[ANN][DASH] Dash (dash.org) | First Self-Funding Self-Governing Crypto Currency

[humanitee]

Thanks for the price advice by the way, picked up a few at .001175

From a practical point, not only will anonymity investors diversify across all the viable options, the best anonymity will be achieved by combining them. Unless each coin is implementing anonymity identically, sending payments from one to the other to the other will create greater privacy.

This is why I said that all anonymity providers are automatically friends. The stronger any of us gets, the stronger we all get as we will be used in combination. At least any sensible anonymity seeker would.

If anyone has ideas on features they want in an DRK -> BTC anonymity bridge, I am definitely open to ideas as it is just in the concept stage now. The current concept is that you send BTC address with payment amount (rounded) in DRK -> bridge -> <tbd process> -> BTC address

I am surprised that nobody has expressed any opinion on being able to send DRK to any place that accepts BTC, effectively getting DRK accepted at all places BTC is accepted, while adding more anonymity to the spend process.

James

Isn't this just a DEX, similar to MasterCoin or Counterparty? It seems like you are reinventing the wheel.

[jl777]

I am glad to see indepth posts on anonymity! This is the DRK thread and while all the GPU mining info is of practical concern, the primary thing about DRK is the anonymity and it will benefit the most from thoughtful discussions. Especially since Evan seems to magically add all the new capabilities each week

All these txout and txin issues are avoided if the spending step goes through a BTC bridge, with proper intermediate steps. From a practical standpoint, it adds a new blockchain that needs to be correlated. Theoretically, not much, but practically speaking another dataset that needs to be processed. There can be LTC bridges and other altcoin bridges too.

All the inputs into the BTC bridge will have the same denomination, then they all get deposited into a single account. In NXT accounts are just a single number. So this allows sending from the merged acct different amounts to the BTC destination address.

You might say, "Wait!" the BTC destinations can be knapsack analyzed with the original DRK sends into the BTC bridge. While this is true if people didnt send the same amounts, it can be avoided by having the change just kept in the BTC bridge until the next transaction. This way, all DRK sends coming in are of the same amount and I dont see a way to correlate the BTC receiving address. Also, there will be a DRK to BTC conversion at market prices and by slightly randomizing this conversion price it will add more noise.

James

Look at my diagram above and give me your thoughts, if you don't mind.

Why wouldn't that alone suffice? With a denomination pool to combine all smaller inputs into larger inputs, you effectively have complete anonymity. Evan has indicated he would like to work on anonymous transaction broadcasting further down the road. TOR is already in the client, it's just not on by default. With my diagram + TOR I can't see any possible way a user could be discovered.

First off, I dont want to rely on TOR. It is under surveilance and attack by the TLAs. Anybody that uses it is automatically added to a database of people to be investigated. If you dont believe me, just put yourself in the shoes of the guy tasked with finding people using the internet for bad stuff. What would you do, ignore any IP address that connects to TOR or log it for further analysis.

So, even assuming TOR is not compromised yet (it is a giant target), if usage of TOR can be detected (I am pretty sure it can), then you are flagged, followed, investigated. Why paint a giant glowing neon sign on yourself?

I STRONGLY discourage using TOR as part of the solution, unless you can be sure to do it from an already encrypted connection without any connection to your normal acct. So, maybe from Starbucks wifi, sure use TOR, still with https totally cracked, any assumptions about privacy is probably wrong...

I have not fully understood the dataflow implications of your diagram, so hey that is a good start
However, the fundamental problem is that you have txout -> txin -> txout, this creates a direct chain, yes diluted by the number of chains at any given time, but there is timing analysis that can be done, even if knapsacking is removed and I am not certain all knapsacking is removed with your approach.

As to the question of whether your approach improves things or not, it probably does, but the question becomes one of risk/reward. How much does it improve it versus the risk of implementation issues. The more complicated DRK send becomes, the more likely for there to be an unforseen attack at the protocol level. Remember the XCP incident. Very scary.

For DRK send, I prefer the simplest implementation that gets Aunt Flo off our backs. I suggest adding "super DRK send" that will build on the basic DRK send. This way, we can get DRK send out of beta and released, that is kind of important. Adding more complexity now will certainly delay things and at worst exposes use to unforseen attacks.

