Monero, Dash, or Zcash? Let's argue about it.

[nexitorned]

zcash is good, but seems monero will be more profitable for miners soon [Like me], and Dash for mining for now is low comparative against zcash and even monero or ethereum, i hope Dash price increase but at this moment isn't profitable for Mining, maybe for investment but I don't know  i'm not a magician.

[Hueristic]

Why do you say optional anonymity is a problem?  Monero also has optional anonymity via the view key.

This is not what I mean.  The feature that makes anonymous should be the thing that is always used, so that there is no "suspicion" when it is used.  The goal of anonymity is to "melt into the crowd and to be indistinguishable for Joe Sixpack".  It is like an envelope for snail mail.  Everybody uses a closed envelope.  There's no suspicion that you want to be anonymous when you use a closed envelope.  If all letters would be sent in an open envelope, except those that wanted to keep private, they would stand out. 
Another illustration (negative this time), is if you want to be anonymous on the street.  You can put a bag on your head, but you stand out.  As almost all people show their faces, so if you put a bag over your head, you stand out.  Ok, people cannot see who you are, but they can see that you are a guy wanting to hide his face.

You can say it differently: if you are the *only* person using a service that wants to be anonymous, that should still work.  You shouldn't depend on *how many other people* want to be anonymous to get that anonymity without standing out.
For instance, if it became a habit to publish your viewkey systematically on a public web site when you do a monero transaction, then this principle would be harmed in monero too, because those few times that you would like to be anonymous, and not publish your view key, you'd stand out again.  But this is not what happens with the view key.  The view key is usually only used in a very restrained circle if you want to prove something to someone ; not publicly.

Very well put, it amazes me that this needs to be explained ad nauseum.

[MoveCrypto]

Why do you say optional anonymity is a problem?  Monero also has optional anonymity via the view key.

This is not what I mean.  The feature that makes anonymous should be the thing that is always used, so that there is no "suspicion" when it is used.  The goal of anonymity is to "melt into the crowd and to be indistinguishable for Joe Sixpack".  It is like an envelope for snail mail.  Everybody uses a closed envelope.  There's no suspicion that you want to be anonymous when you use a closed envelope.  If all letters would be sent in an open envelope, except those that wanted to keep private, they would stand out.  
Another illustration (negative this time), is if you want to be anonymous on the street.  You can put a bag on your head, but you stand out.  As almost all people show their faces, so if you put a bag over your head, you stand out.  Ok, people cannot see who you are, but they can see that you are a guy wanting to hide his face.

You can say it differently: if you are the *only* person using a service that wants to be anonymous, that should still work.  You shouldn't depend on *how many other people* want to be anonymous to get that anonymity without standing out.
For instance, if it became a habit to publish your viewkey systematically on a public web site when you do a monero transaction, then this principle would be harmed in monero too, because those few times that you would like to be anonymous, and not publish your view key, you'd stand out again.  But this is not what happens with the view key.  The view key is usually only used in a very restrained circle if you want to prove something to someone ; not publicly.

Very well put, it amazes me that this needs to be explained ad nauseum.

I see your point.  Applying this same principle then we could say anyone opting for optional anonymity by using monero or zcash instead of bitcoin is looking suspicious.

Zcash has two different types of addresses, transparent "T" addresses or anonymous "Z" addresses.  

For example, if someone sends 1000 ZEC from a T address to a Z address, then from an outside observer's perspective, it just looks like 1000 ZEC was transferred from T address to Z address pool.  They can't see any specific Z addresses, their balances, or their transactions.

A large % of people who opt to use ZEC instead of BTC will also opt to use the Z addresses instead of the T addresses.  If Bob requests that someone send funds to his Z or T ZEC address, then it won't look any more suspicious than if he requests someone send funds to his XMR address.

[Hueristic]

Why do you say optional anonymity is a problem?  Monero also has optional anonymity via the view key.

This is not what I mean.  The feature that makes anonymous should be the thing that is always used, so that there is no "suspicion" when it is used.  The goal of anonymity is to "melt into the crowd and to be indistinguishable for Joe Sixpack".  It is like an envelope for snail mail.  Everybody uses a closed envelope.  There's no suspicion that you want to be anonymous when you use a closed envelope.  If all letters would be sent in an open envelope, except those that wanted to keep private, they would stand out.  
Another illustration (negative this time), is if you want to be anonymous on the street.  You can put a bag on your head, but you stand out.  As almost all people show their faces, so if you put a bag over your head, you stand out.  Ok, people cannot see who you are, but they can see that you are a guy wanting to hide his face.

