Is it true that Vanillacoin uses the BTC code?

[Este Nuno]

Oh, he'll want to fix some of the inherited bugs

"built from scratch in it's entirety"

Scammer: confirmed.

Time for a 'Blowing the lid off Vanillacoin' thread?

Also, I just re-read the OP and gmaxwell mentioned it being run through an auto-formatter rather than actually refactored by hand, which seems like even more deliberate deception to me. Not sure if that part is true though.

[r0ach]

I don't know if this coin is legit or not (probably not), but I always find it ironic when a bunch of "crypto anarchists" are constantly talking about things like copyrights when things like copyrights and patents can't exist without a police state to enforce them.  You have one foot in each ideology at the same time.  It makes zero sense to me.

I don't care if his code comments all say "fuck you I pirated all this shit" as long as it actually works.  Again, if it works is another subject entirely.

[smooth]

I don't know if this coin is legit or not (probably not), but I always find it ironic when a bunch of "crypto anarchists" are constantly talking about things like copyrights when things like copyrights and patents can't exist without a police state to enforce them.  You have one foot in each ideology at the same time.  It makes zero sense to me.

I don't really give a shit about the copyrights tbh. I do care about the misrepresentation. You don't say "built from scratch in its entirety" when you are ripping off code, bugs and all.

We can certainly call out scumbag behavior when we see it, state or no state.

[rnicoll]

I don't know if this coin is legit or not (probably not), but I always find it ironic when a bunch of "crypto anarchists" are constantly talking about things like copyrights when things like copyrights and patents can't exist without a police state to enforce them.  You have one foot in each ideology at the same time.  It makes zero sense to me.

I don't really give a shit about the copyrights tbh. I do care about the misrepresentation. You don't say "built from scratch in its entirety" when you are ripping off code, bugs and all.

We can certainly call out scumbag behavior when we see it, state or no state.

Similar; Dogecoin is ~95% other people's work, but we make no claims otherwise, and work is attributed to the relevant authors. If he'd said "I've made a new coin based on the Bitcoin code, refactored it how I want it to work, and replaced much of the networking layer, attributions are left in as-is" there'd be no problem.

Edit: Keep in mind Bitcoin Core is under the MIT license, which is essentially "Anything but remove attribution"; he could sell it and that would be fine, the only thing you can't do is pass it off as your own work.

[blobafett2]

Copyright (c) 2009-2015 The Bitcoin Core developers

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.


From Bitcoin^.
I'd call it copyright infringement.

It is copyright infringement.

It is also fraud to claim that you wrote all the code yourself when you did not.

Hi VNL community,

I did a tally of Smooth's attacks on his competitors today and notice him attacking VNL.

Attacking his competitors:

Dash thread: 26 posts (competing with the anon feature)
Vanilla threads: 20 posts (competing for Poloniex volume)
Bytecoin thread: 4 posts (competing "Anon coin")

Posting on his own threads:

AEON: 3 posts
Monero: 0 posts

Smooth's competitors attacking his coins on their threads:

Dash devs: 0 posts
Vanilla devs: 0 posts
Bytecoin devs: 0 posts

I made a thread to investigate Smooth after months of attacking his competitors and also attempting / succeeding to take over his competitors as developer,  please feel free to vote whether you think his actions are ethical / professional / not in conflict of interest.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151565.0

The only competitors to Monero are Shadowcash and Boolberry.

This isn't an attack on a competitor, it's bringing bad behavior into the light.

VLN is one of the major competitors for Monero volume on Poloniex, which is 98% of Monero's global volume (excluding HitBTC's 8%)

https://i.imgur.com/TrJ5p1g.png

In my experience with Smooth, you need to think outside the box.  He tends to only go where the money is and not waste his time if he doesn't see some $ at the end of the rainbow.

Maybe that's why, at the same time VNL becomes a significant volume coin on Poloniex, you suddenly have Smooth, AmericanPugasus, GeneralizeThis, and so many other Monero dev's / "enthusiasts" going around attacking VNL right now?

Yesterday, this was his attack profile.

Example Day of forum attacks by Smooth (today, 12th Aug 2015)

Attacking his competitors:

Dash thread: 28 posts (competing with the anon feature)
Vanilla threads: 20 posts (competing for Poloniex volume)
Bytecoin thread: 4 posts (competing "Anon coin")

Posting on his own threads:

AEON: 3 posts
Monero: 0 posts

Smooth's competitors attacking his coins on any threads:

Dash devs: 0 posts
Vanilla devs: 0 posts
Bytecoin devs: 0 posts

If you factor in his gang that follow him around and "help expose scams", we are talking 100s of posts a day attacking any coin in a competitive space, or even sharing a position as a high volume coin on Poloniex.

