EmilioMann, John Connor, & VanillaCoin/VCash are lying about Monero exploits

[pseudonymdude]

First of all, here's what john says from FAQ:

"Is Vcash a clone of Bitcoin?

No, it was built over a period of several years using Peercoin as a reference implementation for interoperability and backwards compatibility purposes, therefore it brings an alternative codebase to the cryptocurrency ecosystem."


Since everyone's attacks here seem to be appeal to authority, I'll just reference a few semi-known people:

TF2Honeybadger was Poloniex's wallet manager until he got a new job.  He was very impressed with John's code and showed up on IRC a bunch of times.

Mobydick is Poloniex's current wallet manager and is also very impressed with John's code.

Busoni either reviewed the code himself or approved the reviewer and allowed the confirmations of Vcash to be dropped to 1 last year.  Vcash is the only altcoin that only requires 1 confirmation on Poloniex.

Earlz was contacted in March 2015 about how much he would charge for a code review.  He wrote: "I'm not really sure, and I'm not sure how much weight my review could even carry. I don't really understand what Vanillacoin is trying to even accomplish.. it looks like it's 90% fresh code, but with the same core design as bitcoin, and with about 10% of bitcoin code (specifically the scripting engine)."

(I believe the reason John wrote his code using Peercoin as a reference implementation was in hopes that Bitcoin and Peercoin would upgrade to his codebase.  He tried to make it easy for them.)

You can see this written by ocminer if you click John's trust rating, written after first wave of defamation by smooth in September 2015: "John's code is legit. We implemented a lot of RPC calls together while in IRC, he basically coded while I was waiting for the update etc and it all worked out very well. ZeroTime and much other features like the FPGA bitstreams, the GUI wallets etc are unique to VNL. Furthermore the code is all in C++ instead of C."

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[bigfryguy]

back on topic though John offerred to sell you the exploits, and you guys havent once come forward to find out if this is true or not.  simple answer to this whole debate.

put up a bounty and see if he has what he says he has.

I am sure Monero has enough funds between you bagholders to pay for these bug/exploits.

your bluff was called days ago and still there is silence where there should be resolve.  prove John wrong if you are so sure, offer a bounty in esrow and prove him wrong.

As an outsider looking in, why should or would, anyone do that? That's just stupid. "Oh hey, can i offer you thousands of dollars for something of which you are unwilling to provide any proof of?"  Wtf does escrow have to do with that bs? 

This is one seriously delusional SA thread, but whatevs...

I am asuming there will have to be a code review before funds are released... duh.

[smooth]

put up a bounty and see if he has what he says he has.

Advance fee scam much?

Nobody is interested in putting up money on the basis of entirely unsupported claims with zero evidence from a proven liar and scammer.

The one with zero remaining credibility here based on a documented pattern of repeated false claims is not us, it is john-connor.

If he wants to prove he didn't simply make up the 12 exploits like he made up everything else, he ought to be smart enough to figure out how to do that in a provable, verifiable manner. If he's not, he's not.

@pseudonymdude

No one has claimed that it is a clone of bitcoin. That question was obviously crafted carefully in order to allow for a half-truth answer, and one that does not respond to the actual relevant (and frequently asked) question:

"Does Vcash/Vanillacoin contain or has it ever contained substantial portions of code that are copied from Bitcoin with only minor modification such as reformatting, removing comments, and changing of variable names (directly or indirectly via an intermediate coin forked from Bitcoin)?"

about 10% of bitcoin code (specifically the scripting engine).

If 10% of the code (I have no idea if the scripting engine is 10% of the code, but let's assume it for now) is Bitcoin code then he is admitting copying, misrepresenting, and violating the license. Why claim it was written "entirely" from scratch (his word) when 10% of it was copied, and why fail to include the Bitcoin license that clearly (and apparently now admittedly) applies to 10% of the code?

Furthermore some of the already-identified copied Bitcoin code is not part of the scripting engine so the quoted statement is either a lie or a mistake.

