Thoughts on Zcash?

[ArticMine]

This project looks pretty good except the PoW. If someone could get rid of the initial private investor coins and switch this to PoS then I would be really interested.

The obvious solution to this is to wait for it to come out and then fork it.

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[fartbags]

Being anonymous is cool but it should be based on the Ethereum platform instead of bitcoin. Bitcoins code is amazing but the facts are the facts, Ethereums code is better.

Then we could start getting anonymous Ethereum clones.

[TPTB_need_war]

I don't have time to read this:

http://www.coindesk.com/forking-bitcoin-msb-legal-issues/

I was also provided the following link by Zcash:

https://coincenter.org/2016/02/no-fincen-policy-is-not-relevant-to-the-bitcoin-forking-debate

I responded privately to Zcash as follows:

Okay I read the document you provided and it doesn't change anything I have written in the past. I never said the developers would be at-risk of FinCEN regulation. It is the miners who transfer coinbase to your company/foundation that will be subject to registration as MSBs. And the document you provided does not argue otherwise. The document you provided is only talking about miners who don't transfer their coinbase but rather mine it for themselves (they may exchange it later as an individual but that is not the same as a regularized transfer operation). Now you might argue that since they are transferring it only to one (or just two) entity then there is no risk of money laundering, thus the MSB regulation would not apply. But that is not what FinCEN guidance says. They say if the entity is creating and transferring, then they must register. Sorry you are potentially wrong and this could cost you dearly. Why not simply premine it! Much easier and avoids the problem on your miners.

[GTO911]

Being anonymous is cool but it should be based on the Ethereum platform instead of bitcoin. Bitcoins code is amazing but the facts are the facts, Ethereums code is better.

Then we could start getting anonymous Ethereum clones.

Only Dash i know is based of Bitcoin code, or maybe some Bitcoindark shitclone.

Monero and Zcash are completely different from Bitcoin and each other

[TPTB_need_war]

TPTB_need_war:

You mentioned a few times about obscuring your IP address for true anonymity with crypto blockchains.  What are your thoughts on the latest direction for bitcoin core 0.12.0.  Tor seems like such a mixed bag depending on what your trying to accomplish.

"Automatically use Tor hidden services

Starting with Tor version 0.2.7.1 it is possible, through Tor’s control socket API, to create and destroy ‘ephemeral’ hidden services programmatically. Bitcoin Core has been updated to make use of this.

This means that if Tor is running (and proper authorization is available), Bitcoin Core automatically creates a hidden service to listen on, without manual configuration. Bitcoin Core will also use Tor automatically to connect to other .onion nodes if the control socket can be successfully opened. This will positively affect the number of available .onion nodes and their usage.

This new feature is enabled by default if Bitcoin Core is listening, and a connection to Tor can be made. It can be configured with the -listenonion, -torcontrol and -torpassword settings. To show verbose debugging information, pass -debug=tor."

Perhaps Tor/I2P are useful for privacy against those who don't have the data collection capabilities of the NSA. I don't know what those use cases are. If you are trying to hide from the government, I don't think Tor/I2P are sufficient. Governments will cooperate and share data on those who are avoiding goverment's absolute power of taxation and regulation.

I have stated in this thread that for corporations who will comply with government edicts yet otherwise want privacy, then they want a more reliable solution than depending on a network layer for IP address obfuscation. Remember that the fundamental End-to-End Principle of the internet says the ends should not rely on the performance of any particular network nodes in the middle (i.e. the network should be a fungible layer). I suspect (wild conjecture) Tor/I2P might fail 0.1 to 1% of the time (in terms of IP anonymity and/or performance).

Thus I have stated Zcash/Zerocash (zk-snarks) are a superior solution because IP address becomes more or less irrelevant (which is not the case for any other technology such as Bitcoin or Monero/Cryptonote).

I give up on hiding from the government. Can't be done. I am pursuing microtransactions as the way to fight back (the government can't tax every damn little thing that people do, because people don't want to track every damn little thing they do). You can say I am pursuing a new strategy of "hiding in plain sight".

