XMR/AEON Developer Smooth Investigation

[smooth]

He's not even right about the number of my commits, because the github search is broken and he was told this the last time he went on one of his butthurt trolling fits against me.

Never mind though. We now return to your regularly scheduled troll thread.

[1713560600]

1713560600

[1713560600]

1713560600

[1713560600]

1713560600

[1713560600]

1713560600

[blobafett2]

...
I'm sure he'll be crushed. But it stands that your 1000 commit statement was wrong--misread or blatant overstatement for effect? It's anyone's guess. I'm guessing your brain doesn't know what it's doing.

No, you misunderstood - when I said "your 1000 commits" I meant Smooth's project, Monero - obviously I am not claiming he did 1000 commits, when I just cataloged all 9 that he did do since the project started.

[blobafett2]

It's becoming kind of ridiculous to call Smooth a "Monero dev" at this stage, I don't think I can honestly say that anymore.

He told you upthread that he has contributed mental effort on design, white papers, etc.. I know personally he was the developer who interfaced with me during the BCX incident and he and I discussed potential means to unmask anonymity.

I think the only potential valid complaint you had is letting him know you don't appreciate the frequency of his posting in other coins' threads, and asking him to explain his intentions with AEON. That doesn't mean you are correct, but you have a reasonable SUBJECTIVE point to make there that apparently some voters agree with. He has also has the right to express his opinion as much as he wants and absorb the political repercussions.

But if you ignore what he already said, it starts to look like you want to do a hatchet job on him and taking irrational revenge.

You won't be able to turn the entire community against smooth if that is your objective. You can express your opinion. Personally I am not willing to take the political heat that smooth is. I am a developer more than I am a martyr.

Personally I don't think that someone who changes 30 lines of code can call himself a dev, yet he is presented as a Monero dev, and is even using that cache to build up Aeon, a coin he owns a large % of and that is competing with the coin he has been "developing" for the last year.   As to what you think is valid or not, that's entirely up to you, please read the OP first though and then vote in the poll and you can see what the BCT community thinks too.

[generalizethis]

...
I'm sure he'll be crushed. But it stands that your 1000 commit statement was wrong--misread or blatant overstatement for effect? It's anyone's guess. I'm guessing your brain doesn't know what it's doing.

No, you misunderstood - when I said "your 1000 commits" I meant Smooth's project, Monero - obviously I am not claiming he did 1000 commits, when I just cataloged all 9 that he did do since the project started.

Reread and you'll see that it sounds like you're implying that he lied about the 1000 commits, and after your github research  , found out that he was misleading us and only has 9 commits. Changing you have to monero has would do a great do to clear up your meaning.

Sorry for asking this, but could somebody tell me
What are real "inventions/software inventions" in XMR and/or AEON? Or are they just a copy of some other coinbase.
Because real coders know how things work and not just code a new GUI or something like that, they make the code better, improve and develope new things.

This is veering off topic and I'm going to respect that even on this troll thread, but in short Monero has done an enormous amount of work to improve the code. I think fluffypony posted that something like 100K lines of code had been added or rewritten (I don't know the exact numbers). I know there have been >1000 commits in the main repo (and unlike the repos such as bitcoin forks, this does not include upstream commits -- that's 1000 actual Monero commits) plus the repos. Monero has also produced four MRL research reports, plus a few other mathy documents.

AEON is a much smaller and newer project in practical terms, as we've only been working on it for a few months with me as the only coder, part-time (we also have another team member but he is not a coder), I'm the only coder. In that time, there is a modified proof of work algorithm and slower block time (with a hard fork implemented to change these with zero observed disruption of the network), better connection management in the p2p, portability cleanups for low end hardware (some of these are from Monero, others will be pulled back up to Monero), some optimizations of speed and storage. AEON also addressed, in a novel way, the anonymity problems revealed by MRL-0001. In fact AEON likely has the strongest deployed anonymity of any coin today (aside from the important fact of not having much use which makes the anonymity sets small), though eventually Monero will get there too.