P.S. Why is it necessary for all Vcash scammers/socks to flood every thread and gang up on someone every single time? It's quite consistent and obvious. Is that too a form of forum sliding (five responses from five "different" Vcash supporters being posted for every one post criticizing it?). I mean, I can easily handle all of you and your deflections, because I have the facts on my side and that makes it easy, but it is still tedious and looks pretty desperate.

[pseudonymdude]

john-connor's not saying that.  It's just what earlz said.  I was just defending from icebreaker's (and your) attacks.  John-connor's position is:

"Is Vcash a clone of Bitcoin?

No, it was built over a period of several years using Peercoin as a reference implementation for interoperability and backwards compatibility purposes, therefore it brings an alternative codebase to the cryptocurrency ecosystem."

[smooth]

john-connor's not saying that.  It's just what earlz said.  I was just defending from icebreaker's (and your) attacks.  

So in other words, the best defense you can come up with actually supports the accusation against him. Very nice.

John-connor's position is:

"Is Vcash a clone of Bitcoin?

No, it was built over a period of several years using Peercoin as a reference implementation for interoperability and backwards compatibility purposes, therefore it brings an alternative codebase to the cryptocurrency ecosystem."

That's interesting as far as answering irrelevant questions goes.

"Does Vcash/Vanillacoin contain or has it ever contained substantial portions of code that are copied from Bitcoin with only minor modification such as reformatting, removing comments, and changing of variable names (directly or indirectly via an intermediate coin forked from Bitcoin)?"

[jimlite]

Conspiracy Theory:

Connor is Satoshi, therefore he doesn't have to acknowledge his own work.

[smooth]

Conspiracy Theory:

Connor is Satoshi, therefore he doesn't have to acknowledge his own work.

Already refuted long ago by Luke-Jr and others.

Each individual Bitcoin developer owns the copyright to his or her contributions. To operate outside the license at this point would require permission from all of the developers, including Satoshi, but even Satoshi alone can not legally violate the license, nor grant permission to others' work. It is clear that at least some of the portions or code copied from Bitcoin in Vanillacoin/Vcash are not from Satoshi.

[smooth]

EDIT: As a side note, this is exactly the shit that makes XMR look bad, and makes people stay away from it. You being associated with it and acting a fool without caring - sure, you don't care what anyone thinks of you, but it also reflects on Monero, and you act like you couldn't give a shit.

Monero will be fine (or it won't) regardless of what I do or don't do. I don't exaggerate my own importance one way or the other. I also happen to believe that rampant scams and scumbaggary like this is a bigger problem for the future of crypto (and for that matter open source) than what people think of one particular coin. There is more to life than calculating every action on the basis of trying to pump it, or protect it from potential controversy.

Here's a suggestion for you: Why don't you take a look at the actual code and give an opinion on whether it is copied from Bitcoin or written entirely from scratch? You're pretty qualified to do that. You can find some of the relevant examples linked from john-conner's trust history, but to quote one of the people there, "it won't be hard to find dozens more".

The more people speak out against it rather than just ignoring scams in the name of keeping things peaceful, the less scammers like john-conner will be able to pull this crap. It's not really about him, it about the next 10 like him who consider whether they ought to take similar ethical shortcuts in stealing code and launching based on dishonest claims or not.

You may be right, that as long as it is just me people will ignore it, but the more the full weight of the community comes down on it, the more we will start to see real change.

[smooth]

Finally, yes, I am qualified to review John's code, and you ask why I don't? Honestly, because I couldn't give a fuck less. Even if all this was irrefutably true, and I went around saying it, not a damned thing would change. So, no matter the results of any review I do, nothing changes. Why waste the time?

You're posting here. By your logic you should simply ignore the thread and not waste time posting.

If your goal here is to get me to shut up about their scamming, that's not going to happen, so you are doing the same thing you are accusing me of doing



And I don't even agree with you that not a damn thing will change if you review and give your conclusion. The more qualified people review the code the more their protestations become absurd and ineffective. If they didn't feel it was effective in keeping doubt open about the accusation, they wouldn't do it.

