XMR vs DRK

[majamina]

Can you explain how a masternode works in a more detailed way? I'm curious to see how all the moving parts work in coordination--on just a cursory look, it seems like an added complication (unnecessarily so) to a cryptocurrency.

The nodes create a 2-tier architecture allowing additional services to be deployed on top of the standard PoW currency. Whether this is unnecessary depends on your point of view about the features and their utility.

From the perspective of running a masternode, it's just the regular wallet/daemon running on a host with a static IP and collateral of 1000 DASH, normally stored off the node in a cold wallet. There is a key in the config file that identifies the node so you can start it remotely from the cold wallet.

The DASH wallet/daemon is forked off bitcoin core with a load of additional code written by the DASH devs. From a networking standpoint everything sits behind TCP/9999 so this is typically the only port listening to the internet.

Presently the masternodes provide privacy functions (Darksend) and instant transactions (InstantX), with more features in the pipeline (e.g two-factor auth).

Whitepaper here:

https://www.dashpay.io/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/DarkcoinWhitepaper.pdf

InstantX white paper here:

https://www.dashpay.io/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/InstantTX.pdf

Review by Kristov Atlas here:

http://blog.anonymousbitcoinbook.com/2014/09/darksend-paper-version-2/

[majamina]

You've already been shown the maths proving Cryptonote/Monero is secure and private.

There exists no equivalent research for Masternodes, much less the rest of Darkcoin's hodge-podge of borrowed and rebranded crypto tricks.

What DASH is doing is not hyper-complex. The code has been reviewed once by K Atlas, is open source and will no doubt be subject to further review. At no point have I said DASH is perfect or 'mathematically proven' - it's about real-world utility and whether it's fit for purpose.

You refuse to listen when gmaxwell, the inventor of CoinJoin, says Evan's homespun version is flawed.

Well, in the comments posted from him on this thread he was saying there are better approaches, but doesn't say it's broken. I can see he doesn't like DASH though....fair enough.

Trusted 3rd parties are security holes.  That is why Bitcoin exists.  If you still don't get it, you never will.

Sure, but I don't really see where the trust is. Masternode owners is all anyone says, but there's no clear demonstration of _why_ they are trusted.

lots of stuff about cults

I could take you a lot more seriously if you dropped all this BS, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do...

[wpalczynski]

You've already been shown the maths proving Cryptonote/Monero is secure and private.

There exists no equivalent research for Masternodes, much less the rest of Darkcoin's hodge-podge of borrowed and rebranded crypto tricks.

What DASH is doing is not hyper-complex. The code has been reviewed once by K Atlas, is open source and will no doubt be subject to further review. At no point have I said DASH is perfect or 'mathematically proven' - it's about real-world utility and whether it's fit for purpose.

You refuse to listen when gmaxwell, the inventor of CoinJoin, says Evan's homespun version is flawed.

Well, in the comments posted from him on this thread he was saying there are better approaches, but doesn't say it's broken. I can see he doesn't like DASH though....fair enough.

Trusted 3rd parties are security holes.  That is why Bitcoin exists.  If you still don't get it, you never will.

Sure, but I don't really see where the trust is. Masternode owners is all anyone says, but there's no clear demonstration of _why_ they are trusted.

lots of stuff about cults

I could take you a lot more seriously if you dropped all this BS, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do...

I have to interject here.  Something touting itself as an anonymous crypto currency cannot be fit for purpose if it has not been proven mathematically sound.  I believe in this situation the onus is reversed.  It is up to DASH to prove the cryptographic functions, mathematics and logic behind its anonymity and privacy are sound and not the other way around.

There is just too much at stake for people who will use it.  There are financial, reputational, legal (criminal code) and regulatory risks for consumers using this technology should the anonymity be broken.

[BlockaFett]

it's more like math hasn't got to the stage where it can describe complex systems, i.e. chaotic systems, e.g. weather, turbulence, market behaviour.  That's not a 'human element', it's a 'chaotic element'.  Cryptography's purpose is to obscure information for the purpose of un-obscuring it later.  Which is essential for underpinnings of mechanics of crypto currency.  But when you want to start to lose information like you do with anonymity, (in my opinion) it's not the best suited way.  Because it's essentially reversible with the right tools (because the information is confined in one place, it security relies on your ability to decode it).  Trying to lose information in a complex system, i don't think that approach is a good idea.  You need to abstract the problem and use the system itself, in DRK's case, disparate location of the information, combining information to create ambiguity, across a chaotic network, is used to help 'lose' it - a cryptographic function can't do that; it's an alternative method.  So just because there is not a mathematical proof to describe it doesn't matter, current math fails to describe most complex systems, forward brances are trying to like chaos theory. it's the application that counts and the efficacy of it's application which distils down to a statistic result, same as cryptography does IMO.

