We're happy to announce that the TiPS mixing service is now available!
What's this?Our unique mixing service allows you to send coins through a third party and hide all trace of them originating from you by using a simple checkbox on the client. Your coins are sent (with data encrypted) to a mixer node chosen by random, which sends the coins along after a certain length of time. This makes the transaction recorded on the blockchain appear only as a transaction to the mixer address with no indication of where they were headed.
Transactions are sent to a mixing service owned by a member of the TIPS community at random, which ensures that no centralized service could reveal the origins of transactions that are mixed.
Mixed transactions charge an additional 2% on top of the value of the transaction to give help nodes out and give mixing node operatives an incentive for running a node (this fee may be changed at any time). For now the fee is global across all mixing nodes but future updates may allow mixing node operators to change the fee as they wish.
What makes it secure?Since your coins are sent encrypted to a third party the only people who can match the dots are you and the mixing service operator. Our mixing node software is built to ensure that once your transaction is sent the relevant decrypted data is destroyed.
Mixing nodes operating with us will also be checked regularly to ensure they comply with our privacy and safety standards, such as requiring all communication over Tor to help conceal the mixing services location and completely pruning all data, and changing address every 3 months.
To make new mixing nodes known we use mixer announcements, a new feature added to propagate the nodes information through the network. Essentially they're just a copy of the original Bitcoin alerts system, but unlike alerts announcements are invisible to the user. When coins are mixed a mixing node is chosen at random from the known announcements to mix the coins.
After we accept a new mixer node an announcement will be created, signed and broadcast to the network to notify people of the new service. We centralize the management of nodes to ensure that bad services can be revoked and removed from use before any coins can be lost.
We're also looking into ways on how to fully decentralize it, if you have any knowledge in this area and want to help feel free to join us on IRC.
Why would I use it?To give an example, Bob lives with his wife Alice and they both get paid TiPS monthly into a shared address.
Alice likes to keep tabs on Bob and regularly checks the blockchain to see where he's been sending money. But Bob is fine with this, because he uses the TiPS mixing service to conceal his transactions destinations. That way Alice will never know that Bob is the leader of a notorious tipping ring who regularly helps out the citizens of Reddit. Good thinking Bob.
Can I start up my own mixing node?If you're known to the community as a trustworthy person and you have two spare servers located in different areas then yes you can. The guide on how to set it up still isn't available yet, but if you message tipsfedora on freenode I'll get back to you after it's finished.
Where can I download it?Always make sure to backup your wallet before upgrading!Windows: visit
http://fedoracoin.net/Mac OS X: soon
Linux:
https://github.com/fedoracoin/fedoracoinIf you have problems with "No mixing nodes available" try going to help -> debug console and type in
addnode srv1.fedoracoin.net add
addnode srv1.fedoracoin.net onetry
addnode srv2.fedoracoin.net add
addnode srv2.fedoracoin.net onetry
Also note that building from source may now require you to run the following before you can compile:
cd fedoracoin/
chmod +x share/genbuild.sh
share/genbuild.sh src/build.h
If you have any questions feel free to ask either in this thread or on IRC (#TIPS on freenode)
0.60 Changelog:* Built-in coin mixing/anonymizer service, to conceal transaction origins
- Mixing services can be announced to the network and are chosen by clients at random
- 2% fee is added on top of mixed transactions to help out and give incentive toward running mixing services
- A guide to starting a mixing service is available below
* RPC user system, become your own web wallet!
- Users can be added with the adduser command and passwords are changed with the passwd command
- User wallets are stored separately to the main wallet
- Passwords are hashed with a per-user salt to help strengthen them, their password is also used to encrypt their wallet ensuring only they have access to their coins.
- The encryption password can be changed with the usual commands, affecting the users password
- Users have restricted access to commands, only the main admin user can use them all (admin user is read from fedoracoin.conf when 0.60 is first run, rpcuser is later unneeded in the conf file afterward)
- A full list of commands is available below
* Alert key changed, now you can get alerts near instantly after an important announcement
- You can use the -alertnotify setting to execute scripts when alerts are received
- New admin-only commands: createalert, signalert, sendalert - only useful with the alert private key.
- Mixer announcements use the same system as alerts with seperate keypairs, also has a set of admin-only commands: createann, signann, sendann (again only useful with the private key) and listann
* JavaScript/AJAX access now enabled on the RPC server, allowing web frontends to connect to your wallet (if allowed), use a remote controller for your local wallet!
- For an example of this set rpcuser and rpcpassword in your fedoracoin.conf file and also add daemon=1 and server=1 on seperate lines at the end
- Run the QT wallet and after it's loaded visit
http://fedoracoin.net/js-remote/, enter your rpc login there and make sure the url field is set to "
http://localhost:22888/"
- Alternatively you can create a user in the debug console (with the adduser <username> <password> command) and login using that users details
- Wallet is directly connected between your browser and your local wallet, our servers aren't anywhere in between
* Changed coin denominations to thousands and millions
* Improved sync with updated checkpoints
* Code now builds with no warnings on Windows, very few on other OS's
* TestNet now enabled, you can test whatever changes you like on there
* 500 billion coin limit now forced thanks to the new getchainvalue command
* Splash screen made transparent
* New commands:
adduser <username> <password> (admin only) - adds new user
authuser <username> <password> (admin only) - tests user login
passwd <username> <password> (admin only) | passwd <password> (user only) - update users password
root (admin only) - displays root username
whoami - displays logged in username
createalert <too many args, see help> (admin only) - creates alert data and outputs hex data
signalert <alert hex data> <privatekey hex data> (admin only) - signs alert data with the private key and outputs hex data
sendalert <signed alert hex data> (admin only) - sends (correctly signed only!) alert to the network
createann <too many args, see help> (admin only) - creates announcement data and outputs hex data
signann <ann. hex data> <privatekey hex data> (admin only) - signs announcement data with the private key and outputs hex data
sendann <signed ann. hex data> (admin only) - sends (correctly signed only!) announcement to the network
listann (admin only) - lists mixing announcements in effect
getchainvalue [uptoblockidx] - outputs current chains total value up to given block idx
* Updated commands:
getinfo/getmininginfo - updated with admin-only info
sendtoaddress - add :mixed to end of destination address to send the coins through a mixer (will error if no mixing services available)
sendmany/sendfrom - add :mixed to end of source account to send the coins through a mixer (will error if no mixing services available)
* Admin only commands:
stop
getconnectioncount
getpeerinfo
addnode
getaddednodeinfo
generatekey
backupwallet
getgenerate
setgenerate
gethashespersec
getrawmempool
verifymessage
settxfee
setmininput
signrawtransaction
sendrawtransaction
gettxoutsetinfo
gettxout
verifychain
adduser
authuser
root
createalert
signalert
sendalert
createann
signann
sendann
listann
encryptwallet
That's not all though, be on the look out for another announcement from us soon