You can say it differently: if you are the *only* person using a service that wants to be anonymous, that should still work.  You shouldn't depend on *how many other people* want to be anonymous to get that anonymity without standing out.
For instance, if it became a habit to publish your viewkey systematically on a public web site when you do a monero transaction, then this principle would be harmed in monero too, because those few times that you would like to be anonymous, and not publish your view key, you'd stand out again.  But this is not what happens with the view key.  The view key is usually only used in a very restrained circle if you want to prove something to someone ; not publicly.

Very well put, it amazes me that this needs to be explained ad nauseum.

I see your point.  Applying this same principle then we could say anyone opting for optional anonymity by using monero or zcash instead of bitcoin is looking suspicious.

Zcash has two different types of addresses, transparent "T" addresses or anonymous "Z" addresses.  

For example, if someone sends 1000 ZEC from a T address to a Z address, then from an outside observer's perspective, it just looks like 1000 ZEC was transferred from T address to Z address pool.  They can't see any specific Z addresses, their balances, or their transactions.

A large % of people who opt to use ZEC instead of BTC will also opt to use the Z addresses instead of the T addresses.  If Bob requests that someone send funds to his Z or T ZEC address, then it won't look any more suspicious than if he requests someone send funds to his XMR address.

100% fungability is the only solution for freedom.

[c789]

The Trusted Setup of Zcash completely negates any positive argument in favor of Zcash. Everything comes back to having to trust a group of devs. This is counter to crypto, where the only thing you should have to trust is math.

https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/

http://weuse.cash/2016/06/09/btc-xmr-zcash/

[MoveCrypto]

The Trusted Setup of Zcash completely negates any positive argument in favor of Zcash. Everything comes back to having to trust a group of devs. This is counter to crypto, where the only thing you should have to trust is math.

https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/

http://weuse.cash/2016/06/09/btc-xmr-zcash/

Every crypto runs on some degree of trust in the devs.  Some more so than others.  For example, a big part of Monero's market cap comes from the fact that people trust the devs not to dump all their monero and abandon the project.  A very unlikely scenario.

Ethereum is also working towards implementing zksnarks.  Vitalik's idea is to expand the trusted setup to 20-30 participants.  You would have to trust that just 1 out of the 20-30 successfully destroys their portion of the SNARK parameter private key.

If all trusted setup participants colluded to preserve the private key, then they would be able to create ZEC at will like a central bank.  Even in this unlikely scenario, they would not be able to de-anonymize transactions, so ZEC would still have value for temporarily transferring money in/out of ZEC just to use the zero knowledge function.

I actually recommended a different process for the trusted setup - my preference was to not bother with the airgaps, DVDs, offline laptops, etc and make up for it by having 20-30 participants instead of six and make sure they come from different countries, backgrounds, etc. I got this instinct from my experience managing the ethereum foundation wallet - our original setup was 3-of-4 but had lots of fancy secret sharing, encryption, offline signing and other machinery on each device but at one point it nearly broke, and since then we're using a 4-of-7 hot wallet between online laptops, and I feel much more comfortable with the security of the latter. But these are only my views, not shared by everyone, and others of course have different opinions how the risks and benefits should be balanced.

EDIT: just to be clear, I still personally think that the risks of the current setup having been compromised are quite low.

[c789]

The Trusted Setup of Zcash completely negates any positive argument in favor of Zcash. Everything comes back to having to trust a group of devs. This is counter to crypto, where the only thing you should have to trust is math.

https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/

http://weuse.cash/2016/06/09/btc-xmr-zcash/

Every crypto runs on some degree of trust in the devs.  Some more so than others.  For example, a big part of Monero's market cap comes from the fact that people trust the devs not to dump all their monero and abandon the project.  A very unlikely scenario.

Ethereum is also working towards implementing zksnarks.  Vitalik's idea is to expand the trusted setup to 20-30 participants.  You would have to trust that just 1 out of the 20-30 successfully destroys their portion of the SNARK parameter private key.