Better to follow up on the Monero/AEON threads please if you wan more detail.

Of these 1000 commits, 9 were Smooth, if you're interested they break down like this:

https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/commits?author=iamsmooth

Nov 9, 2014 Change 6 lines of codes, temporary bug fix
Nov 11, 2014 Commented out 2 lines of code
March 5, 2015 4 lines to change a variable and add IF statement
March 5, 2015 Added 4 lines of code, in the form of a comment
March 6, 2015 Added one line of code (a checkpoint)
March 10, 2015 Changing a default value and an IF statement, 6 lines of code
Apr 5, 2015 4 lines of code and a comment
Apr 5, 2015 2 lines of code to handle a rounding
Apr 14, 2015 Remove a define, 1 line changed

Also Smooth, just saying you have 1000 commits is a bit vague - looking at your work, that doesn't necessarily mean new features were created, nearly all your work for Monero was changing a few comments, disabling or enabling something, changing a variable name - how is that "rewriting" anything or adding lots of new code?

He said "> 1000 commits" and never said they were his--as he was answering a question about Monero and not himself. I guess you are used to "one Dev to rule them all"  in dashland.

I know which commits are Smooth's because I just posted them above for you - and it's mainly commenting / uncommenting or removing a variable and putting it back.  I think he did like 2 small IF statements, which personally after reading them all, was the highlight of his entire Monero development career:

 if (base_reward < FINAL_SUBSIDY_PER_MINUTE)
+ {
+ base_reward = FINAL_SUBSIDY_PER_MINUTE;
+ }

https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/commit/754a785ee15915c4d8d81dbd55d7005e07c6407e.

It's becoming kind of ridiculous to call Smooth a "Monero dev" at this stage, I don't think I can honestly say that anymore.

I'm sure he'll be crushed. But it stands that your 1000 commit statement was wrong--misread or blatant overstatement for effect? It's anyone's guess. I'm guessing your brain doesn't know what it's doing.

[blobafett2]

Learn to write what you mean. Reread and you'll see that it sounds like you're implying that he lied about the 1000 commits, and after your github research  , found out that he was misleading us and only has 9 commits.

Not really interested in nit-picking over semantics Generalize, if you don't think my English is good then that's up to you.  If you're upset because you didn't understand something, I already explained how it's riculous that I meant to suggest Smooth did a thousand commits of anything in Github, i'm saying totally the opposite.

[minersday]

Sorry for asking this, but could somebody tell me
What are real "inventions/software inventions" in XMR and/or AEON? Or are they just a copy of some other coinbase.
Because real coders know how things work and not just code a new GUI or something like that, they make the code better, improve and develope new things.

This is veering off topic and I'm going to respect that even on this troll thread, but in short Monero has done an enormous amount of work to improve the code. I think fluffypony posted that something like 100K lines of code had been added or rewritten (I don't know the exact numbers). I know there have been >1000 commits in the main repo (and unlike the repos such as bitcoin forks, this does not include upstream commits -- that's 1000 actual Monero commits) plus the repos. Monero has also produced four MRL research reports, plus a few other mathy documents.

AEON is a much smaller and newer project in practical terms, as we've only been working on it for a few months with me as the only coder, part-time (we also have another team member but he is not a coder), I'm the only coder. In that time, there is a modified proof of work algorithm and slower block time (with a hard fork implemented to change these with zero observed disruption of the network), better connection management in the p2p, portability cleanups for low end hardware (some of these are from Monero, others will be pulled back up to Monero), some optimizations of speed and storage. AEON also addressed, in a novel way, the anonymity problems revealed by MRL-0001. In fact AEON likely has the strongest deployed anonymity of any coin today (aside from the important fact of not having much use which makes the anonymity sets small), though eventually Monero will get there too.