There could be layers and layers of DRK sending, preferably each of them independent so if there is a problem with one, it wont be a total disaster. By having one super complicated DRK send, it increases the chances of exploit or bug and if it is a bad on, the entire thing explodes.

Compartmentalize, modularize, diversify.

James

[jl777]

Thanks for the price advice by the way, picked up a few at .001175

From a practical point, not only will anonymity investors diversify across all the viable options, the best anonymity will be achieved by combining them. Unless each coin is implementing anonymity identically, sending payments from one to the other to the other will create greater privacy.

This is why I said that all anonymity providers are automatically friends. The stronger any of us gets, the stronger we all get as we will be used in combination. At least any sensible anonymity seeker would.

If anyone has ideas on features they want in an DRK -> BTC anonymity bridge, I am definitely open to ideas as it is just in the concept stage now. The current concept is that you send BTC address with payment amount (rounded) in DRK -> bridge -> <tbd process> -> BTC address

I am surprised that nobody has expressed any opinion on being able to send DRK to any place that accepts BTC, effectively getting DRK accepted at all places BTC is accepted, while adding more anonymity to the spend process.

James

Isn't this just a DEX, similar to MasterCoin or Counterparty? It seems like you are reinventing the wheel.

I am building features on top of the NXT core, one of these features is Asset Exchange, which is similar to Mastercoin, Counterpary and Ripple. Details are different, Mastercoin and Counterparty build on BTC blockchain, NXT blockchain is separate and goes at 1 minute, instead of 10 minutes. Ripple is faster (5 seconds), but it is Ripple.

The idea of the BTC bridge is to automatically be able to spend DRK for BTC denominated purchases. So instead of manually depositing DRK, placing an order, waiting for it to get filled, sending out BTC, it is all automated. I think it is quite useful and now that Ripples BTC bridge is out of commission, I am accumulating a bunch of XRP I cant do anything with. I used to just zap them out the BTC bridge.

I am not aware of any anonynimity BTC bridge for DRK. If there is, I would like to know more about it.

James

[humanitee]

First off, I dont want to rely on TOR. It is under surveilance and attack by the TLAs. Anybody that uses it is automatically added to a database of people to be investigated. If you dont believe me, just put yourself in the shoes of the guy tasked with finding people using the internet for bad stuff. What would you do, ignore any IP address that connects to TOR or log it for further analysis.

So, even assuming TOR is not compromised yet (it is a giant target), if usage of TOR can be detected (I am pretty sure it can), then you are flagged, followed, investigated. Why paint a giant glowing neon sign on yourself?

I STRONGLY discourage using TOR as part of the solution, unless you can be sure to do it from an already encrypted connection without any connection to your normal acct. So, maybe from Starbucks wifi, sure use TOR, still with https totally cracked, any assumptions about privacy is probably wrong...

I have not fully understood the dataflow implications of your diagram, so hey that is a good start
However, the fundamental problem is that you have txout -> txin -> txout, this creates a direct chain, yes diluted by the number of chains at any given time, but there is timing analysis that can be done, even if knapsacking is removed and I am not certain all knapsacking is removed with your approach.

As to the question of whether your approach improves things or not, it probably does, but the question becomes one of risk/reward. How much does it improve it versus the risk of implementation issues. The more complicated DRK send becomes, the more likely for there to be an unforseen attack at the protocol level. Remember the XCP incident. Very scary.

For DRK send, I prefer the simplest implementation that gets Aunt Flo off our backs. I suggest adding "super DRK send" that will build on the basic DRK send. This way, we can get DRK send out of beta and released, that is kind of important. Adding more complexity now will certainly delay things and at worst exposes use to unforseen attacks.

There could be layers and layers of DRK sending, preferably each of them independent so if there is a problem with one, it wont be a total disaster. By having one super complicated DRK send, it increases the chances of exploit or bug and if it is a bad on, the entire thing explodes.

Compartmentalize, modularize, diversify.

James

Ok, let's throw out TOR for now then, just for the sake of your argument. I'm going to assume Evan builds an encrypted channel that bounces broadcasting through multiple nodes, fixing that.