If all trusted setup participants colluded to preserve the private key, then they would be able to create ZEC at will like a central bank.  Even in this unlikely scenario, they would not be able to de-anonymize transactions, so ZEC would still have value for temporarily transferring money in/out of ZEC just to use the zero knowledge function.

I actually recommended a different process for the trusted setup - my preference was to not bother with the airgaps, DVDs, offline laptops, etc and make up for it by having 20-30 participants instead of six and make sure they come from different countries, backgrounds, etc. I got this instinct from my experience managing the ethereum foundation wallet - our original setup was 3-of-4 but had lots of fancy secret sharing, encryption, offline signing and other machinery on each device but at one point it nearly broke, and since then we're using a 4-of-7 hot wallet between online laptops, and I feel much more comfortable with the security of the latter. But these are only my views, not shared by everyone, and others of course have different opinions how the risks and benefits should be balanced.

EDIT: just to be clear, I still personally think that the risks of the current setup having been compromised are quite low.

But how would you know that any coin's implementation of a trusted setup was done without collusion? Sure, the devs will say it was done honestly, but I just don't trust people with that kind of temptation: they could print as much money as they wanted and nobody but them would know. That is an incredible amount of power which few in the world possess. It comes back to trust, and that is a fundamental flaw. I'd rather trust only math. It's impartial.

True, there is always a degree of needing to trust devs, but using the example of Monero, the source is completely open, has academic research, and a core user base who is obsessed with privacy. As you said, their attempts to manipulate the price would likely only hurt them. Such risks are very small.

Those are different types of issues (I'm defining "issue" as a risk that has been manifested). The big issue with Zcash is at the fundamental level. Issues with Monero are not at the fundamental level. The deeper the level of the issue, the greater the chance for bad things to happen.

[Febo]

Every crypto runs on some degree of trust in the devs.  Some more so than others.  For example, a big part of Monero's market cap comes from the fact that people trust the devs not to dump all their monero and abandon the project.  A very unlikely scenario.

I dont  think that 180 contributors to the Monero code, have substantial amount of Moneros. It is impossible to be sure, but i am 99.99% sure that they have little, since so many saw how big gem Monero is and invested in it during past 3 years when coins was cheap.   Losing contributors is always bad and any coin, not only Monero, cant avoid that.  Most leave when get other priorities in RL. But when you have 180 contributors many would need to stop to have substantial impact on Monero development. What I expect is that number of contributors will only increase with wider Monero recognition.

[toknormal]

Another illustration (negative this time), is if you want to be anonymous on the street.  You can put a bag on your head, but you stand out.

I don't know if you realise it but you've just explained why Dash ditched targeting "dark markets", stuck with a transparent blockchain, pursued fungibility over obscurity and kept itself compatible with the Bitcoin "ecosystem"...because using an obscured blockchain over a fungible transparent one is the equivalent of "putting a bag over your head".

Only in the delusional world of an investor who thinks that their coin will be the only one in existence is that not the case.

100% fungability is the only solution for freedom.

Indeed. But which TYPE of fungibility is the solution for maximum value ?  

[MoveCrypto]

The Trusted Setup of Zcash completely negates any positive argument in favor of Zcash. Everything comes back to having to trust a group of devs. This is counter to crypto, where the only thing you should have to trust is math.

https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/

http://weuse.cash/2016/06/09/btc-xmr-zcash/

Every crypto runs on some degree of trust in the devs.  Some more so than others.  For example, a big part of Monero's market cap comes from the fact that people trust the devs not to dump all their monero and abandon the project.  A very unlikely scenario.

Ethereum is also working towards implementing zksnarks.  Vitalik's idea is to expand the trusted setup to 20-30 participants.  You would have to trust that just 1 out of the 20-30 successfully destroys their portion of the SNARK parameter private key.

If all trusted setup participants colluded to preserve the private key, then they would be able to create ZEC at will like a central bank.  Even in this unlikely scenario, they would not be able to de-anonymize transactions, so ZEC would still have value for temporarily transferring money in/out of ZEC just to use the zero knowledge function.