Better to follow up on the Monero/AEON threads please if you wan more detail.

I would not mention these as improvements, every other coin does this, modifies the POW algo, diff algo etc, slower/faster block and of course hardfork which is just one if,elseif,else clause and that's when there are several forks.. But I'm not sure about the rest, usually these "developers" copies the code from another coins... Would love to see a diff from these sections compared to all of the known coins source codes and see if there are really innovations or just copied code. So a run in the plagiarism machine would reveal this, But I cannot say more... Hopefully they are real improvents in the code..

But basically I understood that AEON is a proving ground for Monero.

[generalizethis]

Learn to write what you mean. Reread and you'll see that it sounds like you're implying that he lied about the 1000 commits, and after your github research  , found out that he was misleading us and only has 9 commits.

Not really interested in nit-picking over semantics Generalize, if you don't think my English is good then that's up to you.  If you're upset because you didn't understand something, I already explained how it's riculous that I meant to suggest Smooth did a thousand commits of anything in Github, i'm saying totally the opposite.

I added a grammar correction to my above post--you might learn something about how to pin-down your correct meaning. If you give me a 50/50 reading with a dasher, I'm going to guess misleading or false every time--the apple doesn't fall far from the Dev. 

[smooth]

Sorry for asking this, but could somebody tell me
What are real "inventions/software inventions" in XMR and/or AEON? Or are they just a copy of some other coinbase.
Because real coders know how things work and not just code a new GUI or something like that, they make the code better, improve and develope new things.

This is veering off topic and I'm going to respect that even on this troll thread, but in short Monero has done an enormous amount of work to improve the code. I think fluffypony posted that something like 100K lines of code had been added or rewritten (I don't know the exact numbers). I know there have been >1000 commits in the main repo (and unlike the repos such as bitcoin forks, this does not include upstream commits -- that's 1000 actual Monero commits) plus the repos. Monero has also produced four MRL research reports, plus a few other mathy documents.

AEON is a much smaller and newer project in practical terms, as we've only been working on it for a few months with me as the only coder, part-time (we also have another team member but he is not a coder), I'm the only coder. In that time, there is a modified proof of work algorithm and slower block time (with a hard fork implemented to change these with zero observed disruption of the network), better connection management in the p2p, portability cleanups for low end hardware (some of these are from Monero, others will be pulled back up to Monero), some optimizations of speed and storage. AEON also addressed, in a novel way, the anonymity problems revealed by MRL-0001. In fact AEON likely has the strongest deployed anonymity of any coin today (aside from the important fact of not having much use which makes the anonymity sets small), though eventually Monero will get there too.

Better to follow up on the Monero/AEON threads please if you wan more detail.

Smooth wouldn't be on point if you decided to share with us your personal motivation for taking on AEON (given you've been accused of doing it just to capture microcap vs. small cap growth rate advantage)? If you feel that is your private affairs, then my apologies in advance. No obligation to share that. Personally I am curious to know. Are you experimenting with new tech? Scratching your coding itch? Or what? Perhaps you've already stated it else where but I don't have time to search for it.

Here are some comments I have written on the rule and purpose of AEON, as well as the history and management of its donation fund. I'm pretty sure there is also a related post on bitcointalk but I couldn't find it so I'll add that if I come across it later.

Q (coretroll): It seems like a conflict of interest, unless AEON will target a distinct niche (such as running a node on a smartphone) for which Monero would not be suitable. On the other hand, having another trustworthy, fairly-launched cryptonote coin may serve as a hedge against certain kinds of failure, much as litecoin can serve as hedge for bitcoin.
 
A (smooth): AEON is certainly targeting running a node on a smartphone, but I don't think it is possible to completely rule out Monero (someday) doing that too.
As answered above by others the idea is to do experimental and perhaps even stupid things. Some of them may be adopted by Monero in time, others may not.
Also, as I said earlier in Monero's history when the clones were first appearing, what makes a coin stronger is defeating clones. (I reject the idea of expecting to stop cloning by trash talking clones or cloning, as Adam for example tries to do.) Every coin so defeated serves as credible evidence that the community, process, and technology of the original is sufficiently fit.
So you can think of AEON as a sparring partner to keep Monero healthy and strong.

