CryptoNote | The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly

[farFX]

Hello Everyone,

I am looking to get an interesting discussion going on what could be done better with new forks of the CryptoNote algorithm.

Below is a pic of all the forks that have come about from BCN. There are many, but I really don't want to focus the disucssion on just one coin.
I would like to get your thoughts on what makes each of these coins good and what does not.
What improvements could be made in these coins or if you could take all of the good out of each of these coins and make them into one, what would that be?
Anyway hope we can get a good discussion out of this as I am really interested in the CryptoNote community and future developments.

[kazuki49]

You have to research the history (or lack thereof) of each yourself, but always follow the emission:



the most promissing CryptoNote (The Good): XMR, AEON, XDN, BBR. The plain clone (Ugly): DSH, and the scam that unironically started everything (Bad): BCN

edit: added links to the point

[ArticMine]

The question as to whether Bytecoin was a premine fraudulently disguised as a ninjamine (the most likely scenario) or an actual ninjamine (the claim made by Bytecoin's supporters) is the main subject of the following thread. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=740112.msg8361633#msg8361633.

In either case we are talking of an 82% premine or even if we accept the Bytecoin supporters claim then it is an 82% ninjamine. The choice becomes really ugly + fraud (the most likely) or just really ugly.

[redpepper]

Much of what I've seen in CryptoNote I really like.  I do have some questions.  I know that XMR has some public developers, do any of the other forks have known people working on them?  I'm specifically interested in XDN.  Most of the commits in GitHub are from ducknote and xdn-project and I don't know they are in real life.

A concern, I've read some "conspiracy theories" putting the NSA behind CryptoNote.  I haven't gotten to deep into that research, so I'd love to hear from people that have.

[kazuki49]

A concern, I've read some "conspiracy theories" putting the NSA behind CryptoNote.  I haven't gotten to deep into that research, so I'd love to hear from people that have.

They said NSA was behind Bitcoin too, and they actually are in one way at least (SHA256), Monero doesnt use SHA256 and its elliptic curve is quite respected outside cryptocurrencies as well (used in TOR), BTC curve is not used anywhere else.

[smooth]

That graph is wrong in at least one place. AEON is a fork of XMR.

[Liquid71]

That graph is wrong in at least one place. AEON is a fork of XMR.

That's like saying Litecoin isn't a fork of Bitcoin, it's a fork of Tenebrix 

A cryptonote fork with a sustainable emission rate, GUI wallet, and optimized miners publicly available on launch would be the winning combination for a successful CN fork.

[smooth]

That graph is wrong in at least one place. AEON is a fork of XMR.

That's like saying Litecoin isn't a fork of Bitcoin, it's a fork of Tenebrix 

I don't know the code history of Litecoin that well so I can't comment, but I'm saying that AEON is direct fork of Monero (i.e. it has Monero copyright notices, and features added by Monero, such as mnemonics), which in turn was a fork of Bytecoin, and the graph doesn't show that lineage properly. Notice how the graph does (correctly, I presume) show other coins which are second-generation forks from BCN, but the AEON link is incorrect.

[kazuki49]

A cryptonote fork with a sustainable emission rate, GUI wallet, and optimized miners publicly available on launch would be the winning combination for a successful CN fork.

Bitcoin had none of this when it was launched, and it is a success.

[markm]

A cryptonote fork with a sustainable emission rate, GUI wallet, and optimized miners publicly available on launch would be the winning combination for a successful CN fork.

Bitcoin had none of this when it was launched, and it is a success.

Sure, but thats because Bitcoin was a fork of, uh... waitasec... someone's got this, don't they...

-MarkM-

[smooth]

A cryptonote fork with a sustainable emission rate, GUI wallet, and optimized miners publicly available on launch would be the winning combination for a successful CN fork.

Bitcoin had none of this when it was launched, and it is a success.

Sure, but thats because Bitcoin was a fork of, uh... waitasec... someone's got this, don't they...

-MarkM-

Bit gold

[kazuki49]

Sure, but thats because Bitcoin was a fork of, uh... waitasec... someone's got this, don't they...

