Official Anoncoin Information, FAQ & Description thread. I2P/Tor explained [Mod]

[eddlow]

AnonCoin seems to be interesting. I'll look into it. Do you think it could be a successful coin?

[niteglider]

AnonCoin seems to be interesting. I'll look into it. Do you think it could be a successful coin?

I think it almost has to be, as long as the devs stick with it and follow through. 

It's five times as rare as bitcoin, and has the potential to restore privacy in online purchases.

I expect ANC to be more valuable than BTC in the long term.  Hang on to your ANCs!

[Gnosis-]

Zerocoin update!

Hello all, I am Gnosis, the new member of the Anoncoin team; I will be implementing Zerocoin in Anoncoin.  Since an interested party has chosen to support this development financially, I will be able spend a lot more of my time on this.  Expect a release for testing Zerocoin sometime in March!

First of all, I wanted to clear up any confusion with respect to Matthew Green and the other Zerocoin project members.   The "new" Zerocoin, called "Zerocash", is based on completely different cryptography than the "old" Zerocoin (I will be implementing the old one).  The Zerocoin project has essentially abandoned their previous idea in favor of Zerocash, and expect to release both the paper and the coin in late May.

We are very grateful for the excellent work of the Zerocoin people in developing the original Zerocoin, however they have apparently chosen to ignore our communications, for unknown reasons.  Fortunately, I have the knowledge needed to implement this without their help. 

It is reasonable to ask why we are working on implementing the old Zerocoin when the cryptographers responsible for it are working on their own alt-coin implementing a new idea.  There are two reasons: 1) there is no way of knowing for sure that this new Zerocash coin will be released on time, or will work correctly, and there is strong demand for a truly anonymous crypto-currency ASAP; and 2) the new Zerocash may be fatally dependent on a trustworthy party for setting up the initial parameters, as is suggested by my readings about zkSNARKs.  It is an incredible stroke of luck that a workaround exists to this problem for the old Zerocoin (so-called "RSA UFOs", which I am working on at present), and it is likely that no workaround exists for Zerocash.

[haggis]

Why did the devs of the old Zerocoin abondon their idea? In case of a lack of security it wouldn't be a smart idea to adopt it into ANC, is it?

[Geenstijl]

Anoncoin on BTC38! plz

[geekz]

This is awesome!

Zerocoin update!
  Expect a release for testing Zerocoin sometime in March!

[FallingKnife]

I've accumulated a stake at recent prices and intend to buy a more if it should go lower. There's a lot of reason to love anoncoin at these prices.

- It's completely undervalued.
- At just 4.2 million coins max, placing anoncoin into a "rare" coin category (<5 million), an increasingly attractive altcoin niche (as btg and uno have proven recently).
- The devs have faithfully stayed with this coin since it's launch. They are active and communicative. Some coins (like astrocoin) the devs are gone within weeks of launch; anoncoin devs have demonstrated their commitment and maturity, withstanding the usual flames/hate/noobs that drive other teams to drugs.
- A direction for development as been articulated for anoncoin.
- Major improvements are planned for release, according to communication from the dev team. This will cause people to take a second look.
- Anoncoin is contributing to the state of the art of anonymous participation in a public p2p value transfer network; this work is open source and will benefit the entire crypto community. So what? It means that this project is important, not the usual yac.
- The devs were prescient in anticipating the need for this kind of approach to crypto, as Russia and other countries are proving now in real time.
- many recent coin launches have been only about the pre-mine and take no meaningful stand whatsoever, anoncoin has put themselves in squarely into the discussion about your privacy and anonymity -- this is clearly a mission, and not cheap a pump & dump scheme.
- There is an active community of supporters, miners, pools.
- This coin is vetted and tested in the real world; it's a known quantity, not a risky p&d scheme
- Anoncoin is liquid, listed on the immensely important Cryptsy exchange, and others.

This coin is set to explode, and I want to be part of that. I'm in at .003 an I expect to ride Anoncoin to .03 and beyond, and lend my support along the way.

This is a special coin, limited mintage, great dev team, important mission, and now we can buy in at a great price.  All this coin needs is a bit of good news, and people will quickly see that in a world of 200+ altcoins, this one stands out.

[Gnosis-]

Why did the devs of the old Zerocoin abondon their idea? In case of a lack of security it wouldn't be a smart idea to adopt it into ANC, is it?

It's not a lack of security. In fact, in the original Zerocoin paper, they proved that the difficulty of forging coins or de-anonymizing coin spends depends on standard cryptographic hardness assumptions.  In other words, no easier to break than breaking RSA or Diffie-Hellman with suitable key lengths.

They abandoned it because of the size of Zerocoin spend transactions, mainly.

I think it is a good idea to adopt this into ANC because I have a BitTorrent-like idea for dealing with the size of spend transactions that should make this a non-issue; and because the new Zerocash has potentially insoluble trusted party dependency, which is contrary to the decentralized and trustless nature of crypto-currencies.

Also, it is not possible to integrate Zerocash into ANC even if we wanted to, since they have said they will not release the paper on it until ~May 18.

[theskillzdatklls]

Is there any site around offering this coin with any level of volume? Cryptsy and vircurex seem worthless.

[sparta_cuss]

Can someone explain for the non-programmers/non-cryptographers what is the difference between Anoncoin and Darkcoin, please?

[CoinHoarder]

Can someone explain for the non-programmers/non-cryptographers what is the difference between Anoncoin and Darkcoin, please?

Darkcoin plans to use "CoinJoin": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0

Anoncoin plans to use Zerocoin: http://zerocoin.org/

I'm not sure on which is more anonymous.. I think we should start a debate thread perhaps.