Q (americanpegasus): If I see this, I will report on it. For my money, I am still supporting Monero.
I personally feel that anyone holding 400k of a future-minded currency, especially a dev, could be considered a little excessive (that's over 2% of a currency.... akin to a small premine).
I would say I would have felt more comfortable with smooth outright taking a 3%-5% premine, but I'm not too worried.
Monero remains the first viable implementation of cryptonote, giving it true anonymity, and that along with continuing development is what we have to go off of. Bitcoin was the first viable implementation of a transparent blockchain and litecoin didn't suddenly dethrone it, did it?
I feel the situation is the same and am not currently concerned.

A (smooth): Yes I'm technically holding the 400k donation fund, but:
It was voluntarily donated by coin holders who felt it was a good idea to fund development, there was no premine setup or other manipulation on my part. All I did was create a fund and ask people to donate to it. They felt it was a good use for their coins. The fund continues to be open for any and all voluntary donations, just as with the equivalent Monero donation fund. How is that in any way a bad thing?
I've already stated that all members of the development team, including me, will be subject to some sort of vesting rule (with details tbd, but the intent is a period of years). Which is to say that if I quit the project before that time, I won't keep the coins, I will either burn them or pass them on to the new developer.
At this point the coins, other than a small minority used for bounties and such, are just being held in safekeeping pending decisions on what to do with them.
Responding to the parent post, the two coins do not have the same features. As of next week, AEON has a different proof-of-work, and a slower block time. There will be additional differences soon thereafter. As I said elsewhere I have no objection to any and all features being ported back upstream, and I'd even do the work if they are features the Monero community wants.
Finally, no one is "heavy" into AEON. The total market cap (based on OTC) is something like 100K XMR or 60K USD (and the donation fund is maybe 8K XMR or 4.8K USD). People making a big deal about any of this are being hyperbolic or deliberately trolling.

[blobafett2]

Learn to write what you mean. Reread and you'll see that it sounds like you're implying that he lied about the 1000 commits, and after your github research  , found out that he was misleading us and only has 9 commits.

Not really interested in nit-picking over semantics Generalize, if you don't think my English is good then that's up to you.  If you're upset because you didn't understand something, I already explained how it's riculous that I meant to suggest Smooth did a thousand commits of anything in Github, i'm saying totally the opposite.

I added a grammar correction to my above post--you might learn something about how to pin-down your correct meaning. If you give me a 50/50 reading with a dasher, I'm going to guess misleading or false every time--the apple doesn't fall far from the Dev. 

I will try to improve my English, just for you Generalize 

[smooth]

So a run in the plagiarism machine would reveal this

You do not need a plagiarism machine. All changes are transparent in github, and committed as individual work items (not mega-commits). There has been no reformatting, no stripping out of upstream copyright notices, etc.

[smooth]

Sorry for asking this, but could somebody tell me
What are real "inventions/software inventions" in XMR and/or AEON? Or are they just a copy of some other coinbase.
Because real coders know how things work and not just code a new GUI or something like that, they make the code better, improve and develope new things.

This is veering off topic and I'm going to respect that even on this troll thread, but in short Monero has done an enormous amount of work to improve the code. I think fluffypony posted that something like 100K lines of code had been added or rewritten (I don't know the exact numbers). I know there have been >1000 commits in the main repo (and unlike the repos such as bitcoin forks, this does not include upstream commits -- that's 1000 actual Monero commits) plus the repos. Monero has also produced four MRL research reports, plus a few other mathy documents.