I actually recommended a different process for the trusted setup - my preference was to not bother with the airgaps, DVDs, offline laptops, etc and make up for it by having 20-30 participants instead of six and make sure they come from different countries, backgrounds, etc. I got this instinct from my experience managing the ethereum foundation wallet - our original setup was 3-of-4 but had lots of fancy secret sharing, encryption, offline signing and other machinery on each device but at one point it nearly broke, and since then we're using a 4-of-7 hot wallet between online laptops, and I feel much more comfortable with the security of the latter. But these are only my views, not shared by everyone, and others of course have different opinions how the risks and benefits should be balanced.

EDIT: just to be clear, I still personally think that the risks of the current setup having been compromised are quite low.

But how would you know that any coin's implementation of a trusted setup was done without collusion? Sure, the devs will say it was done honestly, but I just don't trust people with that kind of temptation: they could print as much money as they wanted and nobody but them would know. That is an incredible amount of power which few in the world possess. It comes back to trust, and that is a fundamental flaw. I'd rather trust only math. It's impartial.

True, there is always a degree of needing to trust devs, but using the example of Monero, the source is completely open, has academic research, and a core user base who is obsessed with privacy. As you said, their attempts to manipulate the price would likely only hurt them. Such risks are very small.

Those are different types of issues (I'm defining "issue" as a risk that has been manifested). The big issue with Zcash is at the fundamental level. Issues with Monero are not at the fundamental level. The deeper the level of the issue, the greater the chance for bad things to happen.

I do agree that the 100% trustless setup of Monero is a great feature.

20% of the ZEC block rewards for the first 4 years go to the "founders".  That amounts to 10% of the maximum supply already.

If the 6 trusted setup participants colluded to preserve the private parameter key, then all 6 of those people would be able to secretly counterfeit ZEC.  Some of the 6 participants will be receiving a portion of that 10% of the supply^^^ and they will have an interest in preserving the value of it.

If I were a ZEC founder who was receiving 50k or 200k ZEC, then there's no way I would trust 5 other people with the ability to counterfeit ZEC and crash the value of my stash.  I would have a huge incentive to make sure my portion of the private key was properly destroyed.

The risk that all 6 colluded even though some of them had a huge incentive not to is very small.

[hotsurfing]

When it comes to anonymity i choose Komodo. Anonymous transactions, fiat pegged assets and decentralized exchange

[PovertyByte]

Bitcoin is the big one so ultimately I am looking at which one would replace it

Dash wants to present its self as the successor to Bitcoin and serve as the standard of digital currency. If I am not mistaken, it has a scamcoin grade premine which means that if Dash were to moonshot to forex trading world currency levels, there would be a large centralization of the currency. It would also seem that the maximum circulation of Dash is less than Bitcoin which would mean that if both BTC and Dash reached their total circulation, Dash would need to be worth much more to hold the same market cap. People talk about bitcoin being worth 1 million or more someday. For Dash to have the same market cap it would be much more than 1 million per Dash and having just a few to hold right now is like staring at retirement someday. Besides that, the team has an interesting governance and it does have quick transactions which will prove useful.  That premine thing and imagining the Dash whales to come if it moonshots is concerning. But it's not like we do not have that already with most crypto. Dash does have the ASIC problem which centralizes the mining a lot and personally results in manufacturing of hardware that just becomes obsolete with no resell value. It contributes to e-waste

Monero, I think will suffer with mainstream adoption due to the anonymity. It's advantage over Dash and zCash is that it is actually used. I recall old Monero vs. Dash wars and that Monero has some premine shenanigans too.

zCash has an interesting niche. It has that public and anonymous transaction thing going for it and it is like a Bitcoin clone but simply more advanced. It is ASIC resistant and the thing I like the most so far is the wealth is less centralized than all the above with it being mined by many people since the release and no premine where a few people became super whales. The closest thing to whales are the devs with 20% fee till a certain block but that is small on the grand scale compared to all the above.

Personally, I think something that functions like Dash that is ASIC resistant and not disgustingly premined from the start would be a good choice. Some stuff for personal opinion would be a far larger circulation since I think the public would prefer to count up rather than count down like we do with everything else.