For privacy, I prefer zk-snarks. Monero is available now, Zcash is not. I presume Monero could perhaps add zk-snarks in the future if they decide to.

[TPTB_need_war]

Yeah TPTB, hiding in plain sight among crowds is my strategy as well. It seems that the best a blockchain can give you in terms of privacy is the ability to hide the sender, receiver, and amount.

Apology but I must correct you. Zcash/Zerocash/zk-snarks enable you to increase the anonymity set to every transaction ever done. This is why IP address correlation doesn't normally apply in Zcash, but does apply in these other technologies such as Cryptonote/Monero and copycats such as Bitshares/ShadowCash which limit the anonymity set to rings (and these rings can overlap and other means that they become unmasked via block chain analysis especially when combined with IP address correlation data).

Being anonymous is cool but it should be based on the Ethereum platform instead of bitcoin. Bitcoins code is amazing but the facts are the facts, Ethereums code is better.

Then we could start getting anonymous Ethereum clones.

Yes, of course everyone including Monty Python will be racing to be the first to create the "Holy-Grail"(Dark-Ethereum) in the future.  But here on planet crypto, change occurs nearly instantaneously:

http://bitsharesblog.com/stealth-transfers-feature-added-to-bitshares/

Darkthereum can do anything smart-contract-wise that Ethereum can do plus sending and receiving anonymous amounts of smartcoins/cryptoassets, etc. However, there is one noticeable difference that you will experience when transfering crypto in Darkthereum vs Ethereum:

the transaction will be 5 times faster

The more insoluble problem is that scripting on a block chain destroys the security of the block chain, and besides PoS/DPoS is insecure.

Make sure you understand how fundamentally unavoidable/essential zk-snarks are.

[Dacarte]

zcash protocol is a latest version in a digital currency. It is just like a protocol. zerocash protocol has been considered one of the most trusted technologies for puting security back in the Bitcoin equation

[TPTB_need_war]

It's true that Monero, and BitShares offer the same level of security that is inferior to zcash due to inadequate IP address protection.  But if the powers that really be are able to witness even a fraction of zcash transactions due to well known OS backdoors, then they will be able to perform the exact same type of "chain analysis" that will mathmatically narrow the search for who is trading what with who.

I had already pointed out in my prior two posts in this thread, that hiding from the government is futile. And only Zcash can avoid the unreliability and non-End-to-End principled Tor/I2P mixnets which Monero and copycats require. I shouldn't have to worry about how my transaction is transported to the block chain in order to have my privacy 100% insured (except for the omniscient government).

Zcash is vaporware though.

[TPTB_need_war]

Zcash team is advancing on finding other uses for zk-snarks:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1361602.msg14023257#msg14023257

[slapper]

Zcash is vaporware though.

It's not vaporware. They are actively developing their alpha on their public git They are also contributing to ZKCP which is big news from today

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/02/26/zero-knowledge-contingent-payments-announcement/

The probems with zcash have nothing to do with vaporware but 1)trusted setup 2)their reward structure and 3) being a company. You need to stress on these instead of leading people down the wrong rabbit hole which can be easily countered by their source code. And countering the "vaporware" point will not get rid of the above 3 and some other problems.

Do you have source code available for your vaporware? Or a screenshot of your repo since you know people might steal your wonderful code?

[TPTB_need_war]

slapper I know there was a working version of Zerocash, so I know it is not entirely vaporware. I was just trying to be succinct.

They haven't yet shipped Zcash, is what I mean.

Yes those other concerns have been enumerated by myself upthread. Perhaps you did not read the thread.

What does my vaporware have to do with this   Stay on topic please.

Btw, see my post above 3 minutes before yours 

[slapper]

slapper I know there was a working version of Zerocash, so I know it is not entirely vaporware. I was just trying to be succinct.

They haven't yet shipped Zcash, is what I mean.

Yes those other concerns have been enumerated by myself upthread. Perhaps you did not read the thread.

What does my vaporware have to do with this   Stay on topic please.

