Anonymity, Security and Privacy: Anonymous Cryptocurrency Enhancement Comparsion

[SafeCoins]

SuperCoin has optional privacy settings. It has been established 4 years, and uses its own tech.

https://supercoin.nl/

Worth noting in an exhaustive list.

Really good point.  I've added it, it seems to lack current development (please corrrect me if I'm wrong) but you have to admire the community rising it from the ashes.   As a pioneer in Multisig and Encrypted Messaging, it definitely has a place on here and a little developement could take it a long way still.

[1714942616]

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[1714942616]

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[SafeCoins]

IOTA
- DAG
- Quantum Resistant with Winternitz OTS+

As an aside, what's the reasoning for having DAG and PoS as security features?

Thank you jackalyst,

I certainly haven't forgotten Iota as one of the top coins out there.   But to answer your question, DAG and POS on their own do nothing to protect user privacy.   However, IMHO, when layered on top of Anonymous/Private cryptocurrency, they provide decentralized (POS) and focused (DAG) strength to the security of the Anonymous network.

I am not sure if I should add Iota to this list yet.  I've heard rumours that it may include Anonymity features in the near future.  Can this be substantiated?   If there is a legitimate near term roadmap for this, I would add it.

[JWKY]

good and quite detailed list
a big thumb up for you

another thread for me to follow more often for my knowledge

just wanna know how about HUG, Semux ?

[Febo]

XMR might be in danger if this new coins would make it on the top light,seems xspec is growing fast as ever.

Monero will never be in danger of anything. Any Monero clone or other coin can do whatever they want but they will never pace with amount Monero development. Monero have 300 contributors to the code, well actually we will soon hear the 2017 report. Developers are all that matters. Other coins can only copy past if they can at all.  They are more then welcomed, because the more the merrier.

[TSVHoff]

Good Thread!

In regards to CloakCoin, i just sent you what should be checked on the spreadsheet. Its on CloakCoin thread, told by the developers themselves.

plus, CloakCoin is since last day, fully OpenSourced, and uses its own tech ENIGMA (it didnt fork from zksnakrs, or other copycats)

Tech people and Devs are digging in the code that was uploaded last day to github and are appearing in Cloak Chat and telegram to be in contact with the team developers.


More info here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=823143.9780

Thank you TSVHoff,

I didn't realize how much effort had recently been put into this, fantastic news.   I've updated the matrix accordingly and thank you very much again for the info.

Super,

just one thing, Cloak doesnt have Masternodes. ENIGMA is like a new way to do anon transactions.

The same way Spectrcoin has OBFS4, CloakCoin has since last day, ENIGMA, which is a new feature on the anon crypto world. Its now being audited by a security IT company.

also in the matrix "Enhacement", should be "OpenSource - Code Released"

 

[slb]

You should remove Multisig transactions from Bytecoin. The low level code was removed in the last version

[Bjorn4Bjorn]

I'm surprised there are no quantum resistant privacy coins.  someone needs to get on that.

[2dogs]

The following is an updated attempt to assess and evaluate:

  1.   Enhancements/Protocols:
  
    a. Anonymous Capabilities / Anonyimity
    b. Privacy
    c) Security

  2.   The coins that currently implement these features


Every will be made to assume none of these coins are a complete solution (yet).  Not because they're bad, but because a lot of the other comparison threads out there have been polarized toward one coin as the "solution with all the best end to end features".  

I would really appreciate your thoughts and input on this work in progress, so that together, we can make it even more complicated and unreadable.




Anonymous, Privacy, and Security features are clearly all related to one another, yet in my mind are distinct:
  
Anonymous features ultimately aim for the holding and transacting of a commodity which both requires and releases zero identifying information.
              Buy a pizza.  No receipt, no exchange of information, no record of the pizza or you.
                    There are obvious legal implications to this, causing it to be a "dark" feature.
                          However, this slander assumes that the governing body itself is not "dark", or corrupt.   In many places in the world, Anonymity is a matter of life and death.
                          As such, Anonymity is a double edged sword, aiding both sinister and altruistic efforts.
                          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)
              

Privacy features aim to give ownership of identifying information to individuals/entities who hold or transact a commodity.
              Buy a pizza, there's a record of it but that record is for you (and potentially the pizza shop) only.
                    There is a legal arguement for privacy features.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_law

Security:  If you can hack the thing, you need not worry about Anonymity and Privacy.  Those are out.