[elrippo]

Bitcoin is the big one so ultimately I am looking at which one would replace it

Dash wants to present its self as the successor to Bitcoin and serve as the standard of digital currency. If I am not mistaken, it has a scamcoin grade premine which means that if Dash were to moonshot to forex trading world currency levels, there would be a large centralization of the currency. It would also seem that the maximum circulation of Dash is less than Bitcoin which would mean that if both BTC and Dash reached their total circulation, Dash would need to be worth much more to hold the same market cap. People talk about bitcoin being worth 1 million or more someday. For Dash to have the same market cap it would be much more than 1 million per Dash and having just a few to hold right now is like staring at retirement someday. Besides that, the team has an interesting governance and it does have quick transactions which will prove useful.  That premine thing and imagining the Dash whales to come if it moonshots is concerning. But it's not like we do not have that already with most crypto. Dash does have the ASIC problem which centralizes the mining a lot and personally results in manufacturing of hardware that just becomes obsolete with no resell value. It contributes to e-waste

Monero, I think will suffer with mainstream adoption due to the anonymity. It's advantage over Dash and zCash is that it is actually used. I recall old Monero vs. Dash wars and that Monero has some premine shenanigans too.

zCash has an interesting niche. It has that public and anonymous transaction thing going for it and it is like a Bitcoin clone but simply more advanced. It is ASIC resistant and the thing I like the most so far is the wealth is less centralized than all the above with it being mined by many people since the release and no premine where a few people became super whales. The closest thing to whales are the devs with 20% fee till a certain block but that is small on the grand scale compared to all the above.

Personally, I think something that functions like Dash that is ASIC resistant and not disgustingly premined from the start would be a good choice. Some stuff for personal opinion would be a far larger circulation since I think the public would prefer to count up rather than count down like we do with everything else.

You have proof for this? At the moment speaking nobody has found some, so you would be the first one here  

[PovertyByte]

Bitcoin is the big one so ultimately I am looking at which one would replace it

Dash wants to present its self as the successor to Bitcoin and serve as the standard of digital currency. If I am not mistaken, it has a scamcoin grade premine which means that if Dash were to moonshot to forex trading world currency levels, there would be a large centralization of the currency. It would also seem that the maximum circulation of Dash is less than Bitcoin which would mean that if both BTC and Dash reached their total circulation, Dash would need to be worth much more to hold the same market cap. People talk about bitcoin being worth 1 million or more someday. For Dash to have the same market cap it would be much more than 1 million per Dash and having just a few to hold right now is like staring at retirement someday. Besides that, the team has an interesting governance and it does have quick transactions which will prove useful.  That premine thing and imagining the Dash whales to come if it moonshots is concerning. But it's not like we do not have that already with most crypto. Dash does have the ASIC problem which centralizes the mining a lot and personally results in manufacturing of hardware that just becomes obsolete with no resell value. It contributes to e-waste

Monero, I think will suffer with mainstream adoption due to the anonymity. It's advantage over Dash and zCash is that it is actually used. I recall old Monero vs. Dash wars and that Monero has some premine shenanigans too.

zCash has an interesting niche. It has that public and anonymous transaction thing going for it and it is like a Bitcoin clone but simply more advanced. It is ASIC resistant and the thing I like the most so far is the wealth is less centralized than all the above with it being mined by many people since the release and no premine where a few people became super whales. The closest thing to whales are the devs with 20% fee till a certain block but that is small on the grand scale compared to all the above.

Personally, I think something that functions like Dash that is ASIC resistant and not disgustingly premined from the start would be a good choice. Some stuff for personal opinion would be a far larger circulation since I think the public would prefer to count up rather than count down like we do with everything else.

You have proof for this? At the moment speaking nobody has found some, so you would be the first one here  

I said I recall, not that there was. I'd have to dig through some older threads where it was wars over Monero and Dash before when Dash was 5 USD and Monero was 2 or 3

[Gogreen]

it is too early to tell, my guess zcash?

[elrippo]

Bitcoin is the big one so ultimately I am looking at which one would replace it

Dash wants to present its self as the successor to Bitcoin and serve as the standard of digital currency. If I am not mistaken, it has a scamcoin grade premine which means that if Dash were to moonshot to forex trading world currency levels, there would be a large centralization of the currency. It would also seem that the maximum circulation of Dash is less than Bitcoin which would mean that if both BTC and Dash reached their total circulation, Dash would need to be worth much more to hold the same market cap. People talk about bitcoin being worth 1 million or more someday. For Dash to have the same market cap it would be much more than 1 million per Dash and having just a few to hold right now is like staring at retirement someday. Besides that, the team has an interesting governance and it does have quick transactions which will prove useful.  That premine thing and imagining the Dash whales to come if it moonshots is concerning. But it's not like we do not have that already with most crypto. Dash does have the ASIC problem which centralizes the mining a lot and personally results in manufacturing of hardware that just becomes obsolete with no resell value. It contributes to e-waste

