The impact of bad crypto (DASH, SDC, etc). How much does math matter?

[AlexGR]

So the errors or "errors" that TPTB indicate only ...matter depending the various time-space coordinates, and his likes, or dislikes, at any given point within that 4-dimensional array.

Sounds legit.

[generalizethis]

So the errors or "errors" that TPTB indicate only ...matter depending the various time-space coordinates, and his likes, or dislikes, at any given point within that 4-dimensional array.

Sounds legit.

You'll have to ask Shelby. My guess is he'll tell you before you get a chance to ask, but my point is that Evan runs away when he can't explain a failure. Shen actually argued with Shelby for days, but then again, Shen knew he was right and didn't need to run.

[AlexGR]

Unlike people wasting their time on forums mudslinging, Evan uses his time to code the next features of DASH.

If he sits here debating all day then we'd hear: "doesn't he have anything better to do, like code?"

If he codes and doesn't debate endlessly the (self-defeating - from a game theory perspective) scenario of ...jamming an instantx transaction after acquiring a large number of masternodes => "he run away".

You can spin it any way you want really. It doesn't matter.

If you think mudslinging is a good tactic for promoting Monero, then be my guest. You'll be actively contributing to defining what bad crypto is: Crypto that wants to rise not by virtue of its better characteristics, but by throwing mud at their opponents.

This is now, what? The 10th thread or so of "Monerotards" attacking DASH? Get a life. Or a better coin. Then the market will appreciate it, if it becomes such. You won't get any value from the market without providing value to the coin. Even if DASH never existed, Monero would still be stuck. Contemplate that for a change.

[generalizethis]

Unlike people wasting their time on forums mudslinging, Evan uses his time to code the next features of DASH.

If he sits here debating all day then we'd hear: "doesn't he have anything better to do, like code?"

If he codes and doesn't debate endlessly the (self-defeating - from a game theory perspective) scenario of ...jamming an instantx transaction after acquiring a large number of masternodes => "he run away".

You can spin it any way you want really. It doesn't matter.

If you think mudslinging is a good tactic for promoting Monero, then be my guest. You'll be actively contributing to defining what bad crypto is: Crypto that wants to rise not by virtue of its better characteristics, but by throwing mud at their opponents.

This is now, what? The 10th thread or so of "Monerotards" attacking DASH? Get a life. Or a better coin. Then the market will appreciate it, if it becomes such. You won't get any value from the market without providing value to the coin. Even if DASH never existed, Monero would still be stuck. Contemplate that for a change.

You couldn't spin the narrative away from Evan's shortcomings, so you're going to take your ball and what? I guess the apple doesn't fall from the Dev. Now, as for mudslingin', you just threw a hissy about Monero's mudslinging while calling us Monerotards, and while your quoting someone to do it, you're still doing it. I'd rather not get into a hypocrisy debate, but grow the fuck up. We're all big boys here and should be able to take it as well as we dish it--but I'm sure you're preaching the anti-mudslinging mantra to Tok, Ceti, and Macrochip.

As far as markets go,  given Monero's volume compared to Dash's, I think we are doing just fine--imagine if we had 3,700,000 coins locked up in a masternode scheme?

Now the thread is completely derailed from the hs math versus cryptography, but seeing how Evan isn't good at hs math, maybe the thread should ask if middle school math is good enough?

[smooth]

Monerotards....  

The Monerotards just can't ever admit that someone else could do anything they couldn't do and give proper credit and respect where it is due. Sigh.

And then they wonder why their shitcoin is going no where and those who have the talent to make it go somewhere are not motivated to join with their sick attitudes.

You guys are hilarious. Keep making excuses to deny reality but it won't help you in the real world.

Not even one thank you for pointing an egregious error in Shen's proposed solution which could have enabled me to crash your market price had I withheld the information and supplied it after you implemented a hard fork with the design error. Instead I get verbal diarrhea about senile rage. My and the community wide anger against Monerotards, is because of for example your Shen's condescending verbiage and now more of it from all you key persons in the Monerotard community and even the lead developer.

That's why when you are doing new design work, you carefully document and publish your designs and try to get people to read your paper and provide feedback. I don't know the details of whatever feedback TPTB provided there -- it may or may not have been helpful in particular -- but I know more generally that several qualified experts have also read it and helped to correct errors, clarify ambiguities, and improve the clarity of the presentation.  Yes, that is how you do science.

[AlexGR]

Mixin 0 wasn't too scientific though, was it?

