zerocoin

[armory]

Zerocoin is a proposed extension to the Bitcoin payment network that adds anonymity to Bitcoin payments. Just as paper currency once gained its value from being redeemable for gold, zerocoins gain their value from being redeemable for bitcoins. We believe that tools such as Zerocoin are necessary as the current Bitcoin payment network does not offer strong privacy protections. The main idea behind Zerocoin is to place anonymity technology into the Bitcoin network itself. This is substantially different from previous anonymization technologies such as “laundries”, since Zerocoin does not rely on a trusted centralized party that can fail or become corrupted.

[tjohej]

By the way, here's the main thread:
"Zerocoin: Anonymous Distributed E-Cash from Bitcoin"

Won't this slow down the Bitcoin network 10 times+? I've read that zero knowledge proofs may in practice take a huge amount of time to verify, in contrast to digital signatures that are verified so far in the Bitcoin p2p network.

[HostFat]

I suggest you to continue this discussion here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175156.0

I prefer to maintain only italian discussions here