That's why i'm investigating Smooth, so people can do their own research: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1151565.0

[Este Nuno]

...

VNC started getting some decent volume so it became another topic of discussion in this forum. If you look at this thread for example OP posed an interesting question and many people such as myself are curious as to what the answer is.

It's not really a coincidence that threads that uncover things and put developer claims in to question are popular posts. The important thing in my opinion is just whether or not the truth comes out. I don't pay any attention to Dash at all, but I do know Bytecoin is a total scam, and now it seems like Vanillacoin has some serious issues with claims made by the dev. So I don't see anything wrong with someone posting in threads where there's probably some shady things happening. That's just what we're supposed to do as a community, try to separate the good from the bad.

[rnicoll]

...

Is anything we're saying wrong, or merely inconvenient to your worldview?

[blobafett2]

...

Is anything we're saying wrong, or merely inconvenient to your worldview?

I'm sure 50% of the people here are genuinely concerned about VNL's credibility, which is not something I know much about.

What I am saying, is if you click on page one and look for Smooth, then the trail of his usual suspects like generalize, americanpegasus, that 50% of the posts is from people with a history of spending the bulk of their time spamming the threads of coins that represent some threat to Smooth's main coin, whenever the target coin's price or volume looks like it might be stoping some BTC flowing to their investment.  

And they have done this thousands of times, for months.  

The timing, repetition, and always the connection where there is a financial incentive, makes me suspect that they are not 'just here to out of honest concern', if you get what I mean.  

No disrespect to this conversation - and if i'm right, then it would be a better conversation, without people with a hidden agenda / vested interest in seeing this particular coin lose volume / value giving biased and divisive arguments that benefit them before the people they are claiming to be here to protect.

[nextgencoin]

One thing I'm hating a lot recently is passive FUD. Kind of sounding like you support a coin and then kind of throw out random bits of FUD as you do. Personally I can't see anything suspicious AT ALL from John Conner and in fact he has put effort to call out scammers. This kind of fake cautiousness is really just another form of FUD.




Where are all the people that said JC couldn't do zero time safely now?

[smooth]

...

Is anything we're saying wrong, or merely inconvenient to your worldview?

I'm sure 50% of the people here are genuinely concerned about VNL's credibility, which is not something I know much about.

What I am saying, is if you click on page one and look for Smooth, then the trail of his usual suspects like generalize, americanpegasus, that 50% of the posts is from people with a history of spending the bulk of their time spamming the threads of coins that represent some threat to Smooth's main coin, whenever the target coin's price or volume looks like it might be stoping some BTC flowing to their investment.  

And they have done this thousands of times, for months.  

The timing, repetition, and always the connection where there is a financial incentive, makes me suspect that they are not 'just here to out of honest concern', if you get what I mean.  

No disrespect to this conversation - and if i'm right, then it would be a better conversation, without people with a hidden agenda / vested interest in seeing this particular coin lose volume / value giving biased and divisive arguments that benefit them before the people they are claiming to be here to protect.

It's funny cause if you look at blobafett2 following me around like a stalker (no wait, he is a stalker), you see someone who claims to be concerned about "a better conversation" but in reality is attempting to harass me in retaliation for shining a bright light on his favorite scamcoin, Dash, for their fraudulent instamine.

I suggest everyone ignore the drama queen and disingenuous (and ironic) finger pointing about motives, and instead pay attention to the substance (stealing Bitcoin code and misrepresenting it in this case).

[blobafett2]

...

Is anything we're saying wrong, or merely inconvenient to your worldview?

I'm sure 50% of the people here are genuinely concerned about VNL's credibility, which is not something I know much about.

What I am saying, is if you click on page one and look for Smooth, then the trail of his usual suspects like generalize, americanpegasus, that 50% of the posts is from people with a history of spending the bulk of their time spamming the threads of coins that represent some threat to Smooth's main coin, whenever the target coin's price or volume looks like it might be stoping some BTC flowing to their investment.  

And they have done this thousands of times, for months.  

The timing, repetition, and always the connection where there is a financial incentive, makes me suspect that they are not 'just here to out of honest concern', if you get what I mean.  

No disrespect to this conversation - and if i'm right, then it would be a better conversation, without people with a hidden agenda / vested interest in seeing this particular coin lose volume / value giving biased and divisive arguments that benefit them before the people they are claiming to be here to protect.

It's funny cause if you look at blobafett2 following me around like a stalker (no wait, he is a stalker), you see someone who claims to be concerned about "a better conversation" but in reality is attempting to harass me in retaliation for shining a bright light on his favorite scamcoin, Dash, for their fraudulent instamine.