[smooth]

Mixin 0 wasn't too scientific though, was it?

1. Who developed Cryptonote with unrestricted mix 0?

2. Who analyzed the issue and published the analysis of the problem (also with mix 1)?

3. Who developed and published a proposed fix prior to implementing and deploying it?

4. Who implemented and deployed a fix?

There's your answer.

My answers:

1. Cryptonote/Bytecoin
2. Monero
3. Monero
4. Monero, Boolberry (partially), and AEON

[toknormal]

imagine if we had 3,700,000 coins locked up in a masternode scheme?

Then you'd actually be doing something useful.

You'll have to ask Shelby. My guess is he'll tell you before you get a chance to ask, but my point is that Evan runs away when he can't explain a failure

Thats because Evan is an authority on creating a cryptographic asset and Shelby isn't.

If Shelby were ever to try it for real he'd have his a*ss handed to him by mother nature (as I'm sure he already knows).

Evan is accountable to his coin holders, not his tyre kickers.

Now the thread is completely derailed from the hs math versus cryptography

Agreed. And in that respect, watching promoters of obscured blockchains attack "real" crypto on security or ideological grounds is a bit like watching football fans yell instructions at the players after drinking several pints of beer.

Oops ! I detect an incoming infographic.

[smooth]

And the "real deal" is a public blockchain.

Just show me the public blockchain for gold. Where can I see all the account balances?

[AlexGR]

Mixin 0 wasn't too scientific though, was it?

1. Who developed Cryptonote with unrestricted mix 0?

2. Who analyzed the issue and published the analysis of the problem (also with mix 1)?

3. Who developed and published a proposed fix prior to implementing and deploying it?

4. Who implemented and deployed a fix?

There's your answer.

My answers:

1. Cryptonote/Bytecoin
2. Monero
3. Monero
4. Monero, Boolberry (partially), and AEON

Wait, you cloned Bytecoin, with all its flaws, without any due diligence, consequently had to face the problems of the cloning and start patching these problems as you went ahead, and that's a "feature" instead of "bad crypto"?

[toknormal]

Just show me the public blockchain for gold. Where can I see all the account balances?

Gold is a public blockchain in its own right, not an obscured one. Identifiable out in the open, by atomic number, and by anyone who cares to inspect it.

Gold futures on the other hand are not a public blockchain. They are paper contracts which you cannot see and are kept private due to the fact that they're associated with an individual. But then again, gold futures are tier 2 monetary media - a piece of paper that is backed by gold.

So even by that analogy:

Gold = Part of the "metals" public blockchain with address 79 in the periodic table that is inspectable by anyone
Gold futures = obscured blockchain that is only any use as long as its "backer" (the public blockchain metal) exists

[smooth]

Just show me the public blockchain for gold. Where can I see all the account balances?

Gold is a public blockchain in its own right, not an obscured one. Identifiable out in the open, by atomic number, by anyone who cares to inspect it.

Gold futures on the other hand are not a public blockchain. They are contracts which you cannot see and are kept private due to the fact that they're anonymous. But then again, gold futures are tier 2 monetary media - a piece of paper that is backed by gold.

So even by that analogy:

Gold = Part of the "metals" public blockchain with address 79 in the periodic table that is inspectable by anyone
Gold futures = obscured blockchain that is only any use as long as its "backer" exist (the metal)

I think you misread my message. I want to see the account balances of the gold 'public blockchain', not the atomic number.

Where are they? Link or GTFO.

[toknormal]

I think you misread my message. I want to see the account balances of the gold 'public blockchain', not the atomic number.

You're trying to push the idea that because someone can hide a piece of gold under their bed, that means obscured blockchains can have "value".

That reminds me of my 6 year old daughter who thought because she had 6 coins in her piggy bank she could buy a house.

Unbacked monetary media take a very long time to garner individual trust, then public trust, then public consensus, then public endorsement. Only after that "right of passage" phase comes value anything like the status of gold.

The only reason gold gained any value in the first place was because it got kicked about in the open for thousands of years and was found to posses true monetary properties (which are very rare). But it was public consensus that ultimately endorsed its value. That led to hoarding.

But Gold never had any obscurity of its own. If it had done it would never had got past the value of sand.

[smooth]

I think you misread my message. I want to see the account balances of the gold 'public blockchain', not the atomic number.

Your trying to push the idea that because someone can hide a piece of gold under their bed, that means obscured blockchains can have "value".

No, I'm not. I'm asking to see the public blockchain, where everyone can see all the balances.

