[ANN] Ethereum: Welcome to the Beginning

[iCEBREAKER]

And it's unusable alpha-grade software, unlike Monero which has been up and running for more than a year.

Unjustified bullshit from the Monero troll army...

Looks like they're starting to feel threatened.  As they should.

"Unjustified?"

Clicking sure is difficult for you millennial types...

From https://github.com/ethereum/serpent/blob/develop/examples/ecc/ringsig.se

Code:

# TOTALLY NOT TESTED AND LIKELY BROKEN AT THIS POINT; AWAITING A TEST SUITE

"Threatened?"

Read what I said about the superiority of layered security:

As a layered approach to security is best, let's consider how BTC's CT, ETH's MLRS, and XMR's RCTM may work together, rather than pretend any one solution is completely optimal.

OTOH, DASH's me-too Evolusham vaporware marketing campaign (which is some kind of farcical version of ETH) is threatened with premature obsolescence.

[Blazin8888]

ETH IS MOST ANONYMOUS COIN.

[Chronikka]

Is it really that important for Ethereum to be anonymous, and could it be enforced only on a per transaction basis (meaning each transaction in ethereum can be anonymous or not at the discretion of the sender)?

From a business perspective anonymous is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes having funds and transactions available for the public to see can provide legitimacy. For example if you buy a product online and pay with some digital currency, that transaction serves as your receipt. If the transaction is anonymous then your receipt is worthless as it proves nothing. But if the receiver's address is known , and you can verify ownership of the sending address, the transaction is forever recorded on the blockchain as your receipt. Anonymity can be useful but it can also be a detriment depending on who you are.

If Ethereum is designed to be a platform for crypto based services then anonymity should be a choice, based on the needs of the service. Just my 2 cents.

[Longenecker]

Let's paint a picture:

On Nov 17th, Ethereum's William Mougayar said 20-plus banks are testing on Ethereum (http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ethereums-william-mougayar-20-plus-banks-testing-blockchains-outside-consortium-model-1529080)

Just now (Nov 19th), Mike Hearn of R3 (25 bank blockchain consortium) said on /r/bitcoin that R3 is looking at using Ethereum and NOT Bitcoin! Specifically, he said:

• "It'd be a conflict of interest if there was any chance of banks adopting Bitcoin for the use cases they're looking at, things like moving fiat currencies around, managing post trade lifecycles, etc. But there is no such chance. The use cases they are looking at and requirements they have cannot be met with the Bitcoin protocol, it just doesn't have the things they need. They are actually spending a lot more time looking at Ethereum than Bitcoin, as it's more obvious how to apply it to their use cases.  But even if Bitcoin had all the features banks needed for what they want to do, their volumes are such that they wouldn't fit on a crippled 1mb-only block chain. Bitcoin can barely handle its existing user base without running out of capacity. Dropping existing inter-bank transactions onto it would simply not work."

When someone asked Mike Hearn to elaborate specifically on his statement that "They are actually spending a lot more time looking at Ethereum than Bitcoin," his response was:

• "This stuff isn't really a secret: https://twitter.com/annairrera/status/639065607338598400/photo/1
  
  As an example, try sketching out how to model a bond lifecycle with Bitcoin. I tried it in 2012 for the videod talk I gave in London. It requires absurd acrobatics for even a very simplified sort of bond and when you get into the real thing, forget it.  They are interested in Ethereum due to its more powerful scripting language (and, I suspect, its better reputation, as Ethereum has not yet been sullied by people using it for trading illegal things)."

     (Link to reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3tftas/mike_hearn_now_working_for_r3cv_blockchain/)

Conclusions:  
   1.  R3 / big banks are overlooking Bitcoin and instead opting for Ethereum.  
   2.  Ethereum + R3 partnership all but confirmed[?]
   3.  Buy more ETH

It almost feels like the momentum is turning away from Bitcoin and towards Ethereum.

