Smooth VS VNL

[Gillette]

Smooth - the dev of XMR has made serious accusations against Vanilla coin:

john-conner's project, Vanillacoin (VNL), includes a significant amount of reformatted and, at best, lightly-edited Bitcoin code which has illegally and unethically had its attribution and copyright notices removed. In addition, he describes Vanillacoin as written "from scratch in its entirety", a false, misleading, and fraudulent claim that is being used to promote his coin. Given that this shows dishonesty, low credibility, and willingness to engage in unethical conduct, extreme caution is advised.

What do you guys think? Is this accusation grounded?

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[monsterer]

Smooth - the dev of XMR has made serious accusations against Vanilla coin:

john-conner's project, Vanillacoin (VNL), includes a significant amount of reformatted and, at best, lightly-edited Bitcoin code which has illegally and unethically had its attribution and copyright notices removed. In addition, he describes Vanillacoin as written "from scratch in its entirety", a false, misleading, and fraudulent claim that is being used to promote his coin. Given that this shows dishonesty, low credibility, and willingness to engage in unethical conduct, extreme caution is advised.

What do you guys think? Is this accusation grounded?

Yes, this 100% fact.

[ol92]

Smooth - the dev of XMR has made serious accusations against Vanilla coin:

john-conner's project, Vanillacoin (VNL), includes a significant amount of reformatted and, at best, lightly-edited Bitcoin code which has illegally and unethically had its attribution and copyright notices removed. In addition, he describes Vanillacoin as written "from scratch in its entirety", a false, misleading, and fraudulent claim that is being used to promote his coin. Given that this shows dishonesty, low credibility, and willingness to engage in unethical conduct, extreme caution is advised.

What do you guys think? Is this accusation grounded?

Yes, this 100% fact.

According to people who have inspected somewhat the code, the network part is essentially new while the crypto part is basically a rewrite in c++.
For me the expression "written from scratch" is more a borderline overstatement.

[Marlo Stanfield]

Wasn't most of it just run through an automatic refactorer? That's what I remember reading. Not sure on the specifics though. Bitcoin Core dev Greg Maxwell called him out though and questioned his knowledge, which is pretty damning as one of the most trusted people in the community as well as one of the top experts.

I certainly wouldn't be too happy being told that it was completely written from scratch though. That appears to be quite deceptive.

[generalizethis]

I remember in elementary school this kid took apart a watch, taped it back together and told everyone, "I made this watch."

John, is that you?

[Gillette]

So, as of now,  the dev of vnl remains a fraudster?

[bigfryguy]

isnt smooth vs everyone these days?

why doesnt he post a link of side by side code so everyone can see what he is talking about?

dev of VNL is on irc everyday working on the code, building his project, and generally getting things done.
over the last month
He instituted zerotime an instant transfer which no one has been able to double spend yet
He instituted a masterpeer incentive system

he patched and released like 10 updated wallets
he has been answerring questions for hours each day...


Where have you seen a dev work so hard in crypto space.

isnt Smooth a dev, shouldnt he be releasing things for his own projects?

[pseudonymdude]

So, as of now,  the dev of vnl remains a fraudster?

No.  Vanillacoin is the ONLY coin that:
- Has random ports and encrypted connections so your ISP won't notice anything unusual while monitoring your ports.  No other coin does this
- Has full, staking mobile wallets that allow you to move your wallet.dat to your PC from your Android and iOS wallets.  No other coin does this
- Requires only 1 confirmation on Poloniex (other than BTC, which also requires 1 confirmation)
- Only coin to have near-instant 0 confirmation transactions without master nodes.  No other coin has done this

None of that is fraud and all of that is testable.  He did use some of the tried and trusted methods from Bitcoin and Peercoin.

[jimlite]

The fact that gmaxwell would even acknowledge and talk about john-connor shows that vnl dev is the real deal.
Do you think gmaxwell would even converse with Karsen or shitcoin #968 dev? I highly doubt he converses with
the hundreds of clown clone devs.

[bitcoin carpenter]

Whatever people want to say about VNL

You have to admit...


It works better than all the other clone/shitcoins out there.

Sorry but I traded all my xmr to vnl weeks ago.

[maccaspacca]

Going back to the question - no the accusation is not grounded. I can see the concern but VNL was written to be familiar and compatible with other cryptocurrencies, pools and services etc. This means that the code calls similar functions to other currencies and uses common terminology, file locations etc.

This coin continues to diverge from all other currencies at an incredible rate.

John is the real deal and has proven his skills time and time again.

This weekend node incentives were implemented..... another feature unique to VNL.

[jwinterm]

The fact that gmaxwell would even acknowledge and talk about john-connor shows that vnl dev is the real deal.
Do you think gmaxwell would even converse with Karsen or shitcoin #968 dev? I highly doubt he converses with
the hundreds of clown clone devs.