I'm afraid it doesn't work like that

I'm afraid that you making up your own concepts of 'monetary properties' doesn't work like that, with or without infographics. Make up whatever you want, of course, just don't expect anyone else to care.

[toknormal]

Make up whatever you want, of course, just don't expect anyone else to care.

I do expect them to care.

Thats the difference between the view that you are expressing and that of what I'm posting here.

Just read your own post again:

I'm asking to see the public blockchain, where everyone can see all the balances.

Do you realise you're talking about gold ?

Nothing could be less obscured. It's lying around in the hills. An open secret. Analysed to death, has a place in the periodic table. If ever anyone even stumbled on a piece of gold there are a myriad of reference points for them to verify it. Even if you don't own it you can still verify it. It is what's known as a "bearer token" because after gold there is no further you can go in the chain of trust.

So it is with public blockchains. There is a reason why satoshi did not obscure the blockchain - even though anonymity was the priority - and that reason is plain as day to anyone who understands how gold acquired its value.

[generalizethis]

Did Monero's emissions and transactions suddenly become unverifiable?

The reason I ask is that all I need or want is to know the supply is as stated and that my amount is secure and that I can send stuff without it being broadcast to the whole world. As long as Monero does that, it has all the money properties I want--seems kind of stupid to tell me I'm wrong about I want.

If you want centralized money that everyone can see, that's your business, just don't call it anything else--and don't tell me the instamine is redistributed because you read some market tea leaves.

[iCEBREAKER]

The elephant in the room is monetary properties, not technical ones. It's very simple, for tier 1 monetary assets:

Good crypto = Public Blockchains
Bad Crypto = Obscrued Blockchains

For higher order tiers (backed money, e.g. Bitcoin CT), obscured blockchains are acceptable.

So you should therefore be discussing the merits of Good/Bad crypto within the domain of Public Blockchains explicitly or Good/Bad crypto within the domain of Obscured Blockchains explicitly since they are distinct monetary domains and obscured blockchains do not have any native (unbacked) monetary properties in the first place - even if it is "good crypto".

You are still singing this tune, eh?

For those just tuning in, you should know that this guy is responsible for the brilliant statement of

"Cryptography has never been a significant part of cryptocurrency - even though it may share the first few letters. "

This occurred during a very heated debate in what I hoped we could consider "classic" DASH vs XMR threads, which were quite literally 1 year ago.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1001642.msg10921597#msg10921597

Which was politely responded to by gmaxwell

Cryptography has never been a significant part of cryptocurrency - even though it may share the first few letters. It works on a system of digital signatures.

It would seem that you actually do not understand what cryptography is in the modern sense.

A fundamental nature of information is that it wants to be freely copied everywhere to everyone. That any bit is equal and indistinguishable from any other bit of the same value and that any bit is eventually known to all who care.  Cryptography is all that technology by which we hope to confine and constrain the nature of information, to put up fences and direct it to our exclusive purposes, against all attacks and in defiance of the seemingly (and perhaps actually) impossible.  Digital signatures are cryptography by any modern definition and utilize the same tools and techniques (for example, a DSA signature is a linear equation encrypted with an additively homorphic encryption), and suffer from most of the same challenges as the message encryption systems to which you seem to be incorrectly defining cryptography as equivalent.  Moreover, the use of digital signatures isn't the only (or even most relevant) aspect of cryptography in cryptocurrencies-- e.g. the prevention of double spending of otherwise perfectly copyable and indistinguishable information in a decentralized system is a cryptographic problem which we address using cryptographic tools, and-- like all other practical cryptography-- achieve far less than perfect confidence in our solution. As are more modest ends like interacting with strangers but not being subject to resource exhaustion from them.

Far more so than other sub-fields of engineering, cryptographic systems are doing something which is fundamentally at odds with nature and share an incredible fragility and subtly as a result (and perhaps all are failures, we have no proof otherwise).

A failure to understand and respect these considerations has resulted in a lot of harmful garbage and dysfunctional software.

And then by andytoshi

Can you (or Tok) point to a part of a cryptocurrency which isn't cryptography?

the dev team, the website, any part of the wallet not doing a cryptographic function, the buyers, the masternode operators, the network transport, whatever isn't going into a cryptographic function.

