hours to Monero. Have you donated a single hour?

I can still gain all the benefits, even if I choose not to share.

There was a study on why doesn't selfish behavior pervade society if selfish behavior has the most benefits--they used bats as one study group. Bats share food with neighbor bats when they find a food source. The scientist fed certain bats, but did not let them share the food to see how the group would behave. The group reacted by not sharing food with the "selfish" bats. And while I feel sorry for the bats in the study because they were ostracized by the scientist's actions and not their own--i don't feel sorry for when it happens to humans. The larger your stake in Monero, the more it makes sense to give back towards the success of the project. Even Nash is on record that game theory is lacking when talking about human interactions. Probably being institutionalized gave him the insight that not all human actions are rational or can fit into the context of game theory.

[wpalczynski]

^ Priceless. Even XMR has got retards amongst its community.

We have to have at least one, for diversity and all that.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

Buddy, I have more XMR than you, I guran-fucking-tee it. And I'm actively bringing new investors in, so please stfu about concern trolling. It's true that I have Dash as well, but my only concern is to see the development of the best technology. I just think that devs should be coding, not arguing with idiots on a forum.

Unless you are certain how much XMR he has, how can you guarantee it? ...

It would be easier if XMR wasn't so gosh-darned anonymous

[wpalczynski]

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people --more devs than you can shake an angry troll stick at, and they're volunteers not paid by an instamine, but go on trying to sell your concern pericope like a two bit trial lawyer. Also, if they believe x-dark-dash is a fraud, they have every right, and I applaud them for it, to call it so. Your concern trolling is very appreciated--you obviously put a lot of time and effort into it.

Buddy, I have more XMR than you, I guran-fucking-tee it. And I'm actively bringing new investors in, so please stfu about concern trolling. It's true that I have Dash as well, but my only concern is to see the development of the best technology. I just think that devs should be coding, not arguing with idiots on a forum.

Unless you are certain how much XMR he has, how can you guarantee it? ...

It would be easier if XMR wasn't so gosh-darned anonymous

Didnt you see the Monero RichList?

http://moneroblocks.eu/richlist

[BlockaFett]

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.

This thread is moving pretty quickly (ten pages of mudslinging in half as many hours!) so I'm not sure you'll see this, but there's an important misunderstanding here. You're right that the human beings aren't cryptographic (e.g. the development team, market participants, etc) --- though it's important to observe that this makes them very unsuited to cryptographic functionality. gmaxwell had an elegant description of cryptography as "technology by which we hope to confine and constrain the nature of information" despite information respecting no ownership, borders or morality. He described this as "inherently subtle and fragile", which it is, but this indifference to political and social pressure also make it efficient (human trust is expensive to build and maintain!) and robust against a lot of political and social pressures that human systems are not. This robustness is the cypherpunk motivation for bringing cryptography into everyday life: anything we have the technology to do cryptographically rather than socially ought to be, since social systems can change quickly and unjustly. Nowhere is this more true than finance, so cryptocurrency is a perfect environment for this kind of thing. So cryptocurrencies try to eliminate human decision points wherever possible, and where not they try to set things up so others can't override each others' decisions (hence the value implied by buzzwords like "decentralization" and "censorship resistance" and "public verifiability").

I'm not entirely clear on what masternodes do these days, but I infer that their actions affect users' privacy, i.e. they are "confining and constraining" information. This is a cryptographic function too. Human decisions may factor into their behaviour, but they are still performing a cryptographic function; human involvement does not change this, only changes the failure modes.

All this to say that basically the entirety of cryptocurrency really is cryptography. Even many of the human parts. The network transport is part of the cryptosystem: it needs to be designed to prevent modification of data in transport, authentication of data even when endpoints are anonymous and spoofable, etc. A wallet is part of the cryptosystem: it's responsible for creating verification keys ("scriptPubKeys" in Bitcoin, which are usually abbreviated to addresses) whose corresponding private keys are controlled by the correct parties to the correct extent, and for correctly and securely storing these keys. Wallets are decoupled from the main cryptocurrency cryptosystem, and in particular are not part of the hard part --- consensus code --- but they are certainly cryptographic and are subject to the same sort of subtle missteps as other cryptosystems. (For example, the oft-cited BIP32 "bug" where a party in possession of a public key and chaincode can derive the secret key from a non-hardened child secret key; it would not be hard to come up with a plausible-sounding system which "unintentionally" exposed secret data through this mechanism.)