I suggest everyone ignore the drama queen and disingenuous (and ironic) finger pointing about motives, and instead pay attention to the substance (stealing Bitcoin code and misrepresenting it in this case).

As you know Smooth, I just started an investigation because of the level of your harrasment of you coming into other coins threads and dumping thousands of posts over months about how they are scams, including the maybe 15 anti-Dash threads not to mention your ~30 spam posts on the main Dash thread yesterday.  

I suppose by just turning that upside down in a post and pretending it's me spamming all your threads for months with 1000s of posts, people who don't do 2 seconds research might believe you. Your post history and reality says otherwise. That's really scraping the bottom of the barrel, even for you lol.

[smooth]

...

Is anything we're saying wrong, or merely inconvenient to your worldview?

I'm sure 50% of the people here are genuinely concerned about VNL's credibility, which is not something I know much about.

What I am saying, is if you click on page one and look for Smooth, then the trail of his usual suspects like generalize, americanpegasus, that 50% of the posts is from people with a history of spending the bulk of their time spamming the threads of coins that represent some threat to Smooth's main coin, whenever the target coin's price or volume looks like it might be stoping some BTC flowing to their investment. 

And they have done this thousands of times, for months. 

The timing, repetition, and always the connection where there is a financial incentive, makes me suspect that they are not 'just here to out of honest concern', if you get what I mean. 

No disrespect to this conversation - and if i'm right, then it would be a better conversation, without people with a hidden agenda / vested interest in seeing this particular coin lose volume / value giving biased and divisive arguments that benefit them before the people they are claiming to be here to protect.

It's funny cause if you look at blobafett2 following me around like a stalker (no wait, he is a stalker), you see someone who claims to be concerned about "a better conversation" but in reality is attempting to harass me in retaliation for shining a bright light on his favorite scamcoin, Dash, for their fraudulent instamine.

I suggest everyone ignore the drama queen and disingenuous (and ironic) finger pointing about motives, and instead pay attention to the substance (stealing Bitcoin code and misrepresenting it in this case).

As you know Smooth, I just started an investigation because of the level of your harrasment of you coming into other coins threads and dumping thousands of posts over months about how they are scams

I have never accused a coin of being a scam that is not a scam, and all of my posts are on topic on their relevant threads, whether you happen to like the content or not. That upsets you because you are supporter of Dash and its fraudulent instamine, which you would prefer buried and never discussed, with Dash supporters free to rewrite history unchallenged. Okay, but at least keep that disagreement on topic in the relevant threads and cut out following me around staking and concern trolling on every single other unrelated thread where I post.

This entire conversation you have initiated here about your vendetta against me is 100% off topic for VNL being plagiarized from Bitcoin. Cut it out.

[blobafett2]

...

Is anything we're saying wrong, or merely inconvenient to your worldview?

I'm sure 50% of the people here are genuinely concerned about VNL's credibility, which is not something I know much about.

What I am saying, is if you click on page one and look for Smooth, then the trail of his usual suspects like generalize, americanpegasus, that 50% of the posts is from people with a history of spending the bulk of their time spamming the threads of coins that represent some threat to Smooth's main coin, whenever the target coin's price or volume looks like it might be stoping some BTC flowing to their investment. 

And they have done this thousands of times, for months. 

The timing, repetition, and always the connection where there is a financial incentive, makes me suspect that they are not 'just here to out of honest concern', if you get what I mean. 

No disrespect to this conversation - and if i'm right, then it would be a better conversation, without people with a hidden agenda / vested interest in seeing this particular coin lose volume / value giving biased and divisive arguments that benefit them before the people they are claiming to be here to protect.

It's funny cause if you look at blobafett2 following me around like a stalker (no wait, he is a stalker), you see someone who claims to be concerned about "a better conversation" but in reality is attempting to harass me in retaliation for shining a bright light on his favorite scamcoin, Dash, for their fraudulent instamine.

I suggest everyone ignore the drama queen and disingenuous (and ironic) finger pointing about motives, and instead pay attention to the substance (stealing Bitcoin code and misrepresenting it in this case).

As you know Smooth, I just started an investigation because of the level of your harrasment of you coming into other coins threads and dumping thousands of posts over months about how they are scams

I have never accused a coin of being a scam that is not a scam, and all of my posts are on topic on their relevant threads, whether you happen to like the content or not. That upsets you because you are supporter of Dash and its fraudulent instamine, which you would prefer buried and never discussed, with Dash supporters free to rewrite history unchallenged. Okay, but at least keep that disagreement on topic in the relevant threads and cut out following me around staking and concern trolling on every single other unrelated thread where I post.