Btw, see my post above 3 minutes before yours 

It's NOT vaporware, period. There is no spinning angle to it. Plenty of products can be delivered (and still be vaporware), while a project like zcash (which is not out of alpha yet) is still not a vaporware, with its active development, roadmap and their investors. They are not asking anyone to put a dime, are publishing research papers that most of the cryptography world learns from and are producing without blabbering on this board.

Also your post redirects to another post, in typical fashion or your loops of quoting your own posts and spamming multiple threads and generally unreadable.

My zk-snarks idea has been prototyped by gmaxwell and the Zcash team:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1364951.msg14023183#msg14023183

Yah right, how come they didn't credit you? Where is your actual idea from 2013? Any source code/math/crypto to demonstrate any of your claims?

[TPTB_need_war]

Also your post redirects to another post, in typical fashion or your loops of quoting your own posts and spamming multiple threads and generally unreadable.

Oh slapper I see you are just foaming at the mouth because of some personal hate for me.

I thought you were actually interested in documenting the facts and truth.

You are now on ignore.

Btw, I didn't realize that you are so handicapped that you can't click the mouse on a link. My pity for not being aware of the struggle/anguish you are going through. I thought I was in bad condition with fatty liver disease, but not being able to click the mouse pointer on links (or touch the screen on your mobile device) would really limit what someone could do with a computer these days. So sad. Hope you can find a cure.

Edit: watching these trolls get so offended by my successes is nothing compared to the joy I am going to get when I dominate with my vaporcoin in the actual user adoption market. Then who will they cry to, lol. slapper your days are numbered. Enjoy them while you can.

[brekyrself]

TPTB_need_war:

You mentioned a few times about obscuring your IP address for true anonymity with crypto blockchains.  What are your thoughts on the latest direction for bitcoin core 0.12.0.  Tor seems like such a mixed bag depending on what your trying to accomplish.

"Automatically use Tor hidden services

Starting with Tor version 0.2.7.1 it is possible, through Tor’s control socket API, to create and destroy ‘ephemeral’ hidden services programmatically. Bitcoin Core has been updated to make use of this.

This means that if Tor is running (and proper authorization is available), Bitcoin Core automatically creates a hidden service to listen on, without manual configuration. Bitcoin Core will also use Tor automatically to connect to other .onion nodes if the control socket can be successfully opened. This will positively affect the number of available .onion nodes and their usage.

This new feature is enabled by default if Bitcoin Core is listening, and a connection to Tor can be made. It can be configured with the -listenonion, -torcontrol and -torpassword settings. To show verbose debugging information, pass -debug=tor."

Perhaps Tor/I2P are useful for privacy against those who don't have the data collection capabilities of the NSA. I don't know what those use cases are. If you are trying to hide from the government, I don't think Tor/I2P are sufficient. Governments will cooperate and share data on those who are avoiding goverment's absolute power of taxation and regulation.

I have stated in this thread that for corporations who will comply with government edicts yet otherwise want privacy, then they want a more reliable solution than depending on a network layer for IP address obfuscation. Remember that the fundamental End-to-End Principle of the internet says the ends should not rely on the performance of any particular network nodes in the middle (i.e. the network should be a fungible layer). I suspect (wild conjecture) Tor/I2P might fail 0.1 to 1% of the time (in terms of IP anonymity and/or performance).

Thus I have stated Zcash/Zerocash (zk-snarks) are a superior solution because IP address becomes more or less irrelevant (which is not the case for any other technology such as Bitcoin or Monero/Cryptonote).

I give up on hiding from the government. Can't be done. I am pursuing microtransactions as the way to fight back (the government can't tax every damn little thing that people do, because people don't want to track every damn little thing they do). You can say I am pursuing a new strategy of "hiding in plain sight".

For privacy, I prefer zk-snarks. Monero is available now, Zcash is not. I presume Monero could perhaps add zk-snarks in the future if they decide to.

Thanks for the response.  I too am not worried about government data collection however if this crypto takes off it will attract a whole new breed of scammers, hackers, etc... trying to take advantage of new users.  I am no IP expert however when it comes to masking your IP with while accessing crypto wouldn't a centralized web based wallet provide more anonymity?