-MarkM-

I got it, a fork of hashcash, but thats OK not everything can have the nicety of spawning out from nothing.

-kazuki49-

[markm]

Sure, but thats because Bitcoin was a fork of, uh... waitasec... someone's got this, don't they...

-MarkM-

I got it, a fork of hashcash, but thats OK not everything can have the nicety of spawning out from nothing.

-kazuki49-

And that had a GUI wallet?

-MarkM-

[pandher]

And that had a GUI wallet?

-MarkM-

Did Bitcoin had a GUI wallet in early days?

[smooth]

And that had a GUI wallet?

-MarkM-

Did Bitcoin had a GUI wallet in early days?

Yes

[gjhiggins]

It seems to be the case that there are some genuine semantics pertinent to the provenance. Looks like I need to add a “cloneparent” relation to the DOACC ontology (plain OWL (in github repos) or fancy HTML (on Minkiz *).

I somehow managed to miss ASAPcoin and have not yet added Tavos to the DOACC graph but here's a SPARQL query that lists the name and symbol of each DOACC entry listed as using the protocol named “cryptonote”.

Code:

PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX doacc: <http://purl.org/net/bel-epa/doacc#>

SELECT ?node ?sym ?lab WHERE 
{?prot skos:prefLabel "cryptonote"@en . 
  ?node doacc:protocol ?prot .
  ?node skos:prefLabel ?lab . 
  ?node doacc:symbol ?sym 
} ORDER BY ?lab

Results (output format edited for inclusion here). Hyperlinks are to Minkiz' own version of a Linked Open Data browser *

• Dfd89a34c-47bf-467e-b3ea-28e5b478fa1b : "AEON" : "Aeon"@en
• D8a7f39f2-bcbe-40d1-88af-892812d153ef : "BMR"  : "BitMonero"@en
• Ddeb9d744-b1c5-4a95-9d43-4af699481fd8 : "BBR"  : "Boolberry"@en
• D8053f587-9851-469e-b0e0-2d8ad4cc9349 : "BRO"  : "Breakoutcoin"@en
• Dcdbbfd0e-a3aa-4b05-9658-f0d1962d0676 : "BCN"  : "Bytecoin"@en
• Db7751e4e-6545-4d40-a00b-db67281123ea : "CRR"  : "CherryNote"@en
• Df5bd177c-db64-43f2-967c-a56ce1df51d6 : "CNC"  : "CryptoNoteCoin"@en
• D36a50071-b486-444a-952d-4f1cfb2b99aa : "CNN"  : "CryptoNotecoin"@en
• Dfd798104-2844-4994-9426-b8010d2d0263 : "XNA"  : "DNAcoin"@en
• D63744eb7-cf92-4067-8e8d-dfc741fdeb36 : "DNC"  : "DarkNetCoin"@en
• Db1368b14-c2e2-4c32-8df9-e279b87078b4 : "DSH"  : "Dashcoin"@en
• Df56c8007-5deb-4a1e-81f0-fa065bc76595 : "DBK"  : "DiamondBack"@en
• D3c860557-8adb-48c6-b648-e878f053c084 : "DB"   : "DoctorByte"@en
• D9b5a5879-a0bb-46c2-aae8-c1020e398450 : "DOSH" : "DoshKapitalcoin"@en
• D3b3c5677-1499-4191-8854-4868c7d9f0de : "FCN"  : "Fantomcoin"@en
• D6fadae6d-73f9-4494-a1ed-b7d59e4c2e95 : "INF8" : "Infinium-8coin"@en
• Dbe832a72-27cb-46ad-90ba-e4a55cdeddc5 : "XMR"  : "Monero"@en
• D1eb34fc1-bf78-40d0-8f28-52487b874a60 : "MCN"  : "MonetaVerde"@en
• Dd730f2e5-2c42-4132-b21c-b822e95b2652 : "MNT"  : "MountCoin"@en
• D1dc28053-6fca-468d-8726-664ba5287ff2 : "OEC"  : "OneEvilCoin"@en
• Da4ecd125-b600-42bc-9846-a83ea1389581 : "XPB"  : "Pebblecoin"@en
• Dd99ca886-3c77-4ff1-8630-5f8b6b2ac3f9 : "QCN"  : "QuazarCoin"@en
• Db9bfd480-13de-4ee5-be5d-57e29ee43f6c : "RD"   : "RedWind"@en
• Df92358a3-d7c9-4d3d-8c2e-eeeeae5f4bcf : "SBK"  : "SilverBack"@en
• Da32a3b5a-b6ef-4846-a288-673faa6c7ab1 : "TC"   : "Tournamentcoin"@en
• D599b4cef-2af0-4d83-a9ca-857af2fd93a9 : "XDN"  : "duckNote"@en