There is no tx out -> tx in -> tx out going on, at least as far as chained transactions (which I think you are describing). Do you know what stealth addresses are? All those addresses would look totally random to anyone tracing them. Here's a link in case you don't know about them.
http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/31813471/

The only time you could identify that there was a central owner is if you combined all the addresses into a larger address or sent them all to some other address. That is why you need a denomination pool, to recombine for higher denomination DarkSends. You would still know all those addresses belonged to some central user, but after recombining in a denomination pool with 1000 other people, who sent what? And where did they send it?

Thanks for the price advice by the way, picked up a few at .001175

From a practical point, not only will anonymity investors diversify across all the viable options, the best anonymity will be achieved by combining them. Unless each coin is implementing anonymity identically, sending payments from one to the other to the other will create greater privacy.

This is why I said that all anonymity providers are automatically friends. The stronger any of us gets, the stronger we all get as we will be used in combination. At least any sensible anonymity seeker would.

If anyone has ideas on features they want in an DRK -> BTC anonymity bridge, I am definitely open to ideas as it is just in the concept stage now. The current concept is that you send BTC address with payment amount (rounded) in DRK -> bridge -> <tbd process> -> BTC address

I am surprised that nobody has expressed any opinion on being able to send DRK to any place that accepts BTC, effectively getting DRK accepted at all places BTC is accepted, while adding more anonymity to the spend process.

James

Isn't this just a DEX, similar to MasterCoin or Counterparty? It seems like you are reinventing the wheel.

I am building features on top of the NXT core, one of these features is Asset Exchange, which is similar to Mastercoin, Counterpary and Ripple. Details are different, Mastercoin and Counterparty build on BTC blockchain, NXT blockchain is separate and goes at 1 minute, instead of 10 minutes. Ripple is faster (5 seconds), but it is Ripple.

The idea of the BTC bridge is to automatically be able to spend DRK for BTC denominated purchases. So instead of manually depositing DRK, placing an order, waiting for it to get filled, sending out BTC, it is all automated. I think it is quite useful and now that Ripples BTC bridge is out of commission, I am accumulating a bunch of XRP I cant do anything with. I used to just zap them out the BTC bridge.

I am not aware of any anonynimity BTC bridge for DRK. If there is, I would like to know more about it.

James

That's cool, I just wanted to make sure you were aware that something similar existed (although not automated, as you point out). I think it would be amazing, it would just take a lot of work. Good luck!

[jl777]

P.S. Please dont feel that I am an anonymity competitor, in the anonymity biz we are all friends as we can help each other achieve better anonymity. Plus I did manage to get a decent amount of DRK mined with my mini server farm before the GPU era

This can not be stressed enough in my mind. Even as in investor, keep in mind that it's pretty easy to bet on all the horses in this race. It's not a zero-sum game, so we can afford to experiment and have a few losing bets

Clearly ANC is a serious coin, but I am confused by TIPS. Their community is a mess, and the dev was MIA, but came back. I used to have some, but I put them in the permanent "losing" category and bailed.

James

[DieCommieScum]

Going to put a run of these together if there's enough interest. If I get 15 orders I can get these to US residents for $23usd (payable in BTC or DRK, can use Moolah for Escrow), non-us residents we just need to figure out a shipping surcharge.

Sizes are up to 4xl

If you want in, shoot me a PM or email me at my handle name @ cointrepid.com

EDIT: Design updated to include website text

UPDATE I've had a few requests from folks in Europe, it seems most European countries would add $10 to the shipping, so shipping to the EU is available for a total of $33 (countries I've checked so far are the UK, Germany, and Belgium)

Canada only adds $5 to the shipping, so for Canadians it would be $28

We're almost at the minimum, just a few more orders needed.

I'm going to start reaching out for shipping information and payments, and will buy a few extra shirts just to get the order in which i'll put up for sale after the fact. Any one else interested in getting in on this buy please PM or email me ASAP.

[AlexGR]

without encryption, a determined attacker can extract at least partial information from every darksend. Even with encryption you still have to worry about timing attacks and knapsacking attacks. Over time higher and higher probabilities will be obtained. However, this is not something an ordinary person would have to worry about.