Some other attempts at this:  

Full list of anonymous coins
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1025878.0

 [DASH/XDN/XMR/SDC] Comparison between the most known anonymous coins
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=985039.0

Privacy getting important: Verge or Spectrecoin or DeepOnion??
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2397519.0;all

Which cryptocurrency is most anonymous?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2157374.0


https://zcoin.io/zcoins-privacy-tec


Wondering about this one:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2525344.0

Excellent work. 

May I suggest Byteball for inclustion on the list?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1608859.0;topicseen

[allcryptominer]

There's also a new crypto in the making BTCP - Bitcoin Private. Haven't studied the features more then it is a hard fork of BTC and ZCL. Would be great if you could list it in the list with its fetures as well. Or maybe it dosen't bring any new tech just a bitcoin with zk-snarks.

By the way, great job and initiative with the comparison.

[SafeCoins]

Super,

just one thing, Cloak doesnt have Masternodes. ENIGMA is like a new way to do anon transactions.

The same way Spectrcoin has OBFS4, CloakCoin has since last day, ENIGMA, which is a new feature on the anon crypto world. Its now being audited by a security IT company.

also in the matrix "Enhacement", should be "OpenSource - Code Released"

Thank you very much TSVHoff, we're getting there!

A couple clarifications to the best of my knowledge:

OBFS4 is not something created by Spectrecoin, rather it is a TOR network creation:  https://godoc.org/git.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/obfs4.git/transports/obfs4

    It is a TOR obfusciation protocol, part of TOR's pluggable transports, and is likely a desireable integration for any TOR-focused coin.
  
    Spectrecoin just appears to be the first to integrate with it.   I suspect others will follow, and no attempt was made to highlight "special XSPEC tech".


Masternodes:   These are not necessarily evil.   They have well known strengths and weaknesses.
               A proper implementation of masternodes will leverage the strengths and mitigate for their weaknesses.   It must be done well or not at all, IMHO.


Back to Enigma:   I will admit, I am not overly familiar, but after a quick read of the whitepaper I get as quoted below.  Which, to me, sounds very similar to masternodes.   If I am mistaken, by all means I would love to be corrected.  The categorization is not meant to slander nor pump Cloakcoin, it is just an attempt to describe what it does.   Which I am very happy to improve upon (while keeping the comparison chart as simple as possible).

P.S...I have changed the "enhancement" to show that open source code has been released, thank you!  Someone needs to tell google lol.

thank you

https://www.cloakcoin.com/resources/CloakCoin_ENIGMA_Whitepaper_v1.0.pdf
    

Enigma Cloaking Requests
When a user wishes to send a Cloaked Enigma transaction, they elect a series of Enigma nodes
(with a high enough Enigma balance) and request their assistance in cloaking. A Enigma node
can choose to assist in cloaking and send an acceptance response to the requester to indicate
this. If a Enigma node declines to participate in cloaking or does not respond in a timely manner,
an alternate Enigma node is elected and contacted. DDoS (distributed denial of service)
protection will blacklist any misbehaving nodes for the remainder of the session. A node is
deemed to be misbehaving if it repeatedly refuses to sign a Enigma transaction or refuses to
relay Enigma messages. Enigma cloaking nodes use an Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman key
exchange (ECDH) to derive a shared secret with the Enigma initiating node, which is used to
generate a shared secret key for symmetric RSA-256 data encryption between a cloaking node
and the sender node.

[jackalyst]

Not sure if you want me to reply here or if there's somewhere else I should post this.

QRL
- Quantum Resistance: Yes, at mainnet, XMSS
- Encrypted Messaging: At mainnet, Ephemeral with Dilithium, Kyber (Post Quantum)

Right now QRL is an ERC20 token. However, token migration is happening this month and mainnet is being released next month which will have the above features.

Thank you, I didn't realize it was still a token.   Really looking forward to some of the truly unique features in this one.  I have added both to the roadmap, although I am forced to note that it does not currently appear to have anonymous transactions in it's roadmap  (the encrypted messaging is great news though).

You're going a great job on this matrix. It's completely fair to list these items as roadmap features and I'll update you when we actually launch in February. PoS is also on the roadmap but not slated until the end of year. As it stands, other than secure messaging, we don't aim to be an anonymous coin - so that might be a deciding factor on whether QRL is on the list at all, it's your call.