[iCEBREAKER]

Is it really that important for Ethereum to be anonymous, and could it be enforced only on a per transaction basis (meaning each transaction in ethereum can be anonymous or not at the discretion of the sender)?

From a business perspective anonymous is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes having funds and transactions available for the public to see can provide legitimacy. For example if you buy a product online and pay with some digital currency, that transaction serves as your receipt. If the transaction is anonymous then your receipt is worthless as it proves nothing. But if the receiver's address is known , and you can verify ownership of the sending address, the transaction is forever recorded on the blockchain as your receipt. Anonymity can be useful but it can also be a detriment depending on who you are.

If Ethereum is designed to be a platform for crypto based services then anonymity should be a choice, based on the needs of the service. Just my 2 cents.

The things you describe are more of an issue with Zerocoin/Zerocash type coins; Monero-like ring signatures already solved those problems.

The anonymity is opt-in.  View keys provide an audit trail when required.

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/moneropedia/viewkey

[Longenecker]

...

Quit shilling here man.  You're making yourself and Monero look bad.

[Chronikka]

Is it really that important for Ethereum to be anonymous, and could it be enforced only on a per transaction basis (meaning each transaction in ethereum can be anonymous or not at the discretion of the sender)?

From a business perspective anonymous is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes having funds and transactions available for the public to see can provide legitimacy. For example if you buy a product online and pay with some digital currency, that transaction serves as your receipt. If the transaction is anonymous then your receipt is worthless as it proves nothing. But if the receiver's address is known , and you can verify ownership of the sending address, the transaction is forever recorded on the blockchain as your receipt. Anonymity can be useful but it can also be a detriment depending on who you are.

If Ethereum is designed to be a platform for crypto based services then anonymity should be a choice, based on the needs of the service. Just my 2 cents.

The things you describe are more of an issue with Zerocoin/Zerocash type coins; Monero-like ring signatures already solved those problems.

The anonymity is opt-in.  View keys provide an audit trail when required.

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/moneropedia/viewkey

If its implementing Cryptonote (Same as Monero) are there any plans to deal with blockchain size? Ring Signatures when implemented will cause massive blockchain bloat, and the Ethereum chain is already +3 GB after less than 4 months. Are there any strategies for dealing with this?

[iCEBREAKER]

Is it really that important for Ethereum to be anonymous, and could it be enforced only on a per transaction basis (meaning each transaction in ethereum can be anonymous or not at the discretion of the sender)?

From a business perspective anonymous is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes having funds and transactions available for the public to see can provide legitimacy. For example if you buy a product online and pay with some digital currency, that transaction serves as your receipt. If the transaction is anonymous then your receipt is worthless as it proves nothing. But if the receiver's address is known , and you can verify ownership of the sending address, the transaction is forever recorded on the blockchain as your receipt. Anonymity can be useful but it can also be a detriment depending on who you are.

If Ethereum is designed to be a platform for crypto based services then anonymity should be a choice, based on the needs of the service. Just my 2 cents.

The things you describe are more of an issue with Zerocoin/Zerocash type coins; Monero-like ring signatures already solved those problems.

The anonymity is opt-in.  View keys provide an audit trail when required.

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/moneropedia/viewkey

Quit shilling here man.  You're making yourself and Monero look bad.

Your shilling accusation does not answer Chronikka's questions.

I answered Chronikka's questions.  Sorry if that makes you butthurt.   

It's not my fault ETH decided to use "monero-like linkable ring signaures" which can best be explained in terms of what XMR has already done.



You don't like it when Monero is mentioned in a discussion about ETH's new "monero-like linkable ring signatures?"

Gee, that's just too bad.  Please go sodomize yourself with retractable batons.   

[iCEBREAKER]

Is it really that important for Ethereum to be anonymous, and could it be enforced only on a per transaction basis (meaning each transaction in ethereum can be anonymous or not at the discretion of the sender)?