Maybe your particular review wouldn't make an immediate difference but it is one more that adds to the weight of it, and where is the line?  What happens after 10 reviews, 20 reviews, etc.? Are they really going to continue to try to sell people on the same bullshit denials? I don't think so.

[ray88]

Hey smooth,
When are you going to buy tv spots and billboards ? Carry on !

[jimlite]

So if John said his code was 99% from scratch and 1% was used from btc/ppc code to maintain backwards compatibility, would that make you happy? From scratch doesn't necessarily mean 100%. When you bake a cake from scratch you don't lay the eggs yourself. I agree with Wolf, you need to get over this little sticking point. No one that owns Vcash or may own Vcash in the future cares if it is 98, 99, or 100% original code.  No one cares if John used 1% of the same code from btc or ppc that 99% of other dev's use 90% of that code. Bottom line is he used FAR, FAR less and it is fine. Now I see your point if you want to be a stickler about whether he should or should not need to acknowledge either btc or ppc legally. But to me and most people what he did is not illegal, and even if it borders on unethical or illegal or he should do it. All I can say is when the speed limit is 55mph and you drive 56mph you did something illegal. When your kid has 10,000 songs on his ipod/iphone, he did something illegal. When you watch Game of Thrones on the internet without acknowleging and paying HBO, you did something illegal. When you surf porn, like 90% of the population, you probably run across something accidentaliy that is illegal for you to view without paying the producer somehow. There are all sorts of very slightly unethical or illegal stuff that everyone on the planet does, and no one gives a fuck. I guarantee you that both Smooth and Icebreaker have done one to all of the things mentioned above. So stop being the crypto cops, riaa, mpaa, etc. It is not your job, no one cares, and go do something useful like working on your coin.  And I'm the first one to say I don't agree with everything John is and does.  Sure he most likely has a genius level IQ (as do I), he sure as hell can code and knows a lot about p2p, crypto, mining, hardware, fpga, and coding in multiple languages on multiple devices, as well as creating one hell of a good coin. But he is arrogant, stubborn, makes up his own theories and realities sometimes, bans a lot of good people from twitter, hasn't doxed himself or promoted his project yet. He thinks that it is 2009 and Vcash is as important as BTC, he thinks he needs to be anonymous like Satoshi. This ISN'T 2009. To be successful in 2016 you need a credible face behind your project and promotion. No one in Vcash cares about your little "he stole a few lines of code and didn't acknowledge it" bullshit. What we care about is that he starts doing what any successful coin's creator or CEO does. Meaning tell us who the fuck you are, what all the great projects and code you have created over the last 20 years are, and start marketing/promoting your coin and getting the world to use it.  Smooth, you don't even know who Connor is. If he came out and was someone you respected, I bet you would be buying up Vcash. That is all.

[Gleb Gamow]