For example, in BitShares the wallet keys stay local and we simply access a portal such as OpenLedger to get the blockchain.  If one were to use a VPN, Tor, whatever method you want to access OpenLedger is there anyway on the IP level a user could be tracked?  I'm not asking beyond the IP level as each chain has their own privacy issues with transactions etc...  This appears to be a better approach instead of running a full node locally?

[slapper]

Also your post redirects to another post, in typical fashion or your loops of quoting your own posts and spamming multiple threads and generally unreadable.

Oh slapper I see you are just foaming at the mouth because of some personal hate for me.

I thought you were actually interested in documenting the facts and truth.

You are now on ignore.

Btw, I didn't realize that you are so handicapped that you can't click the mouse on a link. My pity for not being aware of the struggle/anguish you are going through. I thought I was in bad condition with fatty liver disease, but not being able to click the mouse pointer on links (or touch the screen on your mobile device) would really limit what someone could do with a computer these days. So sad. Hope you can find a cure.

Edit: watching these trolls get so offended by my successes is nothing compared to the joy I am going to get when I dominate with my vaporcoin in the actual user adoption market. Then who will they cry to, lol. slapper your days are numbered. Enjoy them while you can.

Oh I'm shaking. I will definitely partake in the zcash PnD when the BTC whales play it, and in fact hold onto some.

Your vaporware on the other hand? Will never happen anyways ....

I even told you I would fund your project more than an year ago, if only you could come up with a whitepaper (too lazy to find the post but its there in my history). All you can throw now is your own bile on gullible retards and drown in your own self-pity. Get some self respect. It means more than money.

[TPTB_need_war]

Thanks for the response.  I too am not worried about government data collection however if this crypto takes off it will attract a whole new breed of scammers, hackers, etc... trying to take advantage of new users.  I am no IP expert however when it comes to masking your IP with while accessing crypto wouldn't a centralized web based wallet provide more anonymity?

For example, in BitShares the wallet keys stay local and we simply access a portal such as OpenLedger to get the blockchain.  If one were to use a VPN, Tor, whatever method you want to access OpenLedger is there anyway on the IP level a user could be tracked?  I'm not asking beyond the IP level as each chain has their own privacy issues with transactions etc...  This appears to be a better approach instead of running a full node locally?

Trusting any centralized node is roughly akin to trusting a mixnet that has only one node. Timing attacks still apply. Trust that the node isn't compromised still applies.

When I tell people that I thought deeply for 3 years about all the ways anonymity could be achieved, they don't appreciate all the designs I contemplated while sitting on the sofa over the past 3 years.

I simplified the conclusion.

[TPTB_need_war]

One last time...

I even told you I would fund your project more than an year ago

Damn glad I didn't accept your offer. I don't remember because so many people offered me money. I could have easily taken  $100,000 in angel investment, but I didn't. Because I don't need it. Yet Ethereum needed $15 million to produce nothing. And now needs more. I expect Zcash will need more than the $1 million they have.

Your overconfidence is perfect.

drown in your own self-pity

I will pray you get fatty liver disease so you can walk in my shoes (oh yeah you can't click a link ... how sad). Any way, it is coming cured finally. So now I can deal with you retards the way I have always done in the past before I got ill.

Yah right, how come they didn't credit you? Where is your actual idea from 2013? Any source code/math/crypto to demonstrate any of your claims?

I could respond in more detail if I thought there was any benefit to doing so, but I'd rather let you continue with your overconfidence. Just a little note for you:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1378318.msg14023976#msg14023976

[brekyrself]

Thanks for the response.  I too am not worried about government data collection however if this crypto takes off it will attract a whole new breed of scammers, hackers, etc... trying to take advantage of new users.  I am no IP expert however when it comes to masking your IP with while accessing crypto wouldn't a centralized web based wallet provide more anonymity?