.....

DRK is the coin that provides anonymity for the ordinary people. So you dont have to worry about your neighbors snooping on your finances. So people wont find out about stuff they have no business finding out about!

Anything that can be done manually can also be automated if it doesn't involve too much human judgement. What I mean by that is that if a determined attacker has a way to tell that A went to B after thorough "investigation" into a transaction, you can't be really certain that this is good enough for the average Joe either. It would seem that it is (using the rationale "ok, who will do this kind of thorough investigation, time after time, for every transaction") but it is not.

As I see it, if the analysis process can be done with a relative degree of confidence, then it's simply a matter of scripting to automate the procedure of understanding one transaction and do it with other transactions. And that will be done without the manual-effort cost concern which would otherwise protect most people, since it will be done automatically.

Once this is done, you'll have the obfuscated blockchain and another site which is running a script and analyzes, in somewhat-realtime (perhaps lagging a few blocks to allow for the mixing to occur), the blockchain transactions for what they really are, rather than their mixing or noise. Imagine the scenario of an alternative block explorer which is de-obfuscating stuff and then assigning a probability percentage for each transaction. If DRK is a smash and it has many transactions, I bet someone will make this kind of "service".

I have to disagree...
The level of anonymity that DRK can achieve, especially if combined with some of my upcoming NXT based services, will require MORE data than is available in the public blockchains.

I'm just throwing ideas around, you can see them more as a thought experiment*, in order to bulletproof the coin.

I am neither a programming expert, nor a cryptography expert and I'm really at a handicap to properly analyze what is going on under the hood. I'm just using algorithmic logic to check whether hints can be assembled to show input/output and pin it down to addresses/individual.

* A coin designer who is more familiar with their coin should ask themselves: If I wanted to track the transactions that go through DarkSend, what would I do? What hints would I use? What automation would I use to sort through all of those hints and make them transparent? If they want to make it NSA-proof like, then they'd have to ask a whole different set of questions, regarding pattern recognition, ip tracking, mass surveillance capabilities etc etc.

Also keep in mind that NXT has no txouts -> txins that creates a lifetime historical chain. That is really the fundamental reason why bitcoin is so transparent.

I think the reason why bitcoin is so transparent is elusive to pretty much everyone in the bitcoin world but I'll give it a go - with a warning attached that what you will read may be near impossible to believe.

Just like the ape evolved to the human by integrating a higher intellect, human will evolve into a new and better species (we are not the end of evolution - we are still evolving). Some say humans will evolve to a techno-organic hybrid (Kurzweil) like Borg but the reality is that humans will integrate their "soul" to become god-humans, making cyborg humans obsolete.

This is "destined" to happen near the end of this century. I say destined because the future is like a gravity center that "pulls" the past to itself (rather than the past building upon itself step-by-step to reach the future - which is how we view it in linear time). At the end (timeline-wise) of that gravity center is the "soul Internet". It is when humans will discover that they are all connected on a soul level where every human soul is a node and that their souls make up an internet, which is what we'd call God.

In order for humans to scientifically discover that internet, there must be some things, like concepts, that they can build upon. The order is something like that: Telegraph => Telephone => Modems => Technological Internet (what we have now) => Mental Internet (where we discover that our minds are interconnected) => Soul Internet (where we discover that our souls are interconnected).

For example, you have the telegraph and you say I discovered the phone, which is like the telegraph, but instead of signals it transmits voice. Then you have the modem which is like the phone but instead of voice, transmits data - and you've reached the internet. And then you'll say "humans are connected in their minds, just like the internet nodes". And when this is "known science" it will be easy to make the next step in understanding that humans are connected at a deeper level - comprising the ultimate network (which is the All-that-is-One). But it always requires prior concepts to build upon.

Every direction of society is building new concepts, in incremental steps, that are going towards this final realization. This includes entertainment, technology, economy, sciences, etc. In our case (Bitcoin) the decentralized/P2P model is the precise model for making people understand how the mental and soul network operate with everyone being a node. Decentralization and networks built through an equality of nodes that make up the "larger entity" is a key element. On the other hand, hierarchy/authority is against the protocol of equality which is necessary for people to understand what's coming next.