Monero, I think will suffer with mainstream adoption due to the anonymity. It's advantage over Dash and zCash is that it is actually used. I recall old Monero vs. Dash wars and that Monero has some premine shenanigans too.

zCash has an interesting niche. It has that public and anonymous transaction thing going for it and it is like a Bitcoin clone but simply more advanced. It is ASIC resistant and the thing I like the most so far is the wealth is less centralized than all the above with it being mined by many people since the release and no premine where a few people became super whales. The closest thing to whales are the devs with 20% fee till a certain block but that is small on the grand scale compared to all the above.

Personally, I think something that functions like Dash that is ASIC resistant and not disgustingly premined from the start would be a good choice. Some stuff for personal opinion would be a far larger circulation since I think the public would prefer to count up rather than count down like we do with everything else.

You have proof for this? At the moment speaking nobody has found some, so you would be the first one here  

I said I recall, not that there was. I'd have to dig through some older threads where it was wars over Monero and Dash before when Dash was 5 USD and Monero was 2 or 3

Well, in this case i would urge you to be careful when "quoting" something you recalled from somewhere that you actually can not find. I neither like the bashing between Dash and Monero but in some cases it shows the discrepancy between those two and the large differences in their approaches.

[dinofelis]

I see your point.  Applying this same principle then we could say anyone opting for optional anonymity by using monero or zcash instead of bitcoin is looking suspicious.

That is true if monero or zcash remain niche activities.  One could say that the culprit is then the unfortunate existence of bitcoin
This is like right now, where it becomes suspicious to withdraw cash.  There's nothing that can be done concerning anonymity if most people can opt to use a system which entirely exposes private matters.  The only thing we can hope is that sufficient users will use a privacy-protecting system, so that the use in itself of that system is not something that is suspicious as such.  But there's no reason to build a system that only allows you to opt in for that privacy protection.  It is much better to attract people to a system for different reasons, and to protect their privacy by default.

A large % of people who opt to use ZEC instead of BTC will also opt to use the Z addresses instead of the T addresses.

Actually no.  Right now, I haven't looked any more, but a month after launch, only about 6% of transactions were done with Z addresses.  Most were 'in the clear'.

[MoveCrypto]

I see your point.  Applying this same principle then we could say anyone opting for optional anonymity by using monero or zcash instead of bitcoin is looking suspicious.

That is true if monero or zcash remain niche activities.  One could say that the culprit is then the unfortunate existence of bitcoin
This is like right now, where it becomes suspicious to withdraw cash.  There's nothing that can be done concerning anonymity if most people can opt to use a system which entirely exposes private matters.  The only thing we can hope is that sufficient users will use a privacy-protecting system, so that the use in itself of that system is not something that is suspicious as such.  But there's no reason to build a system that only allows you to opt in for that privacy protection.  It is much better to attract people to a system for different reasons, and to protect their privacy by default.

A large % of people who opt to use ZEC instead of BTC will also opt to use the Z addresses instead of the T addresses.

Actually no.  Right now, I haven't looked any more, but a month after launch, only about 6% of transactions were done with Z addresses.  Most were 'in the clear'.

You are right that only 1% of the ZEC is currently stored in Z addresses:

https://explorer.zcha.in/statistics

I'm actually not invested in ZEC, but in Komodo which copies the zksnarks to allow anon transactions.

The main thing that sets Komodo apart is its decentralized exchange with fiat-pegged assets.  There have been other decentralized exchanges that haven't been used much due to lack of liquidity.  This is why the Komodo "Easydex" will have some nodes connected to centralized exchange api to insure there is always liquidity.

One of the problems with Monero market now is most users who want to use its anon functions are going through central exchange in order to do so.  Easydex will allow users to go BTC->XMR->BTC or BTC->KMD->BTC without dealing directly with central exchange.

Not to mention KMD is the first altcoin ever secured by Bitcoin's hashrate.  Komodo "notary nodes" are writing KMD block hashes to the Bitcoin blockchain here:

http://blockchain.info/address/1P3rU1Nk1pmc2BiWC8dEy9bZa1ZbMp5jfg

[elrippo]

I see your point.  Applying this same principle then we could say anyone opting for optional anonymity by using monero or zcash instead of bitcoin is looking suspicious.