Hi BlockaFett,

I'm not sure what you mean by "math hasn't got to the stage where it can describe complex systems". I have a math degree and several published papers in mathematics and I can't for the life of me square this claim with actual work in the field. Mathematics, though the power of clever abstractions, is able to describe extremely complex systems with inhuman precision and correctness. The breakdown in modeling real systems comes from the fact that real systems have many independent moving parts which we are unable to measure precisely and which are  infeasible to compute with anyway. So the problem is not complexity per se, nor is it somehow a failure of mathematics that things are this way. The breakdown in modeling software is that there often is no much-simpler description of a software program than the program itself (which can span many millions of bits). Oh -- and we can define "simpler description" precisely and actually prove that this is true for almost all programs.

"Chaotic systems" can be modeled as stochastic processes, and this field is much better developed than I think you realize. And anyway this is about situations where there is no physical way to obtain complete information, not about systems which are humanly defined and whose components are purely mathematical in nature anyway. It sounds like you're trying to justify the standard altcoin practice of responding to criticism by piling on so much complexity that experts won't bother looking at it anymore. But there is no mathematical or scientific result or practice that justifies this. It's just charlatanism.

Next, cryptography's purpose is not "to obscure information for the purpose of un-obscuring it later". If you define "obscure" as "computationally indistinguishable from the encryption of a random element" I suppose it might be the purpose of encryption, but that is a much stronger definition of obscure than is usually meant by the word. Lots of cryptography is designed specifically to remove information: zero-knowledge proofs, ring signatures, preimage-resistant hash functions and pseudorandom functions are some examples (and there are many others ... this is just the longest list I could form without slowing typing to think). So this notion that cryptography is inappropriate for these kind of applications is just not true. In fact the only way to do these things without cryptography is to physically control the flow of information, which is at odds with trust-minimization and public verifiability, not to mention really difficult in a world where people routinely communicate over long distances.

I hope this helps clarify some things.

Andrew

Hi

Surely Cryptography to 'lose' information is only required when the information is confined in a shared space, if you can move the information out of the space, you don't need cryptography.  For example you don't need to encode text on a piece of paper if you can lock it in a box that no one can access and that is more secure than leaving it on a table with an encoded cypher that anyone can access.  Saying that you need cryptographic functions to 'lose' information in a cryptocurrency seems to assume that the encoded information is still accessible in the system (which is true with XMR) but in DRK it isn't. This seems like a weaker solution to me than moving the information permanently out of the reach for anyone to access and try to decode it later?

About "the fact that real systems have many independent moving parts which we are unable to measure precisely and which are  infeasible to compute with anyway" seems like another way of saying "we don't have a method yet" and hypothetical.  Modeling complex systems today involves taking math and building that into a complex system with many parts as you say.  But how do we know that there aren't new mathematical methods that can model complex systems more elegantly than the current way of thinking, and itsn't this what fields like Chaos theory are trying to do and having some success at?

Not sure I agree on the definition of cryptography (just my opinion) as I agree it seeks to 'confine and constrain' information but isn't that missing the last part you need to explain the purpose - confine and constrain information for the purpose of deconfining it and un-constraining it later?  What else it is needed for (unless 'losing' information in a shared space)?

All I am saying is, looking at complex systems like p2p networks, brain neural network models, there are properties and behaviour that are clearly following rules but we don't understand yet (can't quantify mathematically at a macro level without having to model each 'moving part' at a micro level within a macro simulation).  So to say that the math is already as far as it an go and it just requires modelling, i dont see that, and applied to cryptocurrencies, to say that all jobs have to use cryptography, i don't see that either, in fact it seems like permanent anonymity in a cryptocurrency is the one area that needs to not use cryptography unless you want the information sitting there in the shared space (blockchain) to be potentially decoded later.  Secondly, (as some people here have said) that because then the anonymity 'system' can't be trusted because it's not following a mathematical proof, my response is that that does not mean that a proof can't be found or is even required, the mathematics needs to be developed to model what the system is achieving statistically not the other way around, because in the real world most of the 'systems' in people's lives don't have mathematical proofs for but we depend on them. but thats my opinion

thanks for your comments

[vokain]

You have to trust masternode owners to uphold the value of your coins, because a lot of the value comes from owners' dependency upon financial privacy. It is totally contrary to the philosophy of the blockchain, so you trust absolutely no one but everyone for that. And value=/=price mind you

[majamina]

I have to interject here.  Something touting itself as an anonymous crypto currency cannot be fit for purpose if it has not been proven mathematically sound.  I believe in this situation the onus is reversed.  It is up to DASH to prove the cryptographic functions, mathematics and logic behind its anonymity and privacy are sound and not the other way around.

but everything that makes it a cryptocurrency is proven - it's a fork of bitcoin core.

the additional services provided by masternodes are just that; additional services....like what you can get with BTC from trusted third parties, but instead native to the coin and trustless.