Transparency is another key element because there are no "secrets" in the "higher" networks that exist beyond the technological internet. So Bitcoin has been created as a conceptual platform / a reference for discovering things that operate based on the same "protocols" (p2p - power to the people / transparency).

Going against these protocols (in our case transparency) that build up our higher realizations as a species will be tricky. It's like trying to sail against the wind - and that ensures a hell of a bumpy raid for anyone who'll try to give it a shot in anonymity given that it is a fundamental rule of this reality that there is nothing hidden under the sun.

/"sci-fi mode" off

Reaching 100% Anonymity is like reaching the speed of light. The closer you get, the harder it gets to get closer.
My assessment is that with current and near future incarnations, DRK will be anonymous enough for personal privacy use.

I like the speed of light analogy...

However, it will be a mere annoyance to a determined attacker with globally positioned packet sniffers and a large server farm to crunch trillions of calculations to unravel all payment paths.

Yep... and that's why you can't have a "fund-Snowden"campaign, because if you don't have an NSA-proof anonymous solution, Snowden will laugh and decline your offer.

P.S. Please dont feel that I am an anonymity competitor, in the anonymity biz we are all friends as we can help each other achieve better anonymity. Plus I did manage to get a decent amount of DRK mined with my mini server farm before the GPU era

No such feeling of "anonymity competition" - don't worry.

[jl777]

There is no tx out -> tx in -> tx out going on, at least as far as chained transactions (which I think you are describing). Do you know what stealth addresses are? All those addresses would look totally random to anyone tracing them. Here's a link in case you don't know about them.
http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/31813471/

The only time you could identify that there was a central owner is if you combined all the addresses into a larger address or sent them all to some other address. That is why you need a denomination pool, to recombine for higher denomination DarkSends. You would still know all those addresses belonged to some central user, but after recombining in a denomination pool with 1000 other people, who sent what? And where did they send it?

I wasnt aware of the stealth addresses, thanks! I have already implemented a proof of concept version of a NXT version of this, which is much simpler due to how NXT is implemented.

The problem with anything complicated (you have to admit the bitcoin stealth addresses are complicated) is that I cant fully understand them immediately. Maybe after a while I can speak more to its effectiveness, but in my experience the more complicated something is, the more likely to be bugs or exploits. Certainly stealth addresses (assuming no bugs/exploits) sounds great, but the assumption is that there is an attacker who has access to then entire set of IP traffic and the servers to analyze and correlate.

Short of a mathematically provable algo, my assumption is that full information + clever guys + lots of servers will be able to unravel any path information. From an anonymity standpoint the whole txout->txin system is absolutely horrible. Its like if you looked at a $100 USD bill with a microscope you could see every transaction it was involved in! This is why some theorize bitcoin was invented by one of the TLA's

For example, at some point the funds come out of the stealth address to a public destination. Even if knapsacking analysis is prevented by streams of identical denominations, there is still timing analysis.

That's cool, I just wanted to make sure you were aware that something similar existed (although not automated, as you point out). I think it would be amazing, it would just take a lot of work. Good luck!

Thanks! I hope to be able to announce some sort of service in the near future, been hard at work

James

[jl777]

without encryption, a determined attacker can extract at least partial information from every darksend. Even with encryption you still have to worry about timing attacks and knapsacking attacks. Over time higher and higher probabilities will be obtained. However, this is not something an ordinary person would have to worry about.

.....

DRK is the coin that provides anonymity for the ordinary people. So you dont have to worry about your neighbors snooping on your finances. So people wont find out about stuff they have no business finding out about!

Anything that can be done manually can also be automated if it doesn't involve too much human judgement. What I mean by that is that if a determined attacker has a way to tell that A went to B after thorough "investigation" into a transaction, you can't be really certain that this is good enough for the average Joe either. It would seem that it is (using the rationale "ok, who will do this kind of thorough investigation, time after time, for every transaction") but it is not.

As I see it, if the analysis process can be done with a relative degree of confidence, then it's simply a matter of scripting to automate the procedure of understanding one transaction and do it with other transactions. And that will be done without the manual-effort cost concern which would otherwise protect most people, since it will be done automatically.