So if John said his code was 99% from scratch and 1% was used from btc/ppc code to maintain backwards compatibility, would that make you happy? From scratch doesn't necessarily mean 100%. When you bake a cake from scratch you don't lay the eggs yourself. I agree with Wolf, you need to get over this little sticking point. No one that owns Vcash or may own Vcash in the future cares if it is 98, 99, or 100% original code.  No one cares if John used 1% of the same code from btc or ppc that 99% of other dev's use 90% of that code. Bottom line is he used FAR, FAR less and it is fine. Now I see your point if you want to be a stickler about whether he should or should not need to acknowledge either btc or ppc legally. But to me and most people what he did is not illegal, and even if it borders on unethical or illegal or he should do it. All I can say is when the speed limit is 55mph and you drive 56mph you did something illegal. When your kid has 10,000 songs on his ipod/iphone, he did something illegal. When you watch Game of Thrones on the internet without acknowleging and paying HBO, you did something illegal. When you surf porn, like 90% of the population, you probably run across something accidentaliy that is illegal for you to view without paying the producer somehow. There are all sorts of very slightly unethical or illegal stuff that everyone on the planet does, and no one gives a fuck. I guarantee you that both Smooth and Icebreaker have done one to all of the things mentioned above. So stop being the crypto cops, riaa, mpaa, etc. It is not your job, no one cares, and go do something useful like working on your coin.  And I'm the first one to say I don't agree with everything John is and does.  Sure he most likely has a genius level IQ (as do I), he sure as hell can code and knows a lot about p2p, crypto, mining, hardware, fpga, and coding in multiple languages on multiple devices, as well as creating one hell of a good coin. But he is arrogant, stubborn, makes up his own theories and realities sometimes, bans a lot of good people from twitter, hasn't doxed himself or promoted his project yet. He thinks that it is 2009 and Vcash is as important as BTC, he thinks he needs to be anonymous like Satoshi. This ISN'T 2009. To be successful in 2016 you need a credible face behind your project and promotion. No one in Vcash cares about your little "he stole a few lines of code and didn't acknowledge it" bullshit. What we care about is that he starts doing what any successful coin's creator or CEO does. Meaning tell us who the fuck you are, what all the great projects and code you have created over the last 20 years are, and start marketing/promoting your coin and getting the world to use it.  Smooth, you don't even know who Connor is. If he came out and was someone you respected, I bet you would be buying up Vcash. That is all.

I've no horse in this race, but I like this post, with apologies to any actors who disagree. I do need to get out more, for I've just learnt that John Connor is not John Connor.

To be fair,  I probably once did drive over 55 mph while viewing porn, but that was only due to the custom V-cash engine under the hood which I wasn't accustomed to.  

[smooth]

So if John said his code was 99% from scratch and 1% was used from btc/ppc code to maintain backwards compatibility, would that make you happy?

It would be yet another inaccurate deflection. Some of the already-identified copied portions have nothing to do with backward compatibility.

You're really desparate to come up with something, any available excuse, to explain it away, huh? Maybe it would be easier to just go with the simpler explanation that he's a scammer who launched an obfuscated Bitcoin fork as a falsely-hyped entirely-written-from-scratch coin and now continues to scam by making false statements about other coins. Ya, know, Occam's Razor and all.

Why is that so hard to believe? It is obvious you are unwilling or unable to dig into the code to actually answer for yourself (or look at the twitter timestamps running in reverse order). Is that laziness, inability, or are you just a paid shill with zero willingness to engage in honest inquiry on the matter?

This isn't about the morality of copying music, it is about taking credit for others' work (work that was given to you freely to use if you just acknowledge it) and holding your product out as something it is not. Many people may have 10000 download songs in their iPad, but few claim to have written and performed all those songs, and fewer still would believe them if they did.

If he came out and was someone you respected, I bet you would be buying up Vcash. That is all

How did that work out for Brian Williams?

[jimlite]

LOL, John Connor said it was written from scratch and used that to hype his coin.
If there is one thing I try to get John Connor to do is promote, market, or hype his coin, and he absolutely stubbornly refuses to do it yet. He is so anti-hype it is unbelievable and damaging to his coin's adoption. Seriously Smooth, he probably once 2 years ago said it was written from scratch and that was it. That one time statement has gotten your panties in a bunch for 2 years? Do you ever see Connor hyping his coin or saying he wrote it from scratch so invest in my coin? No, NEVER. I wish he would start.

[smooth]

LOL, John Connor said it was written from scratch and used that to hype his coin.
If there is one thing I try to get John Connor to do is promote, market, or hype his coin, and he absolutely stubbornly refuses to do it yet. He is so anti-hype it is unbelievable and damaging to his coin's adoption. Seriously Smooth, he probably once 2 years ago said it was written from scratch and that was it. That one time statement has gotten your panties in a bunch for 2 years? Do you ever see Connor hyping his coin or saying he wrote it from scratch so invest in my coin? No, NEVER. I wish he would start.