This thread is moving pretty quickly (ten pages of mudslinging in half as many hours!) so I'm not sure you'll see this, but there's an important misunderstanding here. You're right that the human beings aren't cryptographic (e.g. the development team, market participants, etc) --- though it's important to observe that this makes them very unsuited to cryptographic functionality. gmaxwell had an elegant description of cryptography as "technology by which we hope to confine and constrain the nature of information" despite information respecting no ownership, borders or morality. He described this as "inherently subtle and fragile", which it is, but this indifference to political and social pressure also make it efficient (human trust is expensive to build and maintain!) and robust against a lot of political and social pressures that human systems are not. This robustness is the cypherpunk motivation for bringing cryptography into everyday life: anything we have the technology to do cryptographically rather than socially ought to be, since social systems can change quickly and unjustly. Nowhere is this more true than finance, so cryptocurrency is a perfect environment for this kind of thing. So cryptocurrencies try to eliminate human decision points wherever possible, and where not they try to set things up so others can't override each others' decisions (hence the value implied by buzzwords like "decentralization" and "censorship resistance" and "public verifiability").

I'm not entirely clear on what masternodes do these days, but I infer that their actions affect users' privacy, i.e. they are "confining and constraining" information. This is a cryptographic function too. Human decisions may factor into their behaviour, but they are still performing a cryptographic function; human involvement does not change this, only changes the failure modes.

All this to say that basically the entirety of cryptocurrency really is cryptography. Even many of the human parts. The network transport is part of the cryptosystem: it needs to be designed to prevent modification of data in transport, authentication of data even when endpoints are anonymous and spoofable, etc. A wallet is part of the cryptosystem: it's responsible for creating verification keys ("scriptPubKeys" in Bitcoin, which are usually abbreviated to addresses) whose corresponding private keys are controlled by the correct parties to the correct extent, and for correctly and securely storing these keys. Wallets are decoupled from the main cryptocurrency cryptosystem, and in particular are not part of the hard part --- consensus code --- but they are certainly cryptographic and are subject to the same sort of subtle missteps as other cryptosystems. (For example, the oft-cited BIP32 "bug" where a party in possession of a public key and chaincode can derive the secret key from a non-hardened child secret key; it would not be hard to come up with a plausible-sounding system which "unintentionally" exposed secret data through this mechanism.)

I'll repeat my above statement: basically the entirety of cryptocurrency really is cryptography. This is important. It's why things are so subtle, why complexity is dangerous, and why changing even trivial-seeming things can have drastic and hard-to-analyze consequences. This is where "a lot of harmful garbage and dysfunctional software" comes from. It's the default for poorly-thought-out systems. And in cryptography, "poorly thought out" means anything less than expert cryptographers spending large amounts of time and effort designing things to be both correct and clearly correct. (Given how few experts there are in the cryptocurrency space, I could tell you that almost all of it is shit just by the pigeonhole principle .)

This is not a cheap standard to hold a system to even if its designers want to; and falsely claiming that something is not cryptographic is an easy way to excuse not wanting to. But such claims do not change reality.

The encryption of data through cryptography is the foundation of cryptocurrencies.

This is simply false.

At the end of the day, reader, whomever you are, you are obviously free to do whatever you wish and listen to whomever. Just know who (and what) you're getting in bed with.

I believe toknormal is intentionally being disingenuous by pretending to not understand that zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic functions are long-established and well-tested forms of good crypto.

It is typical for DashHoles like tok to attempt bamboozling noobs with FUD about how "zomg if a coin's blockchain is 'Obscrued' (sic) how do U NO there are only X number of coins?"

Dash: The privacy coin for those not educated sufficiently to understand ZKPs.

If tok wanted to understand good crypto rather than merely FUD against Monero, he would read and understand this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof

Nobody should listen to tok's ham-fisted gainsaying and dissembling.  Given the humiliating epic spanking he got from gmax and andytoshi, I'm surprised he's not too embarrassed to continue making a fool of himself here.  But then again he's probably trying to protect his bags of DarkDashDuffCoin, and may even be paid for his promotional/propaganda/browbeating efforts.

[toknormal]

fuse blown

Good effort but I think she sang it better than you.

[toknormal]

Did Monero's emissions and transactions suddenly become unverifiable?

They've always been unverifiable.

[generalizethis]

Did Monero's emissions and transactions suddenly become unverifiable?

They've always been unverifiable.

I get the feeling your idea of unverifiable is much different than mine. The same as your idea of privacy is different than mine. Or good cryptography. Or what constitutes fair distribution.

So do you think Monero's cryptography is broken or are using the "I don't understand it, so therefore no one will use it" attack/defense?