AEON is a much smaller and newer project in practical terms, as we've only been working on it for a few months with me as the only coder, part-time (we also have another team member but he is not a coder), I'm the only coder. In that time, there is a modified proof of work algorithm and slower block time (with a hard fork implemented to change these with zero observed disruption of the network), better connection management in the p2p, portability cleanups for low end hardware (some of these are from Monero, others will be pulled back up to Monero), some optimizations of speed and storage. AEON also addressed, in a novel way, the anonymity problems revealed by MRL-0001. In fact AEON likely has the strongest deployed anonymity of any coin today (aside from the important fact of not having much use which makes the anonymity sets small), though eventually Monero will get there too.

Better to follow up on the Monero/AEON threads please if you wan more detail.

Of these 1000 commits, 9 were Smooth, if you're interested they break down like this:

https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/commits?author=iamsmooth

Nov 9, 2014 Change 6 lines of codes, temporary bug fix
Nov 11, 2014 Commented out 2 lines of code
March 5, 2015 4 lines to change a variable and add IF statement
March 5, 2015 Added 4 lines of code, in the form of a comment
March 6, 2015 Added one line of code (a checkpoint)
March 10, 2015 Changing a default value and an IF statement, 6 lines of code
Apr 5, 2015 4 lines of code and a comment
Apr 5, 2015 2 lines of code to handle a rounding
Apr 14, 2015 Remove a define, 1 line changed

Also Smooth, just saying you have 1000 commits is a bit vague - looking at your work, that doesn't necessarily mean new features were created, nearly all your work for Monero was changing a few comments, disabling or enabling something, changing a variable name - how is that "rewriting" anything or adding lots of new code?

As others have pointed out, the 1000 commits had nothing to do with my (not 9) commits.

Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you probably would not have been able to perform all of those (not 9) commits correctly, if any of them.

[TPTB_need_war]

Re: the masternode discussion on page 6 of this thread, the fundamental problem with masternodes is they are not dumb intermediaries (i.e. as in the end-to-end principle that guides the design of internet protocols) and thus they can violate expected behavior. And example is their use in 0-conf transactions:

https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/241012134

http://vanillacoin.net/papers/zerotime.pdf

While we appreciate the
InstantX[3] technology it suffers several major weaknesses in that it is a
centralized 3rd party approach vulnerable to collusion attacks, uses a 1st
generation approach to P2P network routing that yields both a limited horizon and
overall limited scalability

I have been designing a 0-conf, fully scalable consensus network that doesn't have the flaws of VNL's zerotime nor the masternode problem. One of the key epiphanies was making nodes dumb intermediaries where it is impossible for them to cheat.

[smooth]

Personally I don't think that someone who changes 30 lines of code can call himself a dev

Based on what qualifications to make such a determination?

[TPTB_need_war]

Here are some comments I have written on the rule and purpose of AEON, as well as the history and management of its donation fund. I'm pretty sure there is also a related post on bitcointalk but I couldn't find it so I'll add that if I come across it later.

Do you think the success of the donation fund is a reasonable retort to my assertions that I needed to ICO to get a coin well funded to do massive development post launch?

I would argue AEON coin holders are desperate given Monero in the distant lead and so many CN clones. So I will argue it is not an applicable comparison. Sorry that is off topic here...

[blobafett2]

Personally I don't think that someone who changes 30 lines of code can call himself a dev

Based on what qualifications to make such a determination?

Well first I think that the fact that it was I who recently found the code in MyMonero.com that was causing user's private keys to be sent to the server in a cookie, and being stored in clear text on each users hard drive - Which I found after I had been told dozens of times that "this can never happen".

You, Fluffy, or the 28 other Monero contributors apparently didn't spot that one.  And I notice no official announcement to my findings was given, meaning anyone using MyMonero since it launched is potentially compromised - or can you link me to the official followup of my findings of that gaping security hole?

