So the Isador review Shadow guys were so proud of is finally out and with some very bad(worse) news -
Good evening each and everyone and first of all please forgive me for my English.
I am excited to see such a large community here on this forum I head so much about for such a long time, I didn't know there were so many people interested in "ShadowCash"!
To introduce myself I have worked multiple large scale cryptography projects in the past ranging from searching the zp to the nth category k factors based largely on second tier unknown quantities or as cryptographers call them 'phantom proofs'. This is very difficult to achieve and yet we spend most of our time finding and patching weaknesses in attempts for so called safe unbreakable fail safe systems to protect privacy and heighten general security on all manner of platforms for a whole range of purposes. I do "code" in many other languages and even take on freelance work as a part of my revenue source.
Introduction out the way and I'll just quickly apologise for not being public before, here in my home office in Germany it's not evident to see the popularity of the task before me. Apologies hopefully accepted and hope everybody understands I am doing this on a voluntary basis although I was kindly gifted 5 Bitcoin (Satoshis work is which I am secretly passionate about and I could not turn down the offer to look into another cryptocurrency).
A few months ago I was contacted by a representative from ShadowCash and asked to shed some light on the whitepaper called "ShadowCash" anonymity using NIZKs.
It took me quite some time to get used to the document and if I may say, it was missing a lot of information.
Working with occasional correspondence with Ryno whilst he informed me he was on business leave the last few months has been very informative although perhaps for this community not as fast as people would like. I have received several requests to post here on this forum and so I feel it is a good idea to share the discoveries sooner rather than later.
Also this was another reason for not posting I was advised was not to worry people as Ryno and Technovert could get problems patched before releasing the findings.
So far when first I began to review the whitepaper I was very curious as to how they had suddenly been able to achieve something that people had spent many many man hours trying to do. All this from developers with NO technical or professional cryptography background.
Needless to say, after the first week I found some major discrepancies... elements of trusted introduction to the shadow token system and elements of traceability using numerical hypothesis and statistical flooding of the blockchain to return sensitive data combined with pattern recognition, let's just say in it's current form each and every shadow token is easily traced within a reasonable budget and intelligence.
This is not to say that the system can't be improved, in fact it can, but if Ryno and Techno listen to my advice they should start afresh with completely new code.
If they decide to stick to the current code I will help them out but it will be a very long process, perhaps years to acheive anything resembling monero levels or anonymity.
I looked into the monero ring signature system and they have something that is far more advanced than the ShadowCash ring signature setup, although I have to commend the team for making this possible on the bitcoin codebase, however it is my duty to state it is not as strong as cryptonote technology.
I will lend my services to try and patch up ShadowCash for as long as possible as I'm passionate about the "end game" scenario.
Any questions and for more detailed answers please send me a pm and I'll be happy to answer questions.
Needless to say, ShadowCash is DEAD