Once this is done, you'll have the obfuscated blockchain and another site which is running a script and analyzes, in somewhat-realtime (perhaps lagging a few blocks to allow for the mixing to occur), the blockchain transactions for what they really are, rather than their mixing or noise. Imagine the scenario of an alternative block explorer which is de-obfuscating stuff and then assigning a probability percentage for each transaction. If DRK is a smash and it has many transactions, I bet someone will make this kind of "service".

I have to disagree...
The level of anonymity that DRK can achieve, especially if combined with some of my upcoming NXT based services, will require MORE data than is available in the public blockchains.

I'm just throwing ideas around, you can see them more as a thought experiment*, in order to bulletproof the coin.

I am neither a programming expert, nor a cryptography expert and I'm really at a handicap to properly analyze what is going on under the hood. I'm just using algorithmic logic to check whether hints can be assembled to show input/output and pin it down to addresses/individual.

* A coin designer who is more familiar with their coin should ask themselves: If I wanted to track the transactions that go through DarkSend, what would I do? What hints would I use? What automation would I use to sort through all of those hints and make them transparent? If they want to make it TLA-proof like, then they'd have to ask a whole different set of questions, regarding pattern recognition, ip tracking, mass surveillance capabilities etc etc.

Also keep in mind that NXT has no txouts -> txins that creates a lifetime historical chain. That is really the fundamental reason why bitcoin is so transparent.

I think the reason why bitcoin is so transparent is elusive to pretty much everyone in the bitcoin world but I'll give it a go - with a warning attached that what you will read may be near impossible to believe.

Just like the ape evolved to the human by integrating a higher intellect, human will evolve into a new and better species (we are not the end of evolution - we are still evolving). Some say humans will evolve to a techno-organic hybrid (Kurzweil) like Borg but the reality is that humans will integrate their "soul" to become god-humans, making cyborg humans obsolete.

This is "destined" to happen near the end of this century. I say destined because the future is like a gravity center that "pulls" the past to itself (rather than the past building upon itself step-by-step to reach the future - which is how we view it in linear time). At the end (timeline-wise) of that gravity center is the "soul Internet". It is when humans will discover that they are all connected on a soul level where every human soul is a node and that their souls make up an internet, which is what we'd call God.

In order for humans to scientifically discover that internet, there must be some things, like concepts, that they can build upon. The order is something like that: Telegraph => Telephone => Modems => Technological Internet (what we have now) => Mental Internet (where we discover that our minds are interconnected) => Soul Internet (where we discover that our souls are interconnected).

For example, you have the telegraph and you say I discovered the phone, which is like the telegraph, but instead of signals it transmits voice. Then you have the modem which is like the phone but instead of voice, transmits data - and you've reached the internet. And then you'll say "humans are connected in their minds, just like the internet nodes". And when this is "known science" it will be easy to make the next step in understanding that humans are connected at a deeper level - comprising the ultimate network (which is the All-that-is-One). But it always requires prior concepts to build upon.

Every direction of society is building new concepts, in incremental steps, that are going towards this final realization. This includes entertainment, technology, economy, sciences, etc. In our case (Bitcoin) the decentralized/P2P model is the precise model for making people understand how the mental and soul network operate with everyone being a node. Decentralization and networks built through an equality of nodes that make up the "larger entity" is a key element. On the other hand, hierarchy/authority is against the protocol of equality which is necessary for people to understand what's coming next.

Transparency is another key element because there are no "secrets" in the "higher" networks that exist beyond the technological internet. So Bitcoin has been created as a conceptual platform / a reference for discovering things that operate based on the same "protocols" (p2p - power to the people / transparency).

Going against these protocols (in our case transparency) that build up our higher realizations as a species will be tricky. It's like trying to sail against the wind - and that ensures a hell of a bumpy raid for anyone who'll try to give it a shot in anonymity given that it is a fundamental rule of this reality that there is nothing hidden under the sun.

/"sci-fi mode" off

Reaching 100% Anonymity is like reaching the speed of light. The closer you get, the harder it gets to get closer.
My assessment is that with current and near future incarnations, DRK will be anonymous enough for personal privacy use.

