[PRE-ANN] Manta - DAG & zkSNARKs - Fast, Fee-less, Private Cryptocurrency

[Sam123]

This is now the third or fourth privacy focused fork off RaiBlocks. And just like all that came before this one, there's no information about the developers, no white paper, no anything really. I'm all for announcing a coin before it's released, but common practice in the industry now is releasing the white paper with the announcement, and also listing all people working on the project along with their past work history and experience. Without this it just comes across a bit shady, especially when your're asking for donations right out of the gate.

I'd gladly make a donation here, but you need to release your identities, and I'm urging everyone that's donating regardless to proceed with extreme caution here. Many people donated to Stone, only to have nothing come from it and no communication from the developers.

If you release your identities, and drop a white paper, I'll have my donation in your XRB wallet immediately. Release a beta wallet and open the faucet to start actually collecting the coins and I'll go HEAVY. But until then this just feels like smoke and mirrors and projects like these are really starting to put a damper on RaiBlocks core.

For the sake of being optimistic here, you guys should consider releasing a newsletter of some sort. One where you can provide progress as you go.. Show us your work, don't tell. Consider creating an open Github repository so people can actually see the progress you're making with the code. If you release your id's and open the faucet, you can notify your followers through the newsletter. Or even a Medium account with regular updates... Just more information is needed in general.

Hey Cawfee, we appreciate the constructive criticism and look to answer your questions properly.

As for why we made a PRE-ANN post, we initially weren't going to make our initial post till mid-February, though seeing other projects pop up (though their legitimacy is questionable), we decided to just get our name out there as seniority is incredibly value within the crypto community, with Bitcoin itself being a prime example. The reason we added the option to donate was to allow early adopters to get in while allowing us to achieve some capital to expand our dev team and such.

In regards to identities, we do plan on revealing ourselves at the time of MANTA being fully released. We do hope to impress people such as yourself with the release of our whitepaper in mid-February and look forward to releasing our game-changing currency.

Sincerely,

Brian

You don't want to release initial draft of the Whitepaper
You don't want to release any source code
You don't want release your identity  
But at least use Escrow
Thanks

[MantaCurrency]

How does Faucet distribution work exactly?

We plan on it being done through Captcha's, similar to the distribution of RaiBlocks.

This is now the third or fourth privacy focused fork off RaiBlocks. And just like all that came before this one, there's no information about the developers, no white paper, no anything really. I'm all for announcing a coin before it's released, but common practice in the industry now is releasing the white paper with the announcement, and also listing all people working on the project along with their past work history and experience. Without this it just comes across a bit shady, especially when your're asking for donations right out of the gate.

I'd gladly make a donation here, but you need to release your identities, and I'm urging everyone that's donating regardless to proceed with extreme caution here. Many people donated to Stone, only to have nothing come from it and no communication from the developers.

If you release your identities, and drop a white paper, I'll have my donation in your XRB wallet immediately. Release a beta wallet and open the faucet to start actually collecting the coins and I'll go HEAVY. But until then this just feels like smoke and mirrors and projects like these are really starting to put a damper on RaiBlocks core.

For the sake of being optimistic here, you guys should consider releasing a newsletter of some sort. One where you can provide progress as you go.. Show us your work, don't tell. Consider creating an open Github repository so people can actually see the progress you're making with the code. If you release your id's and open the faucet, you can notify your followers through the newsletter. Or even a Medium account with regular updates... Just more information is needed in general.

Hey Cawfee, we appreciate the constructive criticism and look to answer your questions properly.

As for why we made a PRE-ANN post, we initially weren't going to make our initial post till mid-February, though seeing other projects pop up (though their legitimacy is questionable), we decided to just get our name out there as seniority is incredibly value within the crypto community, with Bitcoin itself being a prime example. The reason we added the option to donate was to allow early adopters to get in while allowing us to achieve some capital to expand our dev team and such.