I'll repeat my above statement: basically the entirety of cryptocurrency really is cryptography. This is important. It's why things are so subtle, why complexity is dangerous, and why changing even trivial-seeming things can have drastic and hard-to-analyze consequences. This is where "a lot of harmful garbage and dysfunctional software" comes from. It's the default for poorly-thought-out systems. And in cryptography, "poorly thought out" means anything less than expert cryptographers spending large amounts of time and effort designing things to be both correct and clearly correct. (Given how few experts there are in the cryptocurrency space, I could tell you that almost all of it is shit just by the pigeonhole principle .)

This is not a cheap standard to hold a system to even if its designers want to; and falsely claiming that something is not cryptographic is an easy way to excuse not wanting to. But such claims do not change reality.

The encryption of data through cryptography is the foundation of cryptocurrencies.

This is simply false.

Hi Andy,

Sure, I understand cryptography is key for cryptocurrencies.  I was just proposing some semantic misunderstanding of what Tok said because he was getting it in the neck

V. interesting reading this insight into cryptography, thanks.

I get the value, it's the building block of privacy and freedom in the digital age, and in cryptocurrencies it enables all the good stuff like proof of ownership, trustless transfer, global uniqueness etc as well as the low level workings. And humans are useless for cryptographic function because our actions are non-deterministic...thankfully.  I'm into etymology so - information, literally 'the ability to shape people's actions' ergo 'information is power'.  Cryptography aka 'hidden writing' or ability to (as i now understand) 'confine and restrict' the ability to shape people's actions...I think that's the important bit for freedom in the digital age especially when governments can physically access our info but we can't access theirs.

I see what you mean about masternodes but I think it's arguably not a purely cryptographic function because from what you are saying the main purpose of cryptographics is to confine / constrain information as gmaxwell says for the purposes of un-confining / disseminating it later (as I understand it as a layperson).  Masternodes don't want to confine the information they want to 'lose' it best as possible and they do that by adding identical information from others at the same time to create ambiguity which is getting more into information theory and entropy than cryptography right? (if I understood correctly, although there is still arguable confinement and containment...).  but semantics aside I don't think anonymity has to be a cryptographic process, e.g. for me i don't want a reversible process just want the info as lost as possible  (Analogy would be people sitting around a table mixing their $ bills together:  Cryptographic approach would be sequentially logging what went were and then confining / constraining that log information using a cipher or whatever.  Masternode approach would be blindfolding them first and just randomly mixing them, maybe keep a log and randomize it, IDK enough about the inner workings..).  Cryptography seems like best fit for XMR anonimity because they want the reversibility for viewkeys etc but is cryptography best fit for trying to 'lose' information as drk/Dash is aiming to do?

If that's correct then XMR / DRK are really different and it depends what the cryptocurrency users are looking for, DRK anonymity is designed to (ideally) 'lose' transaction information at a given moment through adding ambiguity, XMR anonymity is designed to 'confine and constrain' transaction information using a cryptographic function but provide the ability to decode the information (ideally) only by those who are authorized by the encoder.  

The threat models of compromising the anonymity for each system would then be, for DRK, to acquire enough information to circumvent the ambiguity process meaning high control of the masternode network, or for XMR, to compromise the cryptographic functions governing the ring signatures, or the system that implements those, or extort the 'viewkey' (my XMR knowledge is limited).

So IDK...I am just a drk miner so I don't speak for anyone in DRK (and I dropped out after Calculus so i could have easily interpreted it wrong..)