This entire conversation you have initiated here about your vendetta against me is 100% off topic for VNL being plagiarized from Bitcoin. Cut it out.

"I have never accused a coin of being a scam that is not a scam, and all of my posts are on topic on their relevant threads" - sure that's what you say, it's just no one believes you (ok technically 21 users on BCT do, although I guess that's about full extent of your attack crew from looking at your post history).

Apologies everyone for any disruption to this conversation...Smooth if you want to discuss further, let's use the correct thread.

[spatula]

...

Is anything we're saying wrong, or merely inconvenient to your worldview?

I'm sure 50% of the people here are genuinely concerned about VNL's credibility, which is not something I know much about.

What I am saying, is if you click on page one and look for Smooth, then the trail of his usual suspects like generalize, americanpegasus, that 50% of the posts is from people with a history of spending the bulk of their time spamming the threads of coins that represent some threat to Smooth's main coin, whenever the target coin's price or volume looks like it might be stoping some BTC flowing to their investment.  

And they have done this thousands of times, for months.  

The timing, repetition, and always the connection where there is a financial incentive, makes me suspect that they are not 'just here to out of honest concern', if you get what I mean.  

No disrespect to this conversation - and if i'm right, then it would be a better conversation, without people with a hidden agenda / vested interest in seeing this particular coin lose volume / value giving biased and divisive arguments that benefit them before the people they are claiming to be here to protect.

It's funny cause if you look at blobafett2 following me around like a stalker (no wait, he is a stalker), you see someone who claims to be concerned about "a better conversation" but in reality is attempting to harass me in retaliation for shining a bright light on his favorite scamcoin, Dash, for their fraudulent instamine.

I suggest everyone ignore the drama queen and disingenuous (and ironic) finger pointing about motives, and instead pay attention to the substance (stealing Bitcoin code and misrepresenting it in this case).

As you know Smooth, I just started an investigation because of the level of your harrasment of you coming into other coins threads and dumping thousands of posts over months about how they are scams

.....concern trolling......Cut it out.......

The king of "concern trolling" is getting tired of someone "concern trolling" him? lol

What would we do without smooth to save us from all these scams! Like monero, where it was released with an intentional scam miner (100x de-optimized) to the public so the Devs could profit even more. My hero *swoon*

[iCEBREAKER]

Code theft confirmed:

Comparing a sample piece of code it is clear that at least some of it is based on Bitcoin code:

From vanillacoin - https://github.com/john-connor/vanillacoin/blob/master/src/address_manager.cpp#L1315

Code:

     * Try to find an entry that can be erased.
     */
    for (auto it = bucket_new.begin(); it != bucket_new.end(); ++it)
    {
        assert(address_info_map_.count(*it));
        
        auto & info = address_info_map_[*it];
        
        if (info.is_terrible())
        {
            if (--info.reference_count == 0)
            {
                std::lock_guard<std::recursive_mutex> l1(mutex_random_ids_);
                
                swap_random(
                    info.random_position,
                    static_cast<std::uint32_t> (random_ids_.size() - 1)
                );
                
                random_ids_.pop_back();
                network_address_map_.erase(info.addr);
                address_info_map_.erase(*it);
                number_new_--;
            }
            
            bucket_new.erase(it);
            
            return;

From Bitcoin 0.9.2 in addrman.cpp:

Code:

    // first look for deletable items
    for (std::set<int>::iterator it = vNew.begin(); it != vNew.end(); it++)
    {
        assert(mapInfo.count(*it));
        CAddrInfo &info = mapInfo[*it];
        if (info.IsTerrible())
        {
            if (--info.nRefCount == 0)
            {
                SwapRandom(info.nRandomPos, vRandom.size()-1);
                vRandom.pop_back();
                mapAddr.erase(info);
                mapInfo.erase(*it);
                nNew--;
            }
            vNew.erase(it);
            return 0;
        }
    }

The above code from vanillacoin is based on bitcoin, albeit renamed, refactored, reformatted and re-commented at almost every possible occasion.

The algorithm is the same line by line and even the esoteric identifier name "IsTerrible"/"is_terrible" is used in both.

My guess is John started with a old bitcoin code base and refactored, renamed and recommented the code to a huge degree.

#R3KT

[gjhiggins]

Define "uses". There's certainly structural similarities:

https://github.com/john-connor/vanillacoin/blob/master/src/key.cpp vs
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/0.9/src/key.cpp#L16

Thanks for that.