I like the speed of light analogy...

However, it will be a mere annoyance to a determined attacker with globally positioned packet sniffers and a large server farm to crunch trillions of calculations to unravel all payment paths.

Yep... and that's why you can't have a "fund-Snowden"campaign, because if you don't have an TLA-proof anonymous solution, Snowden will laugh and decline your offer.

P.S. Please dont feel that I am an anonymity competitor, in the anonymity biz we are all friends as we can help each other achieve better anonymity. Plus I did manage to get a decent amount of DRK mined with my mini server farm before the GPU era

No such feeling of "anonymity competition" - don't worry.

Interesting "sci-fi", I actually have some personal experiences which defy current science, but that doesnt mean it didnt happen. I tend to believe what I experience over what I am told I should have experienced! Anyway, there is definitely some sort of universal energy that connects all living things, surprisingly like the force from Star Wars, but at our current stage it is hard to feel it even for someone you are right next to. Maybe it resonated so much with the public because people felt the "future gravity" you talk about. If anybody has ever been to a sports stadium full of people, you have felt this "energy" "force". you cannot deny that you can actually feel what the crowd is feeling. Think about how this is actually possible.

OK, now everybody will be convinced we are both loons

That's ok though, being on the cutting edge is usually accompanied by public ridicule or hostility.

James

P.S. I prefer to use TLA, probably doesnt change the probability values assigned to this post. Anyway I am sure I am fully tracked already anyway...

[the_darkness]

So, even assuming TOR is not compromised yet (it is a giant target), if usage of TOR can be detected (I am pretty sure it can), then you are flagged, followed, investigated. Why paint a giant glowing neon sign on yourself?

I STRONGLY discourage using TOR as part of the solution, unless you can be sure to do it from an already encrypted connection without any connection to your normal acct. So, maybe from Starbucks wifi, sure use TOR, still with https totally cracked, any assumptions about privacy is probably wrong...

...

For DRK send, I prefer the simplest implementation that gets Aunt Flo off our backs. I suggest adding "super DRK send" that will build on the basic DRK send. This way, we can get DRK send out of beta and released, that is kind of important. Adding more complexity now will certainly delay things and at worst exposes use to unforseen attacks.

Usage of TOR can definitely be detected and used to identify someone. The best example I can think of is the comically inept action by a Harvard undergraduate who sent a bomb threat through TOR to skip an exam (http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/18/5224130/fbi-agents-tracked-harvard-bomb-threats-across-tor). In this case they were able to quite quickly identify the individual because, as you so aptly put it, he put a giant neon sign on himself given how rare it for a user on your average network to log in to TOR. (Yes you can use public wifi etc. etc. but people aren't generally going to go to those lengths to make typical private transactions online.) I agree that TOR is probably best left as an opt-in feature if anything.

Generally I also think that Darkcoin's approach of offering reasonable anonymity is probably enough for most of us. As has already been stated in this thread, offering 100% anonymity is essentially like chasing a unicorn and trying to achieve that will slow development time on what could otherwise be a "good enough" product.

[jl777]

So, even assuming TOR is not compromised yet (it is a giant target), if usage of TOR can be detected (I am pretty sure it can), then you are flagged, followed, investigated. Why paint a giant glowing neon sign on yourself?

I STRONGLY discourage using TOR as part of the solution, unless you can be sure to do it from an already encrypted connection without any connection to your normal acct. So, maybe from Starbucks wifi, sure use TOR, still with https totally cracked, any assumptions about privacy is probably wrong...

...

For DRK send, I prefer the simplest implementation that gets Aunt Flo off our backs. I suggest adding "super DRK send" that will build on the basic DRK send. This way, we can get DRK send out of beta and released, that is kind of important. Adding more complexity now will certainly delay things and at worst exposes use to unforseen attacks.

Usage of TOR can definitely be detected and used to identify someone. The best example I can think of is the comically inept action by a Harvard undergraduate who sent a bomb threat through TOR to skip an exam (http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/18/5224130/fbi-agents-tracked-harvard-bomb-threats-across-tor). In this case they were able to quite quickly identify the individual because, as you so aptly put it, he put a giant neon sign on himself given how rare it for a user on your average network to log in to TOR. (Yes you can use public wifi etc. etc. but people aren't generally going to go to those lengths to make typical private transactions online.) I agree that TOR is probably best left as an opt-in feature if anything.