[iCEBREAKER]

You've already been shown the maths proving Cryptonote/Monero is secure and private.

There exists no equivalent research for Masternodes, much less the rest of Darkcoin's hodge-podge of borrowed and rebranded crypto tricks.

What DASH is doing is not hyper-complex. The code has been reviewed once by K Atlas, is open source and will no doubt be subject to further review. At no point have I said DASH is perfect or 'mathematically proven' - it's about real-world utility and whether it's fit for purpose.

You refuse to listen when gmaxwell, the inventor of CoinJoin, says Evan's homespun version is flawed.

Well, in the comments posted from him on this thread he was saying there are better approaches, but doesn't say it's broken. I can see he doesn't like DASH though....fair enough.

Trusted 3rd parties are security holes.  That is why Bitcoin exists.  If you still don't get it, you never will.

Sure, but I don't really see where the trust is. Masternode owners is all anyone says, but there's no clear demonstration of _why_ they are trusted.

lots of stuff about cults

I could take you a lot more seriously if you dropped all this BS, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do...

The standard for real-world fintech is 'mathematically proven.'  The fact you try to equate 'mathematically proven' with 'perfect' shows how little you understand the topic.

You are obviously drinking deeply of the Darkcoin Kool-Aid.  We can all see it.  Hence the "stuff about cults."

"The code has been reviewed once?"

Once?  Really?  Did it get four stars?  

GTFO.  This is crypto, not a new fucking gastropub on Yelp.

[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.

Wait, what does Dash do again? Oh yea, I have to rely on others to setup masternodes in order to even use the "anonymity" in the first place. I also have to trust that all the masternodes are not compromised since most of them are hosted on centralized servers online, as there's still a chance of deanonymizing a transaction. Yippee.

Wait, what has your reply to do with the misunderstandings I mentioned? Oh yea, nothing. It's just your need to regurgitate the same old that's been discussed to death already.

Since you're so concerned about masternodes "being compromised", can you explain what is exactly the most important data that the attacker (realistically, only the NSA) would collect?

Huh? You replied that Green Addresses required a level of trust, to which I replied that Dash's entire masternode system requires a level of trust, get it? It's not even the NSA, it's much more simpler than that. Masternodes are hosted on centralized servers, the hosting providers of such servers technically "own the masternode". Dash's entire masternode system is centralized. Even your former lead developer admitted it...Don't let investments clog your reasoning.

So you're claiming that if A requires trust, and B requires trust, then A = B.

One more time, Just go read the wiki page, Green addresses is not the same as InstantX.

[majamina]

The standard for real-world fintech is 'mathematically proven.'

Hahaha, nope, it ain't.

The standard for real-world fintech is 'works' and 'makes money'. At least if you're talking about 'fintech' as in 'finance technology' used in 'finance companies' by 'finance professionals' like what i am.

GTFO.  This is crypto, not a new fucking gastropub on Yelp.

OK dude, let's keep it civilised....good luck with your mission

[wpalczynski]

I have to interject here.  Something touting itself as an anonymous crypto currency cannot be fit for purpose if it has not been proven mathematically sound.  I believe in this situation the onus is reversed.  It is up to DASH to prove the cryptographic functions, mathematics and logic behind its anonymity and privacy are sound and not the other way around.

but everything that makes it a cryptocurrency is proven - it's a fork of bitcoin core.

the additional services provided by masternodes are just that; additional services....like what you can get with BTC from trusted third parties, but instead native to the coin and trustless.

Additional services at the very core of DASH, at the very core of its marketing and its purpose in life.  I look at them as core services and not additional services.  All central to the DASH architectural model.

[5w00p]

Rebranding is gr8!

I suggest Monero becomes MASH.

[majamina]

Additional services at the very core of DASH, at the very core of its marketing and its purpose in life.  I look at them as core services and not additional services.  All central to the DASH architectural model.

But the point is that the basic coin is the same as BTC. The idea is you have some services on top that improve on what you can get from trusted third-parties with BTC. These services run on 2,400 servers in a random, trustless fashion - instead of a handful of servers owned by one anoymous dude who can steal your coins.

Forgetting any first-mover advantages or whatever....if this is an improvement over standard BTC then why not use it?

[BlockaFett]

I have to interject here.  Something touting itself as an anonymous crypto currency cannot be fit for purpose if it has not been proven mathematically sound.  I believe in this situation the onus is reversed.  It is up to DASH to prove the cryptographic functions, mathematics and logic behind its anonymity and privacy are sound and not the other way around.

but everything that makes it a cryptocurrency is proven - it's a fork of bitcoin core.

the additional services provided by masternodes are just that; additional services....like what you can get with BTC from trusted third parties, but instead native to the coin and trustless.