It wasn't really a conversation, more of a quiet word of warning:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=920344.10

Greeting, this evening john-connor showed up on the Bitcoin Core github with some rather aggressively ignorant minunderstandings of basic cryptographic consensus concepts: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/5634#issuecomment-69481908

Having no clue who he was I looked at his github account and googled a bit and found that he is the, seemingly pseudonymous, author of "Vanillacoin".

Vanillacoin was previously discussed on this forum, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=890388.0 but he locked the threads in order to shuffle the users (victims?) off to someplace out of the light of day-- never a good sign, (nor is his BCT newbie account, for that matter).  The "vanillacoin" software has no source code available, it is binaries only (very much not a good sign, and usually severe malware concern; and an ultimate form of centralization), there are source links but they go to a basically empty github repository. There is a whitepaper, which like the comments on github show some general software development background they show no real sign of sophisticated understanding around decenteralized systems for adversarial networks or cryptocurrencies.

I don't know anything more about it, but I figure sunlight tends to be a good disinfectant; and with the threads locked it probably wasn't fair of me to say nothing while I was privately thinking "hm, that all smells pretty fishy".  Of course, the guy was a bit rude to me and also wasted my time-- so feel free to factor that bias in however you like. I'm just reporting my impression as a regular community member. You now know what I know.

[I'm the last person to play altcoin-cops... I mostly avoid this stuff except for the rare cases that are technically interesting: The drama can sink unbounded time and usually, when it comes to the more misguided altcoin cryptography, the only sane policy seems to be "If you see something,say nothing and drink to forget": there is too much crazyness and risk of being attacked for being critical of someones latest scheme. But if it shows up in my face, I can't quite stomach saying nothing at all.]

[americanpegasus]

I think that red text is reserved for smooth to use only, and you're in danger of this entire topic being deleted.   

[bitcoin carpenter]

I remember in elementary school this kid took apart a watch, taped it back together and told everyone, "I made this watch."

John, is that you?

It's more like he took apart a watch, then gave him back a SPACESHIP!!!!

[generalizethis]

The fact that gmaxwell would even acknowledge and talk about john-connor shows that vnl dev is the real deal.
Do you think gmaxwell would even converse with Karsen or shitcoin #968 dev? I highly doubt he converses with
the hundreds of clown clone devs.

"The fact that Michael Jordan would even acknowledge and talk about Gerald Wilkins shows that "The Jordan Stopper" is the real deal. Do you think Jordan would even converse with Allan Houston or bench player #53? I highly doubt he converses with the hundreds of other clown players." --stuff idiot fan says

[hughbt]

ohhh I have seen it all... This is the textbook situation when people at the top positions in the community(or company) are trying to destroy someone who can threaten their authority and who achieved something that they were unable to do.

Even if some part of the one insignificant method is rewritten or looks similar it doesn't matter. Every programmer understands that sometimes it just doesn't make sense to try to reinvent the wheel. If someone claims that John can't code, or doesn't have the knowledge he is just useful idiot. John did something that no one else could. He is the one who won and Smooth is the loser.

[pseudonymdude]

The fact that gmaxwell would even acknowledge and talk about john-connor shows that vnl dev is the real deal.
Do you think gmaxwell would even converse with Karsen or shitcoin #968 dev? I highly doubt he converses with
the hundreds of clown clone devs.

"The fact that Michael Jordan would even acknowledge and talk about Gerald Wilkins shows that "The Jordan Stopper" is the real deal. Do you think Jordan would even converse with Allan Houston or bench player #53? I highly doubt he converses with the hundreds of other clown players." --stuff idiot fan says

Address these points:

Vanillacoin is the ONLY coin that:
- Has random ports and encrypted connections so your ISP won't notice anything unusual while monitoring your ports.  No other coin does this
- Has full, staking mobile wallets that allow you to move your wallet.dat to your PC from your Android and iOS wallets.  No other coin does this
- Requires only 1 confirmation on Poloniex (other than BTC, which also requires 1 confirmation)
- Only coin to have near-instant 0 confirmation transactions without master nodes.  No other coin has done this

None of that is fraud and all of that is testable.

[smooth]

why doesnt he post a link of side by side code so everyone can see what he is talking about?

That was done. Follow the reference link in j-c's trust rating, that's what it's for (duh)

BTW, I have no opinion on the merits of VNL's added features, etc. nor on his skills as a coder, so all those comments about how great the features are or how great a coder he is are entirely non-responsive on the point that he ripped off Bitcoin's code, stripped out the attributions (which are required by the original license) and misrepresented it as written entirely from scratch.

[YAdaminer]

What desperation is required to launch a new haters thread?

[proletariat]

Connor has a lot more miles to his name in the p2p and cryptography world... more so in the p2p field years before bitcoin was invented. Try doing some research, googling and connecting the dots. The guy has been part of huge projects.