From a business perspective anonymous is not necessarily a good thing. Sometimes having funds and transactions available for the public to see can provide legitimacy. For example if you buy a product online and pay with some digital currency, that transaction serves as your receipt. If the transaction is anonymous then your receipt is worthless as it proves nothing. But if the receiver's address is known , and you can verify ownership of the sending address, the transaction is forever recorded on the blockchain as your receipt. Anonymity can be useful but it can also be a detriment depending on who you are.

If Ethereum is designed to be a platform for crypto based services then anonymity should be a choice, based on the needs of the service. Just my 2 cents.

The things you describe are more of an issue with Zerocoin/Zerocash type coins; Monero-like ring signatures already solved those problems.

The anonymity is opt-in.  View keys provide an audit trail when required.

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/moneropedia/viewkey

If its implementing Cryptonote (Same as Monero) are there any plans to deal with blockchain size? Ring Signatures when implemented will cause massive blockchain bloat, and the Ethereum chain is already +3 GB after less than 4 months. Are there any strategies for dealing with this?

That's a good question, but unfortunately we can't discuss it here without being accused of "shilling."   

[Chronikka]

That's a good question, but unfortunately we can't discuss it here without being accused of "shilling."   

Because you don't have an answer more likely. Monero has yet to solve this. Another thing Monero has yet to implement is tree pruning, which will be very important for dealing with blockchain size

BTW for anybody who doesn't know, I feel the need to point this out. Monero was created for the sole purpose of implementing Cryptonote. So when somebody says "monero like" ring signatures what they're really talking about is implementing Cryptonote. Monero has nothing to do with it.

[iCEBREAKER]

That's a good question, but unfortunately we can't discuss it here without being accused of "shilling."   

Because you don't have an answer more likely. Monero has yet to solve this. Another thing Monero has yet to implement is tree pruning, which will be very important for dealing with blockchain size

BTW for anybody who doesn't know, I feel the need to point this out. Monero was created for the sole purpose of implementing Cryptonote. So when somebody says "monero like" ring signatures what they're really talking about is implementing Cryptonote. Monero has nothing to do with it.

Monero has everything to do with it.  Your ignorance is showing.

There are very good reasons why Vitalik wrote "monero-like" instead of 'cryptonote-like.'  You just don't know those reasons.

Here, I'll help.  Pay attention!

Monero has fixed, improved, and built on the canonical Cryptonote implementation, which is called Bytecoin.

https://lab.getmonero.org/

Monero Research Lab - Protecting Your Privacy's Future

Publications:

MRL-0001: A Note on Chain Reactions in Traceability in CryptoNote 2.0
MRL-0002: Counterfeiting via Merkle Tree Exploits within Virtual Currencies Employing the CryptoNote Protocol
MRL-0003: Monero is Not That Mysterious
MRL-0004: Improving Obfuscation in the CryptoNote Protocol

You should really try to find out WTF you're talking about before posting in public.

Of course blockchain bloat and possible solutions like pruning/sharding are an open issue.  You think I don't know that?

Monero already uses some clever incentives to discourage bloat.  The idea came from Cryptonote, but it was borken so we fixed it.

Thanks for the update! I'll try it out now too. Maybe you or someone explained this already, but how does the regular update work? Does it restrict tx sizes by denying large size transactions and couple the larger ones with the higher fee? Or are all tx's going to have the same fee you set regardless of size now? What's different with the experimental update 0.8.8? Does it scale on the medium block size or something?

It's a fairly severe bug introduced by TFT. The penalty free block size is the median block size (right now ~20kb), and block reward decays exponentially with block sizes that are larger than the median block size. The maximum block size is 2 * median block size, and as you approach that you rapidly approach a reward of zero. When TFT replaced the old tx mempool getblocktemplate generating code (which had a bug that caused blockchain halting), he made it so that all tx would be included in blocks regardless of the penalty they incur. This is why we're seeing problems now with block reward.