Don't act naive. People look for coins that are not Bitcoin forks and consider that as a potential advantage as an investment. There was an obvious reason he said it was written from scratch and that is exactly to set it apart from the crowd of other coins that were also forks of Bitcoin. In fact, when he launched it he was explicitly asked whether it was a Bitcoin fork because people care about that in choosing coins and instead of admitting it, he decided to lie and claim it was written entirely from scratch (but then that was likely his plan all along, otherwise why obfuscate by reformatting the code and removing the comments?)

If, as you claim, it no longer matters that it was actually in large part an obfuscated Bitcoin fork, then he should just admit it, and put the his past mistakes behind him, which would indeed help settle the matter. He would no longer need to be pissed of at me for accurately calling him out on his lies and his continued denials, and therefore he would also no longer feel compelled to lash out in retaliation by lying about Monero exploits as fluffypony originally accused him (correctly) of doing, writing "full of shit" posts about Monero's data storage, etc.

[ray88]

LOL, John Connor said it was written from scratch and used that to hype his coin.
If there is one thing I try to get John Connor to do is promote, market, or hype his coin, and he absolutely stubbornly refuses to do it yet. He is so anti-hype it is unbelievable and damaging to his coin's adoption. Seriously Smooth, he probably once 2 years ago said it was written from scratch and that was it. That one time statement has gotten your panties in a bunch for 2 years? Do you ever see Connor hyping his coin or saying he wrote it from scratch so invest in my coin? No, NEVER. I wish he would start.

Don't act naive. People look for coins that are not Bitcoin forks and consider that as a potential advantage as an investment. There was an obvious reason he said it was written from scratch and that is exactly to set it apart from the crowd of other coins that were also forks of Bitcoin. In fact, when he launched it he was explicitly asked whether it was a Bitcoin fork because people care about that in choosing coins and instead of admitting it, he decided to lie and claim it was written entirely from scratch (but then that was likely his plan all along, otherwise why obfuscate by reformatting the code and removing the comments?)

If, as you claim, it no longer matters that it was actually in large part an obfuscated Bitcoin fork, then he should just admit it, and put the his past mistakes behind him, which would indeed help settle the matter. He would no longer need to be pissed of at me for accurately calling him out on his lies and his continued denials, and therefore he would also no longer feel compelled to lash out in retaliation by lying about Monero exploits as fluffypony originally accused him (correctly) of doing, writing "full of shit" posts about Monero's data storage, etc.

Hey Smooth cop,
What is your background? What makes you the crypto cop you are ? Other than a Copy paste of cryptonote code to make AEON coin i see nothing else, please debunk me was AEON a plan p&d since its just a copy paste of some else's work ?

Development Team:
Lead developer: smooth
Release engineering, Q/A, support: Arux
Other roles: open (PM smooth)
Original developer (as Monero fork): anonymous

Lead Dev: John-Connor
Other roles: pm John-Connor
Original developer (as Peercoin/bitcoin fork): anonymous

[smooth]

What is your background? What makes you the crypto cop you are ?

I'm just a guy posting on a Scam Accusation thread. If you think Scam Accusation threads are all about "crypto cops" and shouldn't exist, take it up with the forum admin. I personally believe that falsely taking credit for others' work -- work that was given to you to use freely with only the condition that you acknowledge it -- is one of the worst forms of scamming.

As much as I dislike what john-conner has done, I still wouldn't copy his coin and claim I created it, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like it very much if I did.

Other than a Copy paste of cryptonote code to make AEON coin i see nothing else

That's off topic, but the main difference is that AEON is explicitly described as a Monero fork, contains all of the upstream copyright notices, and gives credit whenever others' work is used (with permission). There is some new code in there, for example pruning, tweaks to PoW, privacy, P2P, etc. but that's exactly how it was and is presented: Monero with different branding and community, experimental changes, and potential improvements. Unlike Vcash, no one claimed or claims it to be anything other than what it is.