Additional services at the very core of DASH, at the very core of its marketing and its purpose in life.  I look at them as core services and not additional services.  All central to the DASH architectural model.

how do you prove that a complex system is 'mathematically sound'?  E.g. where is the mathematical proof that Bitcoin user's will mine and make transactions and act honestly for the best interest of the system, without which Bitcoin 'wouldn't work'?  The closest that current Math can come is game theory - but that's not a proof.

[wpalczynski]

Additional services at the very core of DASH, at the very core of its marketing and its purpose in life.  I look at them as core services and not additional services.  All central to the DASH architectural model.

But the point is that the basic coin is the same as BTC. The idea is you have some services on top that improve on what you can get from trusted third-parties with BTC. These services run on 2,400 servers in a random, trustless fashion - instead of a handful of servers owned by one anoymous dude who can steal your coins.

Forgetting any first-mover advantages or whatever....if this is an improvement over standard BTC then why not use it?

So if all DASH is is a Bitcoin tumbler, can it really be marketed as an anonymous cryptocurrency?

[5w00p]

...
There is a key in the config file that identifies the node so you can start it remotely from the cold wallet.
...

You obviously don't know what a cold wallet is.

A cold wallet is one in which the private keys are NOT stored on a machine with ANY access to or from ANY other machine at all.

So, it is therefore IMPOSSIBLE to "start (a node) remotely from (a) cold wallet."

It is huge failures in basic security concepts that make the D-coin akin to a mirage, and almost like a Trojan Horse, in my opinion.

[iCEBREAKER]

The standard for real-world fintech is 'mathematically proven.'

Hahaha, nope, it ain't.

The standard for real-world fintech is 'works' and 'makes money'. At least if you're talking about 'fintech' as in 'finance technology' used in 'finance companies' by 'finance professionals' like what i am.

The standard for fintech security is 'mathematically proven,' not "the code has been reviewed once."

"The code has been reviewed once."

^^That's your problem right there.^^

You should make that the cult's new motto:

DASH - The code has been reviewed once!

It'll make a fitting epitaph as well:

[majamina]

...
There is a key in the config file that identifies the node so you can start it remotely from the cold wallet.
...

You obviously don't know what a cold wallet is.

A cold wallet is one in which the private keys are NOT stored on a machine with ANY access to or from ANY other machine at all.

I think the definition of 'cold storage' is somewhat ambiguous, but in general refers to storing keys offline except when it's necessary to use them online, which in the case of masternodes is when you need to start the node - typically following an upgrade.

[canonsburg]

Masternode for anonymity is a bad idea, that's why Drk re-branded itself as Dash and continued to add "additional services" because it makes not sense from a purely anonymous standpoint.

Masternode is the equivalent of the "miner" but instead to provide "anonymity". It gets compensated for doing this "work" just like a miner get rewarded to do its work.

But that was before the invention of better anonymous technology such as those used in Monero. In Monero, you get anonymity for free*, basically baked into the protocol. But with Drk, you have to pay Masternodes for such "services" and you get an inferior version.

That's like still riding a horse when we have invented the car. Why would you do it?

That's why Drk needs to re-brand beyond the "anonymous" label because it's charging people to do inferior work.


Second point is the comparison between the Miner and the Masternode.

The miner does work to secure the blockchain but the work that has already been done cannot be used to corrupt the blockchain, meaning that in order to change history, new work has to be done.

But with the Masternode, the work that has been done is providing anonymity can in fact be used to unwind that very same anonymity. It's almost like a "Proof Of Stake equivalent" but in the anonymous dimension, where some staking in the past can somehow be used in the future but in this case providing anonymity in the past can be used to unwind in the future. This itself may not be a bad thing but what make it really bad is that it's a third party, so where you rely on other miners to secure the blockchain but this work cannot be undone, with Masternode, you rely on other nodes to provide anonymity but the work can be undone.

[majamina]

The standard for fintech security is 'mathematically proven,' not "the code has been reviewed once."

Ah so it's "fintech security" now not "fintech". Nice little mod there.

I'd love to know your fintech credentials...

[xxxgoodgirls]

...
There is a key in the config file that identifies the node so you can start it remotely from the cold wallet.
...

You obviously don't know what a cold wallet is.

A cold wallet is one in which the private keys are NOT stored on a machine with ANY access to or from ANY other machine at all.

So, it is therefore IMPOSSIBLE to "start (a node) remotely from (a) cold wallet."

It is huge failures in basic security concepts that make the D-coin akin to a mirage, and almost like a Trojan Horse, in my opinion.

If you compromize the server running the daemon and get access to the MN private key  you still won't be able to touch the 1k deposit.
MN priv keys have nothing to do with addresses private keys.
What huge failures in basic security are you referring to?