BTW...I never spoke with a cryptographer, what you think about number stations?

cheers

[Brilliantrocket]

There was a study on why doesn't selfish behavior pervade society if selfish behavior has the most benefits--they used bats as one study group. Bats share food with neighbor bats when they find a food source. The scientist fed certain bats, but did not let them share the food to see how the group would behave. The group reacted by not sharing food with the "selfish" bats. And while I feel sorry for the bats in the study because they were ostracized by the scientist's actions and not their own--i don't feel sorry for when it happens to humans. The larger your stake in Monero, the more it makes sense to give back towards the success of the project. Even Nash is on record that game theory is lacking when talking about human interactions. Probably being institutionalized gave him the insight that not all human actions are rational or can fit into the context of game theory.

Meh, I'm selfish. You guys can donate, and I'll get the benefits of those donations if XMR ends up succeeding. If I did donate, I'd only donate directly to Fluffypony, as he's the only one on the XMR team that I like

[illodin]

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!

I don't know how good BitcoinFog's mixing is, or how big their anonymity set is. But the main difference is, that it requires trust. One day when their anonymous admin runs into financial problems and looks at the Fog's wallet and sees a couple of thousand bitcoins in there, well, I wouldn't want to be mixing on that day. And you'll need to keep track of your change, basically you can't spend a change anymore until it's mixed again. And you better not send multiple changes in one transaction to the Fog as it will tie the two changes and hence the two transactions you made together. It's very easy to do a mistake like that. DRK/DASH wallet on the other hand will take care of this.

[illodin]

Then there's "instant transactions", which as others showed was taken from Green Addresses, a system already available with Bitcoin.

If you read what GreenAddress actually is, you will see they are not at all the same. It can never be used from personal wallets, as the recipient has to trust the previously published sending address not to double spend.

This is just one more misunderstanding on what Darkcoin/DASH is in addition to uniform denominations, change handling, and whether masternodes actually send and receive coins.

[majamina]

A few interesting posts overnight. Something from andytoshi caught my eye:

"I'm not entirely clear on what masternodes do these days, but I infer that their actions affect users' privacy, i.e. they are "confining and constraining" information. This is a cryptographic function too. Human decisions may factor into their behaviour, but they are still performing a cryptographic function; human involvement does not change this, only changes the failure modes."

This is an interesting statement and really gets to the heart of the debate.

The mixing provided by masternodes, if working as intended, is a form of one-way encryption. The process does indeed 'confine and constrain' information; information about relationships between address balances. The critical questions are around the efficacy, efficiency, permenancy and vulnerability of this process.

Efficacy: I see no reasonable argument that shows the mixing process does not produce the required result. Address balances are effectively rotated through addresses resulting in no traceable association between two given addresses.

Efficiency: The mixing process can take a while and the user experience in the wallet is not perfect, so there is room for improvement here.

Permanency: If we assume that private keys are safe then the off-chain nature of the mixing provides a permanent 'encryption' of balance movement through the public blockchain.

Vulnerability: This, it seems, is the most critical point and the subject of intense debate on this thread. Almost the entire technical argument against DASH concerns percieved fragility and centralisation of the Masternode network. Yet still, no opponent has demonstrated how any realistic adversary could hope to compromise the network, or indeed define/quantify 'compromised'.

What I see is a trade-off between utility and vulnerability. The MN network provides a two-tier architecture enabling diverse services to be developed on top of a traditional PoW cryptocurrency. Today we have the mixing service & instant transactions. Future features may include two-factor authentication, decentralised web wallets and who knows what else. It's this utility and native feature set that elevates DASH and has the potential to drive adoption. If the platform that enables these features creates vulnerabilities, then the question really is whether these vulnerabilities are realistically exploitable, by whom and for what?

So in the trade-off between utility and vulnerability there is a tipping point which defines whether DASH is fit-for-purpose. I don't see any reason why DASH is at, or anywhere near, that tipping point.

Meanwhile my technical questions remain unanswered

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1001642.msg10924115#msg10924115