[ray88]

What is your background? What makes you the crypto cop you are ?

I'm just a guy posting on a Scam Accusation thread. If you think Scam Accusation threads are all about "crypto cops" and shouldn't exist, take it up with the forum admin.

Other than a Copy paste of cryptonote code to make AEON coin i see nothing else

That's off topic, but the main difference is that AEON is explicitly described as a Monero fork, contains all of the upstream copyright notices, and gives credit whenever others' work is used (with permission). There is some new code in there, for example pruning, tweaks to PoW, privacy, P2P, etc. but that's exactly how it was and is presented: Monero with different branding and community, experimental changes, and potential improvements. Unlike Vcash, no one claimed or claims it to be anything other than what it is.

So you are nobody, claiming scam accusations with no evidences other than this semi-bitcoin dev said this and that.

John says it clear : it was built over a period of several years using Peercoin as a reference implementation for interoperability and backwards compatibility purposes, therefore it brings an alternative codebase to the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
He even gave bug fix to other peercoin based coin/devs.

contains all of the upstream copyright notices, and gives credit whenever others' work is used

John credit peercoin for is work ... whats the problem?
The guy is doing advanced cryptography while you sit on your couch flooding the market with an extra shitcoin copy paste like 90% of all the so called ''devs''.
Are you jealous because you cant code shit and make crypto tech advance? All i see in your github is copy paste copy paste and shit talk like you do here. Your words are as useless as mine.

So all i see is talk talk talk and no actions just like monero been for the last 2 years.

[smooth]

claiming scam accusations with no evidences other than this semi-bitcoin dev said this and that.

Huh? There are statements by a half dozen or so people who have examined the code and concluded that it is an obfuscated copy, not "this semi-bitcoin dev". These are independent people who have looked independently, and given independent opinions, all reaching the same conclusion. The weight of that evidence is quite compelling.

I gave the list of names above, and it is probably a partial list, because I haven't tried that hard to collect every single name.

John credit peercoin for is work ... whats the problem?

Peercoin is a Bitcoin fork and contains a Bitcoin copyright notice and MIT license. To credit peercoin he would also have to credit Bitcoin, include the copyright notices in his code, and not falsely claim to have written it entirely from scratch, when several independent people have examined the code and concluded it is an obfuscated copy. https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin/blob/master/COPYING

Are you jealous

It doesn't get any more off topic than that.

[ray88]

claiming scam accusations with no evidences other than this semi-bitcoin dev said this and that.

Huh? There are statements by a half dozen or so people who have examined the code and concluded that it is an obfuscated copy, not "this semi-bitcoin dev". These are independent people who have looked independently, and given independent opinions, all reaching the same conclusion. The weight of that evidence is quite compelling.

I gave the list of names above, and it is probably a partial list, because I haven't tried that hard to collect every single name.

John credit peercoin for is work ... whats the problem?

Peercoin is a Bitcoin fork and contains a Bitcoin copyright notice and MIT license. To credit peercoin he would also have to credit Bitcoin, include the copyright notices in his code, and not falsely claim to have written it entirely from scratch, when several independent people have examined the code and concluded it is an obfuscated copy. https://github.com/ppcoin/ppcoin/blob/master/COPYING

Are you jealous

It doesn't get any more off topic than that.

Let me tell you this, new tech comes out everyday and pushing the boundaries of this crypto tech is only up to a few minded peoples witch you're not part of.
Pushing those limits to reach new level is only possible if you got guts ballz and far more code knowledge that anybody has in this sick cesspool.
John showed he can code, you said it your self, is tech is game changer if you like it or not, promoted or not. Vcash is the only coin that can proper scale to mass adoption.
If something wrong was done then we can only wait and see. Because neither you or i will change anything.
If john leaves the ship who will you accuse because in this world of mostly anon dev's no matter what i don't see anyone being sued, is legacy will stand strong just like is tech !

Move on smooth