That is true if monero or zcash remain niche activities.  One could say that the culprit is then the unfortunate existence of bitcoin
This is like right now, where it becomes suspicious to withdraw cash.  There's nothing that can be done concerning anonymity if most people can opt to use a system which entirely exposes private matters.  The only thing we can hope is that sufficient users will use a privacy-protecting system, so that the use in itself of that system is not something that is suspicious as such.  But there's no reason to build a system that only allows you to opt in for that privacy protection.  It is much better to attract people to a system for different reasons, and to protect their privacy by default.

A large % of people who opt to use ZEC instead of BTC will also opt to use the Z addresses instead of the T addresses.

Actually no.  Right now, I haven't looked any more, but a month after launch, only about 6% of transactions were done with Z addresses.  Most were 'in the clear'.

You are right that only 1% of the ZEC is currently stored in Z addresses:

https://explorer.zcha.in/statistics

I'm actually not invested in ZEC, but in Komodo which copies the zksnarks to allow anon transactions.

The main thing that sets Komodo apart is its decentralized exchange with fiat-pegged assets.  There have been other decentralized exchanges that haven't been used much due to lack of liquidity.  This is why the Komodo "Easydex" will have some nodes connected to centralized exchange api to insure there is always liquidity.

One of the problems with Monero market now is most users who want to use its anon functions are going through central exchange in order to do so.  Easydex will allow users to go BTC->XMR->BTC or BTC->KMD->BTC without dealing directly with central exchange.

Not to mention KMD is first altcoin ever secured by Bitcoin's hashrate.  KMD block hashes are being written to the Bitcoin blockchain here:

http://blockchain.info/address/1P3rU1Nk1pmc2BiWC8dEy9bZa1ZbMp5jfg

Well just use Shapeshift.io

[MoveCrypto]

I see your point.  Applying this same principle then we could say anyone opting for optional anonymity by using monero or zcash instead of bitcoin is looking suspicious.

That is true if monero or zcash remain niche activities.  One could say that the culprit is then the unfortunate existence of bitcoin
This is like right now, where it becomes suspicious to withdraw cash.  There's nothing that can be done concerning anonymity if most people can opt to use a system which entirely exposes private matters.  The only thing we can hope is that sufficient users will use a privacy-protecting system, so that the use in itself of that system is not something that is suspicious as such.  But there's no reason to build a system that only allows you to opt in for that privacy protection.  It is much better to attract people to a system for different reasons, and to protect their privacy by default.

A large % of people who opt to use ZEC instead of BTC will also opt to use the Z addresses instead of the T addresses.

Actually no.  Right now, I haven't looked any more, but a month after launch, only about 6% of transactions were done with Z addresses.  Most were 'in the clear'.

You are right that only 1% of the ZEC is currently stored in Z addresses:

https://explorer.zcha.in/statistics

I'm actually not invested in ZEC, but in Komodo which copies the zksnarks to allow anon transactions.

The main thing that sets Komodo apart is its decentralized exchange with fiat-pegged assets.  There have been other decentralized exchanges that haven't been used much due to lack of liquidity.  This is why the Komodo "Easydex" will have some nodes connected to centralized exchange api to insure there is always liquidity.

One of the problems with Monero market now is most users who want to use its anon functions are going through central exchange in order to do so.  Easydex will allow users to go BTC->XMR->BTC or BTC->KMD->BTC without dealing directly with central exchange.

Not to mention KMD is first altcoin ever secured by Bitcoin's hashrate.  KMD block hashes are being written to the Bitcoin blockchain here:

http://blockchain.info/address/1P3rU1Nk1pmc2BiWC8dEy9bZa1ZbMp5jfg

Well just use Shapeshift.io

Shapeshift is a centralized exchange with usually less than 2 BTC maximum trade limit.

Easydex is a decentralized exchange that can do direct blockchain-to-blockchain trades (aka atomic swaps) without going through a middleman.  In this situation, Easydex would act as the order-matcher, but would never actually hold any coins.

Easydex will also have some "liquidity provider" nodes connected to central exchanges in order to offer instant trades in case users don't want to wait for order to be matched.