In my update, I have limited the maximum possible penalty incurred to about 9% of the block reward (so at worst instead of 16.5 you get ~15.0 MRO, and aren't penalized any more than this).  The median block size will now grow more slowly.

The ideal behaviour, as proposed in the cryptonote paper, is to only include tx with fees large enough to compensate for the penalty. I'm not sure this would even work as they intend as the incentives are kind of bizarre (it probably incentivizes hoarding tx and not sending them to other miners so you can reap larger rewards). I will be working on a more elaborate fees and penalty algorithm for the mempool, but this will have to do for now.

The severity of the issue may be directly observed here: http://monerochain.info/charts/reward

State of Monero: 2014

May:

- fixed the block reward penalty mechanism and dynamic block sizing

[sangoku]

My God, the troll iCEBREAKER never sleep!!

[Chronikka]

That's a good question, but unfortunately we can't discuss it here without being accused of "shilling."   

Because you don't have an answer more likely. Monero has yet to solve this. Another thing Monero has yet to implement is tree pruning, which will be very important for dealing with blockchain size

BTW for anybody who doesn't know, I feel the need to point this out. Monero was created for the sole purpose of implementing Cryptonote. So when somebody says "monero like" ring signatures what they're really talking about is implementing Cryptonote. Monero has nothing to do with it.

Monero has everything to do with it.  Your ignorance is showing.

There are very good reasons why Vitalik wrote "monero-like" instead of 'cryptonote-like.'  You just don't know those reasons.

Here, I'll help.  Pay attention!

Monero has fixed, improved, and built on the canonical Cryptonote implementation, which is called Bytecoin.

https://lab.getmonero.org/

Monero Research Lab - Protecting Your Privacy's Future

Publications:

MRL-0001: A Note on Chain Reactions in Traceability in CryptoNote 2.0
MRL-0002: Counterfeiting via Merkle Tree Exploits within Virtual Currencies Employing the CryptoNote Protocol
MRL-0003: Monero is Not That Mysterious
MRL-0004: Improving Obfuscation in the CryptoNote Protocol

You should really try to find out WTF you're talking about before posting in public.

Of course blockchain bloat and possible solutions like pruning/sharding are an open issue.  You think I don't know that?

Monero already uses some clever incentives to discourage bloat.  The idea came from Cryptonote, but it was borken so we fixed it.

Thanks for the update! I'll try it out now too. Maybe you or someone explained this already, but how does the regular update work? Does it restrict tx sizes by denying large size transactions and couple the larger ones with the higher fee? Or are all tx's going to have the same fee you set regardless of size now? What's different with the experimental update 0.8.8? Does it scale on the medium block size or something?

It's a fairly severe bug introduced by TFT. The penalty free block size is the median block size (right now ~20kb), and block reward decays exponentially with block sizes that are larger than the median block size. The maximum block size is 2 * median block size, and as you approach that you rapidly approach a reward of zero. When TFT replaced the old tx mempool getblocktemplate generating code (which had a bug that caused blockchain halting), he made it so that all tx would be included in blocks regardless of the penalty they incur. This is why we're seeing problems now with block reward.

In my update, I have limited the maximum possible penalty incurred to about 9% of the block reward (so at worst instead of 16.5 you get ~15.0 MRO, and aren't penalized any more than this).  The median block size will now grow more slowly.

The ideal behaviour, as proposed in the cryptonote paper, is to only include tx with fees large enough to compensate for the penalty. I'm not sure this would even work as they intend as the incentives are kind of bizarre (it probably incentivizes hoarding tx and not sending them to other miners so you can reap larger rewards). I will be working on a more elaborate fees and penalty algorithm for the mempool, but this will have to do for now.

The severity of the issue may be directly observed here: http://monerochain.info/charts/reward

State of Monero: 2014

May:

- fixed the block reward penalty mechanism and dynamic block sizing

None of this answers any of my questions. Monero has not found a reliable way to reduce the blockchain size, period. You have alluded to some of the tricks they put in place to moderate it, but nothing they've implemented is a solution. At its core Monero is a cryptonote implementation with a few little quirks to solve some minor issues, nothing more.