In regards to identities, we do plan on revealing ourselves at the time of MANTA being fully released. We do hope to impress people such as yourself with the release of our whitepaper in mid-February and look forward to releasing our game-changing currency.

Sincerely,

Brian

You don't want to release initial draft of the Whitepaper
You don't want to release any source code
You don't want release your identity 
But at least use Escrow
Thanks

We have our timeline set for releasing our whitepaper, code, and identities, and certainly want to do so when the timing is appropriate. As for the question of Escrow, the funds are being used exclusively for development which is why we opted for direct contributions.

[shavignan]

you have not update the donation list in the link? you said it will be updated frequently?

[MantaCurrency]

you have not update the donation list in the link? you said it will be updated frequently?

We've just updated it 

[roybatty1982]

Logo design has changed. What do you intend to express with it what is behind the design?

[xibeijan]

Very interesting concept.  I am following this project.

[MantaCurrency]

MantaCurrency, hello!

AzulikProject says that

At this stage we confirm that Colin's words were right, it's not possible to apply privacy to XRB as we kown it today ( zkSNARKs).

Adding the privacy feature is harder than it may look, simply applying a ZK-SNARKs protocol (the underlying protocol of Zcash) would make the transaction time increase a lot.

What do you think about this?

While it's not possible to simply slap on zkSNARKs and have it work at the speed of RaiBlocks, with our unique implementation, we've made it possible to have 10-15 second transaction speeds utilizing distributed ledgers and zkSNARKs.

Logo design has changed. What do you intend to express with it what is behind the design?

We intended to convey stealth and speed with the dark tones, sleek design, and geometric outlines while outlining shape of the Manta Ray which is what our currency was named after.

[IcemanVan]

Please excuse noob question but are there any other ways besides donations and faucets that early investors can get in on Manta? I’ve never used a faucet before as a means of getting coins.

All the best with your new project devs!

Thanks

[t4tic]

When do you guys are going to create a Telegram or Discord team for ANN and progression reports?

[eli_lyd1]

I have found they are using raiblocks mixin.

Just look at:

https://raiblocks.net/account/index.php?acc=xrb_3spms1mkp84ij5o8zjkrhh7jk4ntd87jzfrk4raei3t79afxowgz91xadpsz
https://raiblocks.net/account/index.php?acc=xrb_3en5nbhsq7jw698htajgzaz4ee3oh3agjb85dwokoygrd4gqczrpu1sfb5zy

Can you explain why you guys are using raiblocks mixin.

[Cawfee]

I have found they are using raiblocks mixin.

Just look at:

https://raiblocks.net/account/index.php?acc=xrb_3spms1mkp84ij5o8zjkrhh7jk4ntd87jzfrk4raei3t79afxowgz91xadpsz
https://raiblocks.net/account/index.php?acc=xrb_3en5nbhsq7jw698htajgzaz4ee3oh3agjb85dwokoygrd4gqczrpu1sfb5zy

Can you explain why you guys are using raiblocks mixin.

Care to explain to us laymen, what a mixin is and what it's normally used for?

[derickonfire]

MantaCurrency, hello!

AzulikProject says that

At this stage we confirm that Colin's words were right, it's not possible to apply privacy to XRB as we kown it today ( zkSNARKs).

Adding the privacy feature is harder than it may look, simply applying a ZK-SNARKs protocol (the underlying protocol of Zcash) would make the transaction time increase a lot.

What do you think about this?

While it's not possible to simply slap on zkSNARKs and have it work at the speed of RaiBlocks, with our unique implementation, we've made it possible to have 10-15 second transaction speeds utilizing distributed ledgers and zkSNARKs.

Logo design has changed. What do you intend to express with it what is behind the design?

We intended to convey stealth and speed with the dark tones, sleek design, and geometric outlines while outlining shape of the Manta Ray which is what our currency was named after.

I mean, that is cool you've done that - but it seems unworthy of a coin when things like PIVX can do 50/tps.