For example, in BitShares the wallet keys stay local and we simply access a portal such as OpenLedger to get the blockchain.  If one were to use a VPN, Tor, whatever method you want to access OpenLedger is there anyway on the IP level a user could be tracked?  I'm not asking beyond the IP level as each chain has their own privacy issues with transactions etc...  This appears to be a better approach instead of running a full node locally?

Trusting any centralized node is roughly akin to trusting a mixnet that has only one node. Timing attacks still apply. Trust that the node isn't compromised still applies.

When I tell people that I thought deeply for 3 years about all the ways anonymity could be achieved, they don't appreciate all the designs I contemplated while sitting on the sofa over the past 3 years.

I simplified the conclusion.

Makes sense, much more to think about.

You may not realize but I'm sure a lot of lurkers like myself appreciate your comments, concerns, and continued education into this realm.  You are on the right path, my only concern is the next big thing may not be the best option which often takes place on this planet.

[TPTB_need_war]

Yah right, how come they didn't credit you? Where is your actual idea from 2013? Any source code/math/crypto to demonstrate any of your claims?

I could respond in more detail if I thought there was any benefit to doing so, but I'd rather let you continue with your overconfidence. Just a little note for you:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1378318.msg14023976#msg14023976

Note the link the prior post was deleted by Gregory Maxwell, so here is the replacement post:

The client is a mixture of rust

Let's try to this again. I thought I made this post before:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1378318.msg14023976#msg14023976

But it disappeared and never appeared in my Inbox as "deleted by a moderator".

So let me try to reconstruct my post from memory.

Basically I said that I have been looking into Ogg Opus which Gregory Maxwell was an inventor of. I thanked him for producing that and with the word "kudos". I explained that it appears the Ogg container format was designed with a flaw in that it doesn't contain markers for jumping forward in a stream efficiently over a bounded bandwidth connection such as the internet. I said I presume that wasn't Gregory's area of responsibility.

I also stated that Timothy B. Terriberry was apparently Greg's colleague on the Opus project and apparently Timothy B. Terriberry was involved also with Mozilla and I think I also read he is involved with the development of the RUST language. I found this to be curious because I remember some years ago writing some criticisms of RUST's typing of invariants when it was first conceived. I stated I would endeavor to locate my criticisms from several years ago and see if they still make sense (I believe so).

So I said it is not surprising to see Greg experimenting with the Rust language.

I also commended Greg et al for exploring zk-snarks for smart contracts as I think my comments in the "cut & choose" thread have demonstrated the critical requirement for such for scripting in general.

I am adding now the fact that I sent Gregory a private message about this yesterday or the day before that, before he posted about this new invention. I also note that weeks ago I posted to Sean Bowe on the Zcash forum the importance of zk-snarks for smart contracts.

I also note that I the one who recently exposed that Segregated Witness is a Trojan Horse designed to enable Blockstream to take over Bitcoin by enabling them to version the block chain with soft forks. They are trying to push their technologically flawed Side chains in through the back door. Thus it is not surprising that Gregory has deleted my post (and somehow it didn't even appear in my Inbox as it normally should, so he must have some super moderator powers on this forum).

I am sorry folks to inform you about the very deep level of corruption in Bitcoin runs to the core.

Okay Gregory send your hitmen. I am ready.

Note this copy is being copied all over the place so it can't be deleted.

[slapper]

I will pray you get fatty liver disease so you can walk in my shoes (oh yeah you can't click a link ... how sad). Any way, it is coming cured finally. So now I can deal with you retards the way I have always done in the past before I got ill.

I wish that you recover. Praying for someone to get sick? New level of low, but I can understand why you are stuck there. Your arrogance knows no bounds.

I could respond in more detail if I thought there was any benefit to doing so, but I'd rather let you continue with your overconfidence. Just a little note for you:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1378318.msg14023976#msg14023976

Yet another looping reference. Why are you quoting gmaxwell's post, when I already posted that in my earlier post (and coincidently you also posted about it). I am just sick of you trying to take credit for someone else's work and pooping on progress made elsewhere which doesn't fit your agenda. You have been lying to yourself for so long, you have started believing in your own lies.