Back to my original question though, how does anonymity benefit Ethereum?

[iCEBREAKER]

None of this answers any of my questions. Monero has not found a reliable way to reduce the blockchain size, period. You have alluded to some of the tricks they put in place to moderate it, but nothing they've implemented is a solution. At its core Monero is a cryptonote implementation with a few little quirks to solve some minor issues, nothing more.

Back to my original question though, how does anonymity benefit Ethereum?

Thank you for conceding you were wrong to claim Monero has nothing to offer over plain-vanilla Cryptonote/Bytecoin.  You could be a bit more gracious, and admit the block reward penalty is a reliable way to reduce discourage bloat, rather than being a snipey little bitch and creating a distinction without a difference between that and "tricks to moderate it."

Regardless, your concessions are quite distinct from your previous statement that "when somebody says "monero like" ring signatures what they're really talking about is implementing Cryptonote. Monero has nothing to do with it."

Obviously, you are embarrassed to have received such a spanking for being an ignorant brat, and that's why you are moving to goalposts to a new demand for some kind of final solution to the blockchain size problem.  Never mind that even Bitcoin hasn't solved it; you still think it's fair to demand another coin, with even worse bloat, be the first to fix it.

And your final act is an attempt to completely derail the thread, from the OP about ETH to a general discussion about the value of privacy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters?language=en

http://zeroknowledgeprivacy.org/library/why-privacy-matters/

[NextGenCrypto]

None of this answers any of my questions. Monero has not found a reliable way to reduce the blockchain size, period. You have alluded to some of the tricks they put in place to moderate it, but nothing they've implemented is a solution. At its core Monero is a cryptonote implementation with a few little quirks to solve some minor issues, nothing more.

Back to my original question though, how does anonymity benefit Ethereum?

Thank you for conceding you were wrong to claim Monero has nothing to offer over plain-vanilla Cryptonote/Bytecoin.  You could be a bit more gracious, and admit the block reward penalty is a reliable way to reduce discourage bloat, rather than being a snipey little bitch and creating a distinction without a difference between that and "tricks to moderate it."

Regardless, your concessions are quite distinct from your previous statement that "when somebody says "monero like" ring signatures what they're really talking about is implementing Cryptonote. Monero has nothing to do with it."

Obviously, you are embarrassed to have received such a spanking for being an ignorant brat, and that's why you are moving to goalposts to a new demand for some kind of final solution to the blockchain size problem.  Never mind that even Bitcoin hasn't solved it; you still think it's fair to demand another coin, with even worse bloat, be the first to fix it.

And your final act is an attempt to completely derail the thread, from the OP about ETH to a general discussion about the value of privacy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/glenn_greenwald_why_privacy_matters?language=en

http://zeroknowledgeprivacy.org/library/why-privacy-matters/

People must really hate you given you're such a pompous bitch.  Even when you have valid points you come off like a smug know-it-all.  I guess that's why you spend all of your time here trolling trying to get people to care about your dying coin that will NEVER reach mass adoption.

[arielbit]

^

ETH to 5000 pages..LOL 

[newb4now]

That's a good question, but unfortunately we can't discuss it here without being accused of "shilling."  

Because you don't have an answer more likely. Monero has yet to solve this. Another thing Monero has yet to implement is tree pruning, which will be very important for dealing with blockchain size

BTW for anybody who doesn't know, I feel the need to point this out. Monero was created for the sole purpose of implementing Cryptonote. So when somebody says "monero like" ring signatures what they're really talking about is implementing Cryptonote. Monero has nothing to do with it.

Monero has everything to do with it.  Your ignorance is showing.

There are very good reasons why Vitalik wrote "monero-like" instead of 'cryptonote-like.'  You just don't know those reasons.