[MantaCurrency]

Please excuse noob question but are there any other ways besides donations and faucets that early investors can get in on Manta? I’ve never used a faucet before as a means of getting coins.

All the best with your new project devs!

Thanks

The two initial ways will be through donations and faucets, although we do plan on getting on exchanges after MANTA is distributed.

MantaCurrency, hello!

AzulikProject says that

At this stage we confirm that Colin's words were right, it's not possible to apply privacy to XRB as we kown it today ( zkSNARKs).

Adding the privacy feature is harder than it may look, simply applying a ZK-SNARKs protocol (the underlying protocol of Zcash) would make the transaction time increase a lot.

What do you think about this?

While it's not possible to simply slap on zkSNARKs and have it work at the speed of RaiBlocks, with our unique implementation, we've made it possible to have 10-15 second transaction speeds utilizing distributed ledgers and zkSNARKs.

Logo design has changed. What do you intend to express with it what is behind the design?

We intended to convey stealth and speed with the dark tones, sleek design, and geometric outlines while outlining shape of the Manta Ray which is what our currency was named after.

I mean, that is cool you've done that - but it seems unworthy of a coin when things like PIVX can do 50/tps.

The 10-15 second transaction time is the for the end user, while our network will allow 1750 tp/s. Hope this helps!

[boudesj]

As a donator, I am also curious about a response concerning the mixing...

[MantaCurrency]

As a donator, I am also curious about a response concerning the mixing...

Hey boudesj, we simply sold off a small amount to cover some costs.

Best Regards,

Brian

[ALWASA]

MantaCurrency, hello!

AzulikProject says that

At this stage we confirm that Colin's words were right, it's not possible to apply privacy to XRB as we kown it today ( zkSNARKs).

Adding the privacy feature is harder than it may look, simply applying a ZK-SNARKs protocol (the underlying protocol of Zcash) would make the transaction time increase a lot.

What do you think about this?

I think it is good becaise it can actually help us to have an accessible process anytime and eventually many would become interested about this matter.

[MantaCurrency]

Hello everyone, we're just giving a quick update with our progress on MANTA!

We've been doing initial network and transaction tests and the results are promising, we've hit our target transaction speeds of 1750 tx/s and look to test more on an even higher stress test. Our implementation of privacy via the sub-currency and zkSNARKs has also proven to obfuscate well and is doing what we hoped.

We plan on having a testnet in mid-February for the select individuals to test and get a feel for it, we'll have more details on this soon.

Best Regards,

MANTA Dev Team

Brian, Jason, and Nikhil

[sqbit]

We've been doing initial network and transaction tests and the results are promising, we've hit our target transaction speeds of 1750 tx/s and look to test more on an even higher stress test. Our implementation of privacy via the sub-currency and zkSNARKs has also proven to obfuscate well and is doing what we hoped.
We plan on having a testnet in mid-February for the select individuals to test and get a feel for it, we'll have more details on this soon.

Thanks for the update.

[Real_Unhooked]

As an early investor I too would like to be a part of it. Please let me know how do I get on this list.

[MantaCurrency]

Hello everyone, we're just giving a quick update with our progress on MANTA!

We've been doing initial network and transaction tests and the results are promising, we've hit our target transaction speeds of 1750 tx/s and look to test more on an even higher stress test. Our implementation of privacy via the sub-currency and zkSNARKs has also proven to obfuscate well and is doing what we hoped.

We plan on having a testnet in mid-February for the select individuals to test and get a feel for it, we'll have more details on this soon.

Best Regards,

MANTA Dev Team

Brian, Jason, and Nikhil

What do you mean by select individuals? I'd like to be a part of it if possible.

As an early investor I too would like to be a part of it. Please let me know how do I get on this list.

Our current plan is to allow all donators to the test-net, and we'll message all donators at the appropriate time with instructions for testing.

We'll also allow anyone with sufficient post history on bitcointalk to join the test-net, simply reply to the thread if you're interested.