For convenience, here's a canned version of the query * that renders the results as HTML.

As regards collating features, I'm rather impressed with the polish of the DigitalNote GUI wallet, very promising indeed. Introducing a slider bar for degree of anonymity solves one very important but much under-appreciated issue - the fact that users with only a shallow model will naturally but mistakenly treat anonymity as a binary state when the reality is that it is a ratio scale of the brute force required to crack the crypto. A slider bar acts to help prevent such a misperception occurring in the first place. Nice work.

* self-signed SSL cert, CA cert, DYR: archive.org


Cheers

Graham

Edit: added CAcert note

[smooth]

I've no note of a cryptonote coin with a PLD symbol, can't find any results searching for PLD on bitcointalk or for “cryptonote PLD” on DDG. Would be grateful for more info.

Paladincoin and Budhacoin are both fake coins that never existed but were invented as forks that supposedly were created during the alleged "two years in the darknet" Bytecoin backstory.

Anyone who creates or disseminates material that includes those coins or explicitly mentions (often in a context that makes a sensible reader ask why it is being mentioned) Bytecoin having been launched in 2012 is either part of the ongoing Bytecoin premine fraud whitewashing effort or has been fooled by it. You will notice the oddly conspicuous "launched in 2012" comments, for example, in nearly every article or "interview" that has been sprinkled around the web by their astroturfing efforts. Of course every single one of those references (as in fully 100%) only came into existence since the Bytecoin fraud started (late 2013 to early 2014).

[gjhiggins]

Paladincoin and Budhacoin are both fake coins

Thank you.

Just saw your response. I'd deleted my post after I found the info I needed on map of coins.

Cheers

Graham

[dNote]

i would like to mention:

with DigitalNote XDN quantum leap 2.0 we made XDN source code refracting, we made lots of new features, but also we took lots of cryptonote source code parts https://github.com/cryptonotefoundation/cryptonote

Now i would say digitalnote is 1/3 bytecoin source code, 1/3 cryptonote source code and 1/3 of XDN-devs work.

I wish they have some coin "features tree" on that map.

[TPTB_need_war]

A concern, I've read some "conspiracy theories" putting the NSA behind CryptoNote.  I haven't gotten to deep into that research, so I'd love to hear from people that have.

CN uses Daniel Berstein's EdDSA (specifically curve Ed25519). Berstein has fought the USG in court and has been outspoken about threats against our cryptography freedom.

The main problem with CN is that ring signatures require equal denominations, thus Monero has to maintain power-of-10 balances, which bloats the block chain and complicates the wallet programming.

Then when you need to recombine the change from multiple transactions, if don't mix these you break unlinkability.

Also because Monero does not force all ring mixes to be mandatory amongst preset groupings, it could be subject to combinatorial attack which could unmask the anonymity. Their researchers are studying my complaint on this issue and my suggested fix.

Confidental Transactions from Blockstream hides the values of a transaction so business privacy is retained. CN doesn't do this.

No CN coins and in fact no altcoins that I am aware of, have really solved the issue that centralization of mining can cause transactions to be censored. This is an open problem for cryptocurrency.

The other problem for all anonymous coins is that neither I2P nor Tor are reliable anonymity against a national security agency. And the nations are compiling these records to compile future tax and criminal cases against you.

(yes of course I have solutions to all of these weaknesses)