[s20Merlin]

Really interesting article!!! Thank you for the comparison. I might take a stab at XSPEC and ZCL, both with really low market caps for the potential they have!!

ZCL is pretty much Zcash with 10x less market cap.... becoming bitcoin hardfork as bitcoin private, giving you free coins.

Xspec with amazing tech, low market cap, just hope the devs can deliever on their tech!!

[SafeCoins]

good and quite detailed list
a big thumb up for you

another thread for me to follow more often for my knowledge

just wanna know how about HUG, Semux ?

Thank you JWKY,

I had a look at both, and although interesting, neither appears to have privacy or anonymity enhancements that I can see.  If I am wrong or things change, please keep me updated and I'll do the same

[SafeCoins]

[You're going a great job on this matrix. It's completely fair to list these items as roadmap features and I'll update you when we actually launch in February. PoS is also on the roadmap but not slated until the end of year. As it stands, other than secure messaging, we don't aim to be an anonymous coin - so that might be a deciding factor on whether QRL is on the list at all, it's your call.

Keep me updated for sure, thank you!  I will add POS as a roadmap feature.   It really would be great to have privacy features behind the wall QRL is building, seems like a great fit, so I'll leave it on for now and see how things shake out...  good luck with the launch 

[SafeCoins]

Excellent work. 

May I suggest Byteball for inclustion on the list?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1608859.0;topicseen

Thank you 2dogs!   I had included byteball, but I called it "blackbytes", which maybe is a bit confusing.   Good suggestion.

To keep consistency with other private token solution, I've renamed that row to "Byteball" and put "blackbytes" in the description.

[SafeCoins]

You should remove Multisig transactions from Bytecoin. The low level code was removed in the last version

Thank you slb, I have removed this as suggested (will publish in about 10 min).    Curious, why was this done?   Something to do with the Parity wallet situation?

[SafeCoins]

There's also a new crypto in the making BTCP - Bitcoin Private. Haven't studied the features more then it is a hard fork of BTC and ZCL. Would be great if you could list it in the list with its fetures as well. Or maybe it dosen't bring any new tech just a bitcoin with zk-snarks.

By the way, great job and initiative with the comparison.

Thank you very much for the heads up allcryptominer,

A bit of googling confirms what you've suggested, it is a ZCL fork (and, thus, a Zcash fork).  I can't find anything more about improved features either.

I have added this in the ZCL description for now.

[Queen12]

In my opinion, komodo is the best anonymous token because I have it, HHHH
I hope there will be a better increase in komodo next.

[SafeCoins]

In my opinion, komodo is the best anonymous token because I have it, HHHH
I hope there will be a better increase in komodo next.

Honesty!

Gotta love it

For the record, I do not hold a position in any of these coins, yet I am extremely interested in them.

I believe this puts me in a unique position to evaluate them as fairly as possible.  I will do so until I become biased, and will disclose accordingly.


BTW, Komodo has some really nice features.

[BitcoinOnFire]

Somewhere some people pointed out:
- tor integration is not really needed / does not give anything over what is there in true anon coin
- quantum resistance need is also exaggerated - I read normal sha256 from BTC should be still good enough, and if quantum computers will get really advanced any blockchain can get additional proof. So it's simply not needed now, and if will be - can be added to any coin.
- mixing itself is 1.0 anon tech, ring signatures 2.0, zk-snarks 3.0

I suggest to add some weights what is really important and what matters more, so here for example I would give 100 points to zk-snarks, 10 for ring signatures, 1 point for mixing in terms of anon tech.

If master nodes are also important - can get points in a different category? or just depending on what you appreciate more.

Regarding anon coin KMD is zk-snarks (Zcash fork) with BONUS = 4 important features:
1) jumbler (part of KDM platform) which is mixing between transparent and zero-knowledge addresses, as zk-snarks give protection only between z-addresses, so if you move to transparent all can be linked (from what I understand) and anonimization between transparent and zero-address is missing in pure Zcash
2) dPOW - secures transaction using BTC blockchain notarization
3) 5% APR which is really unique among anon coins
4) wallet (Agama) can be used in lite mode, meaning - you do not need to download full KMD blockchain. Recently the wallet works really nice and quick in lite mode.