[dapper3]

Can someone explain for the non-programmers/non-cryptographers what is the difference between Anoncoin and Darkcoin, please?

Darkcoin plans to use "CoinJoin": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0

Anoncoin plans to use Zerocoin: http://zerocoin.org/

I'm not sure on which is more anonymous.. I think we should start a debate thread perhaps.

Yes, please. That would be an interesting read.

[meeh]

Can someone explain for the non-programmers/non-cryptographers what is the difference between Anoncoin and Darkcoin, please?

Darkcoin plans to use "CoinJoin": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0

Anoncoin plans to use Zerocoin: http://zerocoin.org/

I'm not sure on which is more anonymous.. I think we should start a debate thread perhaps.

Yes, please. That would be an interesting read.

I can't find a coin named darkcoin. Just a preannounce.

Anyway, Anoncoin plans both. Including i2pd built-in.

[niteglider]

Can someone explain for the non-programmers/non-cryptographers what is the difference between Anoncoin and Darkcoin, please?

Darkcoin plans to use "CoinJoin": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0

Anoncoin plans to use Zerocoin: http://zerocoin.org/

I'm not sure on which is more anonymous.. I think we should start a debate thread perhaps.

Yes, please. That would be an interesting read.

I can't find a coin named darkcoin. Just a preannounce.

Anyway, Anoncoin plans both. Including i2pd built-in.

So, just to be clear.... Anoncoin is going to go forward with protocols to protect privacy rather than create another digital coin to do so, right?

[meeh]

So, just to be clear.... Anoncoin is going to go forward with protocols to protect privacy rather than create another digital coin to do so, right?

Yes we will not create a new coin, but implement in current.

[Gnosis-]

Can someone explain for the non-programmers/non-cryptographers what is the difference between Anoncoin and Darkcoin, please?

Darkcoin plans to use "CoinJoin": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0

Anoncoin plans to use Zerocoin: http://zerocoin.org/

I'm not sure on which is more anonymous.. I think we should start a debate thread perhaps.

CoinJoin has questionable anonymity compared to Zerocoin.  The reason is that with CoinJoin, two or more users must somehow partner up and forge a transaction together.  They communicate over a secure channel to do this.  The coins are only mixed among these "partners."  Picking partners you can trust is a significant obstacle: how can you know that your partners will "forget" the mixing that happened?  One may try to repeat this 10 times with randomly chosen partners, but how can you know that your partners are not all just sock puppets of one malicious entity (on an anonymous network, it is trivial to create as many fake users as you want[1])?  If that is the case, then your efforts are in vain.

Compare this with Zerocoin, where you put your coins in an accumulator, and they are mixed with the coins of all users who have put coins into that accumulator, since the beginning of Zerocoin.  There would be a different accumulator for different denominations of Anoncoins (1, 5, 10, 50 ANC, etc.).

To put it simply, the more users' coins your coins are mixed with, the more anonymity you have.

I cannot speak to Darkcoin's implementation (or planned implementation) of CoinJoin since I cannot seem to find any specs or code on their Github or their site.  If anyone knows, please point me to them.

Notes:

[1] Otherwise known as a Sybil attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

[eduffield]

Can someone explain for the non-programmers/non-cryptographers what is the difference between Anoncoin and Darkcoin, please?

Darkcoin plans to use "CoinJoin": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0

Anoncoin plans to use Zerocoin: http://zerocoin.org/

I'm not sure on which is more anonymous.. I think we should start a debate thread perhaps.

CoinJoin has questionable anonymity compared to Zerocoin.  The reason is that with CoinJoin, two or more users must somehow partner up and forge a transaction together.  They communicate over a secure channel to do this.  The coins are only mixed among these "partners."  Picking partners you can trust is a significant obstacle: how can you know that your partners will "forget" the mixing that happened?  One may try to repeat this 10 times with randomly chosen partners, but how can you know that your partners are not all just sock puppets of one malicious entity (on an anonymous network, it is trivial to create as many fake users as you want[1])?  If that is the case, then your efforts are in vain.

Compare this with Zerocoin, where you put your coins in an accumulator, and they are mixed with the coins of all users who have put coins into that accumulator, since the beginning of Zerocoin.  There would be a different accumulator for different denominations of Anoncoins (1, 5, 10, 50 ANC, etc.).

To put it simply, the more users' coins your coins are mixed with, the more anonymity you have.

I cannot speak to Darkcoin's implementation (or planned implementation) of CoinJoin since I cannot seem to find any specs or code on their Github or their site.  If anyone knows, please point me to them.

Notes:

[1] Otherwise known as a Sybil attack: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

I replied here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg5282966#msg5282966

[sparta_cuss]

Excellent interview. I'm not technical, and this is exactly the kind of explanation that makes sense to me.

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/02/24/interview-anoncoin-developer-speaks-zerocoin-implementation/
 

[meeh]

My updates on the Zerocoin progress: https://sigterm.no/blog/6/

[meeh]

Anoncoin is now available in PPA and Debian repository!

PPA (Ubuntu only):
https://launchpad.net/~anoncoin/+archive/anoncoin

Anoncoin has also been added to the I2P Debian/Ubuntu repository, URLs for your release could be found here
http://deb.i2p2.no/

Many thanks to KillYourTV from the I2P team for this!

Also, Gnosis has spoken more about the Zerocoin implementation:
https://pay.reddit.com/r/ZeroCoin/comments/1zxw8z/more_details_about_zerocoininanoncoin/