Here, I'll help.  Pay attention!

Monero has fixed, improved, and built on the canonical Cryptonote implementation, which is called Bytecoin.

https://lab.getmonero.org/

Monero Research Lab - Protecting Your Privacy's Future

Publications:

MRL-0001: A Note on Chain Reactions in Traceability in CryptoNote 2.0
MRL-0002: Counterfeiting via Merkle Tree Exploits within Virtual Currencies Employing the CryptoNote Protocol
MRL-0003: Monero is Not That Mysterious
MRL-0004: Improving Obfuscation in the CryptoNote Protocol

You should really try to find out WTF you're talking about before posting in public.

Of course blockchain bloat and possible solutions like pruning/sharding are an open issue.  You think I don't know that?

Monero already uses some clever incentives to discourage bloat.  The idea came from Cryptonote, but it was borken so we fixed it.

Thanks for the update! I'll try it out now too. Maybe you or someone explained this already, but how does the regular update work? Does it restrict tx sizes by denying large size transactions and couple the larger ones with the higher fee? Or are all tx's going to have the same fee you set regardless of size now? What's different with the experimental update 0.8.8? Does it scale on the medium block size or something?

It's a fairly severe bug introduced by TFT. The penalty free block size is the median block size (right now ~20kb), and block reward decays exponentially with block sizes that are larger than the median block size. The maximum block size is 2 * median block size, and as you approach that you rapidly approach a reward of zero. When TFT replaced the old tx mempool getblocktemplate generating code (which had a bug that caused blockchain halting), he made it so that all tx would be included in blocks regardless of the penalty they incur. This is why we're seeing problems now with block reward.

In my update, I have limited the maximum possible penalty incurred to about 9% of the block reward (so at worst instead of 16.5 you get ~15.0 MRO, and aren't penalized any more than this).  The median block size will now grow more slowly.

The ideal behaviour, as proposed in the cryptonote paper, is to only include tx with fees large enough to compensate for the penalty. I'm not sure this would even work as they intend as the incentives are kind of bizarre (it probably incentivizes hoarding tx and not sending them to other miners so you can reap larger rewards). I will be working on a more elaborate fees and penalty algorithm for the mempool, but this will have to do for now.

The severity of the issue may be directly observed here: http://monerochain.info/charts/reward

State of Monero: 2014

May:

- fixed the block reward penalty mechanism and dynamic block sizing

None of this answers any of my questions. Monero has not found a reliable way to reduce the blockchain size, period. You have alluded to some of the tricks they put in place to moderate it, but nothing they've implemented is a solution. At its core Monero is a cryptonote implementation with a few little quirks to solve some minor issues, nothing more.

Back to my original question though, how does anonymity benefit Ethereum?

The CryptoNote blockchain bloat problem has already been solved. Monero takes a cautious development approach but at some point I expect they will implement a solution close to the one explained below (which already works):
http://boolberry.org/files/Boolberry_Reduces_Blockchain_Bloat.pdf

Pruning is more than possible. It has already been done by Boolberry! Ethereum can also implement pruning if it wishes.

[iCEBREAKER]

you're such a pompous bitch 
you come off like a smug know-it-all 

Your butthurt is duly noted.

[LiQio]

It's very tiring to follow topics when they are crashed by the pseudologist.

But I think the TL;DR is "Ethereum will make Monero obsolete".

(Farewell iCEBREAKER)

[iCEBREAKER]

It's very tiring to follow topics when they are crashed by the pseudologist.

But I think the TL;DR is "Ethereum will make Monero obsolete".

(Farewell iCEBREAKER)

Not really.  A layer approach to security is preferable to reliance on any single platform/product.

And they don't even to the same thing.



See?  XMR and ETH go together like peanut butter and chocolate!

You are just mad because ETH makes your precious bags of NXT as obsolete as flat panels made those heavy-ass giant old TVs.