Generally I also think that Darkcoin's approach of offering reasonable anonymity is probably enough for most of us. As has already been stated in this thread, offering 100% anonymity is essentially like chasing a unicorn and trying to achieve that will slow development time on what could otherwise be a "good enough" product.

but is it a pink unicorn?

[porcupine87]

its funny how people that learned about bitcoin last 3 months keep talking about the price every single day. Why do you expect to get rich in a day, week or month?

Right now this coin is innovative, with probably a brilliant and dedicated dev but has nothing to offer except speculation since YOU CANT BUY ANYTHING WITH IT RIGHT NOW

How do you expect it to gain value without services, goods etc accepting it?

And because people believe in it they just keep it and dont even trade at exchanges. So with such small volume there is no gain of course even at exchanges...

I sold my Darkcoins in order to buy cheaper, which i did, and people here started talking about dumping. Its not dumping to trade the coin! its how trading goes. I gained 10% only with 2 trades that people considered dumping...

You should make services and companies accept it. Send emails. Even with dogecoin you can buy many things. With darkcoin right now you cant. And probably you wont until darksend is open source.

tl;dr: Make services, sites, companies, exchanges accept Darkcoin and it will flourish. Sell stuff for Darkcoins.Make people accept donations in Darkcoin. Trade Darkcoins on exchanges. Or just keep posting about price droping. The coin is good. Except if dev totally fails, which can happen of course, i trully believe it can reach easily 10m marketcap when a few sites starting accepting it as payment.

But Darkcoin is not worth much and is not even finished? What can you buy with Peercoin or Quark?

[darkproton]

I am contemplating a putting together a drk only gambling site for sports related events with the possibility of side bitbet-style action. Is this something that the community would want or is this too...niche?(not sure of correct wording). Would a poker site be more popular or something entirely different? Any and all suggestions welcome.

[Jungian]

OK, now everybody will be convinced we are both loons

That's ok though, being on the cutting edge is usually accompanied by public ridicule or hostility.

Absolutely not. Many people share this view, including me, and I'm not surprised to see that view in this community, where we in fact are in a battle to save the soul that interconnects us.

[Jungian]

I am contemplating a putting together a drk only gambling site for sports related events with the possibility of side bitbet-style action. Is this something that the community would want or is this too...niche?(not sure of correct wording). Would a poker site be more popular or something entirely different? Any and all suggestions welcome.

A just-dice clone would be very nice. Provably fair with investment feature. Doge-dice basically made doge coin (and of course made doog an even richer guy). Dark-dice has a nice ring to it.

[godzirra]

Had to buy all the drk below .00125

I love this coin. Keep it up everybody!

[chompyZ]

I sold my Darkcoins in order to buy cheaper, which i did, and people here started talking about dumping. Its not dumping to trade the coin! its how trading goes. I gained 10% only with 2 trades that people considered dumping...

But Darkcoin is not worth much and is not even finished? What can you buy with Peercoin or Quark?

An wise traders' saying goes-
'When you trade, prepare to collect profits with spoons, and loses with buckets'.

Or as Charles Lee [creator of Litecoin] said-
"When the price hit 20 cents, I thought it was overpriced, so I sold about 3/4 of my coins trying to play the market and thinking I can get them back cheaper. Silly me."

http://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/20rnih/how_many_litecoins_does_the_creators_of_litecoin/

[Standhaft]

My withdrawal on Cryptsy is taking about 8 hours now. Pending and I confirmed the eMail directly. mhhhh

[coins101]

Had to buy all the drk below .00125

I love this coin. Keep it up everybody!

[godzirra]

My withdrawal on Cryptsy is taking about 8 hours now. Pending and I confirmed the eMail directly. mhhhh

I don't understand why everyone still uses cryptsy. They have the most volume but the site is so slow.
Can't another exchange replace them already.
Btc deposit took me over an hour this afternoon. But I did get 1000 more drk!