Secondly, it's really up to you to explain what your 9 commits were doing.  I am positing that they are doing - nothing of any significance whatsoever - unless adding a few comments and 2 IF statements in one year, warrants you the title of [Coin X,Y,Z Core Dev], to the extent that that cache then enables you to start spinning off peripheral projects such as AEON, being able to raise 2.5% of the supply in donations, and then continuing to "develop" that coin in addition to being a "Monero core dev", 2 competing positions in complete conflict of interest, which is my whole point.

[smooth]

Personally I don't think that someone who changes 30 lines of code can call himself a dev

Based on what qualifications to make such a determination?

Well first I think that the fact that it was I who recently found the code in MyMonero that was causing user's private keys to be sent to the server in a cookie, and being stored in clear text on each users hard drive - Which I found after I had been told dozens of times that "this can never happen".

You, Fluffy, or the 28 other Monero contributors apparently didn't spot that one.  And I notice no official announcement to my findings was given, meaning anyone using MyMonero since it launched is potentially compromised - or can you link me to the official followup of my findings of that gaping security hole?

Secondly, it's really up to you to explain what your 9 commits were doing.  I am positing that they are doing - nothing of any significance whatsoever - unless adding a few comments and 2 IF statements in one year, warrants you the title of [Coin X,Y,Z Core Dev], to the extent that that cache then enables you to start spinning off peripheral projects such as AEON, being able to raise 2.5% of the supply in donations, and then continuing to "develop" that coin in addition to being a "Monero core dev", 2 competing positions in complete conflict of interest, which is my whole point.

Let's see. The last time you repetitively trolled using the same fallacious attacks, I told you this (after telling you that you were missing some of the commits, but not a huge number of them, which you are still doing, quite possibly deliberately because, hey, they smaller number you can come up with, even if knowingly incorrect, the better for trolling)

If you are looking for lots of code though, you won't find it, that's not my primary role on the project.

And fluffypony told you this:

Incidentally, the Monero Research Lab has been around for just under 8 months now. smooth has been an integral part of that, and has done everything from writing simulations to finding corner cases in theories. I did a quick grep of the Monero Research Lab IRC channel, and in those 8 months he has written 5 250 lines (of the 23 539 total lines written). Something to think about.

So how about you stop acting like you don't know things that have already been explained to you?

And finally, I explained the same just a few days ago on the Dash thread, which I'm sure you saw because my comments there are what set off this latest attack of your chronic compulsive trolling disorder.

You realize of course that I never claimed to be a major coder on the project. I'm a member of the core team, which is a volunteer direction-setting and stewardship group. Yes, I've done some coding on it, but that's never been my primary role, nor did I ever promise that it would be, especially without the project having any significant funding. As a volunteer I'm free to spend as much or as little time on it as I like (and I've spent a lot, most of which was system design and code reviews, not coding).

This whole idea that my criticism of Dash can be countered somehow by claiming I "should be coding" instead is a strawman invented by Dash defenders.

As I said before, I'm here as a member of the cryptocurrency community who is willing and able to draw a distinction between reputable and ethical projects (what few there are) and projects that have behaved in a shameful manner (of which there are many)

And then later again, in case you missed it, also noting some of the accomplishments of the project:

Well, here's the first 8 months neatly written up. We've done a lot in the past 8 months too, but not so neatly written up, you'll have to comb through github for that (though there is also some in-progress work that isn't up anywhere yet, for example on difficulty algorithm design)

https://forum.monero.cc/1/news-and-announcements/134/monday-monero-missives-22-year-in-review-january-5th-2015

In case anyone is reaching for that straw man again, I'm not claiming I coded all this or did all this work. What I claim to have done is: leadership, design, and review, a lot of time on user and merchant support, a very stressful and time consuming incident response to the exploit, and some coding here and there. All as a volunteer with no premine, instamine, ICO, etc., who not only donated his time but is also one of the biggest direct donators to the project: https://getmonero.org/getting-started/donate/hall-of-fame

[blobafett2]

Personally I don't think that someone who changes 30 lines of code can call himself a dev

Based on what qualifications to make such a determination?