Adding “#L34” to the vnl URI nails it for me:

Code:

int EC_KEY_regenerate_key(EC_KEY * eckey, BIGNUM * priv_key)
{
    int ok = 0;
    
    BN_CTX * ctx = 0;
    EC_POINT * pub_key = 0;

    if (eckey == 0)
    {
        return 0;
    }
    
    const EC_GROUP * group = EC_KEY_get0_group(eckey);

    if ((ctx = BN_CTX_new()) == 0)
    {
        goto err;
    }
    
    pub_key = EC_POINT_new(group);

    if (pub_key == 0)
    {
        goto err;
    }

Code:

int EC_KEY_regenerate_key(EC_KEY *eckey, BIGNUM *priv_key)
{
    int ok = 0;
    BN_CTX *ctx = NULL;
    EC_POINT *pub_key = NULL;

    if (!eckey) return 0;

    const EC_GROUP *group = EC_KEY_get0_group(eckey);

    if ((ctx = BN_CTX_new()) == NULL)
        goto err;

    pub_key = EC_POINT_new(group);

    if (pub_key == NULL)
        goto err;

That's a lot more than just a structural similarity.

It’s hard for me to see this as anything other than incontrovertible evidence of the author having a naively self-centred perspective on intellectual property rights, broadly translatable as “what’s yours is mine and what’s mine’s my own”.

More tellingly, it's also hard to reconcile this evident difficulty in critical thinking with any kind of work in the area of cryptography, notorious for its relentlessly stern demands of cognitive sophistication in its proponents.

Stand back a few yards and the picture becomes somewhat clearer. I've not even bothered looking at vnl, being confident that it’s just another variant of the “misunderstood but brilliant maverick outsider, wronged by a complacent community” media narrative and all the posturing is entirely consistent, even the expedient arrogation of others’ work. Given the evidence in the codebase, I'm reassured that my confidence is not misplaced, although I do have to admit that his choice of pseudonym is a bit of a give-away in and of itself.


Cheers

Graham

[doremi]

this guy just have the most appropriate's explanation of this topic so far 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=977245.msg12488436#msg12488436

Cheers!

[iCEBREAKER]

Define "uses". There's certainly structural similarities:

https://github.com/john-connor/vanillacoin/blob/master/src/key.cpp vs
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/0.9/src/key.cpp#L16

Thanks for that.

Adding “#L34” to the vnl URI nails it for me:

Code:

{code}

That's a lot more than just a structural similarity.

It’s hard for me to see this as anything other than incontrovertible evidence of the author having a naively self-centred perspective on intellectual property rights, broadly translatable as “what’s yours is mine and what’s mine’s my own”.

More tellingly, it's also hard to reconcile this evident difficulty in critical thinking with any kind of work in the area of cryptography, notorious for its relentlessly stern demands of cognitive sophistication in its proponents.

Stand back a few yards and the picture becomes somewhat clearer. I've not even bothered looking at vnl, being confident that it’s just another variant of the “misunderstood but brilliant maverick outsider, wronged by a complacent community” media narrative and all the posturing is entirely consistent, even the expedient arrogation of others’ work. Given the evidence in the codebase, I'm reassured that my confidence is not misplaced, although I do have to admit that his choice of pseudonym is a bit of a give-away in and of itself.


Cheers

Graham

Wow, that evidence is damning.  Well done.

VNL scam confirmed.

[vanillagalaxy]

iCEBREAKER is/was a liar confirmed

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1189125.msg12507853#msg12507853

[john-connor]

Smooth aka iCEBREAKER: This code is from the OpenSSL project from ecdhtest.c:

Code:

static EC_KEY *mk_eckey(int nid, const unsigned char *p, size_t plen)
{
    int ok = 0;
    EC_KEY *k = NULL;
    BIGNUM *priv = NULL;
    EC_POINT *pub = NULL;
    const EC_GROUP *grp;
    k = EC_KEY_new_by_curve_name(nid);
    if (!k)
        goto err;
    priv = BN_bin2bn(p, plen, NULL);
    if (!priv)
        goto err;
    if (!EC_KEY_set_private_key(k, priv))
        goto err;
    grp = EC_KEY_get0_group(k);
    pub = EC_POINT_new(grp);
    if (!pub)
        goto err;
    if (!EC_POINT_mul(grp, pub, priv, NULL, NULL, NULL))
        goto err;
    if (!EC_KEY_set_public_key(k, pub))
        goto err;
    ok = 1;
 err:
    if (priv)
        BN_clear_free(priv);
    if (pub)
        EC_POINT_free(pub);
    if (ok)
        return k;
    else if (k)
        EC_KEY_free(k);
    return NULL;
}

I agree, Bitcoin should not steal.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1189125.msg12507853#msg12507853

Thank you for your support.