Well first I think that the fact that it was I who recently found the code in MyMonero that was causing user's private keys to be sent to the server in a cookie, and being stored in clear text on each users hard drive - Which I found after I had been told dozens of times that "this can never happen".

You, Fluffy, or the 28 other Monero contributors apparently didn't spot that one.  And I notice no official announcement to my findings was given, meaning anyone using MyMonero since it launched is potentially compromised - or can you link me to the official followup of my findings of that gaping security hole?

Secondly, it's really up to you to explain what your 9 commits were doing.  I am positing that they are doing - nothing of any significance whatsoever - unless adding a few comments and 2 IF statements in one year, warrants you the title of [Coin X,Y,Z Core Dev], to the extent that that cache then enables you to start spinning off peripheral projects such as AEON, being able to raise 2.5% of the supply in donations, and then continuing to "develop" that coin in addition to being a "Monero core dev", 2 competing positions in complete conflict of interest, which is my whole point.

Let's see. The last time you repetitively trolled using the same fallacious attacks, I told you this (after telling you that you were missing some of the commits, but not a huge number of them, which you are still doing)

If you are looking for lots of code though, you won't find it, that's not my primary role on the project.

And fluffypony told you this:

Incidentally, the Monero Research Lab has been around for just under 8 months now. smooth has been an integral part of that, and has done everything from writing simulations to finding corner cases in theories. I did a quick grep of the Monero Research Lab IRC channel, and in those 8 months he has written 5 250 lines (of the 23 539 total lines written). Something to think about.

So how about you stop acting like you don't know things that have already been explained to you?

OK, I did forget about the 5,250 messages on an IRC chat you did, whilst trying to ascertain the extent of your contributions to Monero in your development role.

So what is the situation - is it correct to say that you are currently a Monero Core-Dev, or not?  On most coins, it's quite easy to find out who is "on the core team", from everything from Bitcoin to Moon coin - is this not the case for Monero?

[smooth]

Here are some comments I have written on the rule and purpose of AEON, as well as the history and management of its donation fund. I'm pretty sure there is also a related post on bitcointalk but I couldn't find it so I'll add that if I come across it later.

Do you think the success of the donation fund is a reasonable retort to my assertions that I needed to ICO to get a coin well funded to do massive development post launch?

I would argue AEON coin holders are desperate given Monero in the distant lead and so many CN clones. So I will argue it is not an applicable comparison. Sorry that is off topic here...

Who knows. Hard to generalize from a single example. I was frankly surprised at the level of support. For a long time the donations were <100K and then someone or a few people decided to really take a shot a funding the project. We'll see what happens.

[smooth]

So what is the situation - is it correct to say that you are currently a Monero Core-Dev, or not?  On most coins, it's quite easy to find out who is "on the core team", from everything from Bitcoin to Moon coin - is this not the case for Monero?

Yes, I am one of the members of the core team (the role of which is clearly described above), and it is easy to find this online in the obvious place. We don't have a position of "core dev" that exists.

We do have some designated "development contributors" I believe, who are mostly community members (or earlier in the project in a small number of cases, paid contractors) who do specifically coding work.

[blobafett2]

So what is the situation - is it correct to say that you are currently a Monero Core-Dev, or not?  On most coins, it's quite easy to find out who is "on the core team", from everything from Bitcoin to Moon coin - is this not the case for Monero?

Yes, I am one of the members of the core team (the role of which is clearly described above), and it is easy to find this online in the obvious place. We don't have a position of "core dev" that exists.

We do have some designated "development contributors" I believe, who are mostly community members (or earlier in the project in a small number of cases, paid contractors) who do specifically coding work.

OK yes and I just saw you stated this clearly already on the Dash thread yesterday:

I'm a member of the core team

Thanks for clarifying.