The privacy coin race

[mandica]

As the PM for a privacy project I would like to offer my two (or maybe three) cents regarding privacy coins. Take this into account when you consider whether a coin offer privacy or not.

- In any UTXO based cryptocurrency (most known cryptos), the loss of anonymity can be twofold; tracability and linkability and any coin that proclaims that it protects your privacy needs to cover both in equal measure, i.e. protect the sender and the receiver of a transaction.

- Tracability can be understood as determining who sent the payment, who initiated the transaction to the receiver, i.e. if multiple transactions exists on the blockchain, can we establish if they were sent by the same person. The sender's privacy can be protected by using ring signatures (Monero, Spectrecoin) or ZKP (Zcash, PIVX)

- Linkability can be understood as determining who the receiver of the payments is, i.e. if multiple transactions exists on the blockchain, can we establish if they are sent to the same person. The receiver's privacy can be protected by using stealth addresses. However, with the use of stealth addresses it is essential to consider this fact; if at a later date, the recipient seeks to consolidate funds from different stealth address transactions to create a new transaction using those inputs, the previous transactions become linked. If fact, if any stealth address transactions are spent to create a single output they become linked. So in effect, unlinkability via the use of stealth addresses only holds true until the transactions are spent due to tracability.

Since spending inputs is a potentially tracable event, tracability implies linkability when new transactions are created. So, a privacy coin MUST have means to protect both sender and receiver and using stealth addresses alone without ring signatures or ZKP is simply not enough.

So, when you asses a privacy coin have this in mind and immediately disregard cryptos that use stealth addresses only and ask yourself how do they protect the sender's privacy.

So, I believe Monero is top of the list and Zcash and of course Spectrecoin.

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[mdgabrielzim]

I'd bet on Dash, for everything that's been done and everything they're doing. This puts a lot of confidence in investing in the currency.

[ukloonion]

Looking ahead try deeponion, the roadmap and current price makes it a very attractive investment. An immutable online database and soon smart contracts are just 2 great features that differentiate it from other normal privacy coins

[Moon_Man]

monero is the king of privacy

[scotty0312]

I own Monero, Spectrecoin and Zcash. If you’re going to invest in privacy coins please learn the difference between each privacy feature. Mandica who is the Project Manager of Spectrecoin explained very well what features to consider when investing in privacy coins.Below is a brief overview of the major blockchain privacy mechanisms that are implemented in cryptocurrencies

CryptoNote and Ring Signatures
As used in: Monero, Spectrecoin

Pros:
•No need for a mixer and mixing is done automatically
•Can be implemented with privacy on by default
•Anonymity increases as time passes as outputs become the new inputs of new mixes
•Hides transaction amounts when implemented with RingCT
•Well researched cryptography

Cons:
•Scalability issues because of large transaction sizes and a non prunable blockchain
•Risks of blockchain being deanonymized in the future or through incorrect implementations
•Cannot take advantage of existing Bitcoin ecosystem and requires separate integration work
•Ring size is practically limited

Zerocash and Zcash
As used in: Zcash, Zencash, Komodo

Pros:
•Potentially the best anonymity set encompassing all coins minted and breaks transaction links between addresses.
•Proof sizes are small and fast to verify
•Hides transaction amounts
•No need for conversion to a base coin and anonymized coins can be sent directly to each other.

Cons:
•Private transactions take a while to generate (almost a minute on a decently powerful computer)
•Complicated trusted setup that has to be done by the developers.
•Incorrect implementation or leakage of trusted setup parameters can lead to forgery of coins.
•Supply cannot be audited therefore forgery can be very difficult to detect.
•Uses relatively new cryptography


Zerocoin and Zcoin
As used in: Zcoin, PIVX

Pros:
•No need for a mixer
•Very high anonymity in the many thousands (if not more) with a single mint and spend transaction and completely •breaks transaction links between addresses.
•Retains supply auditability
•Uses well-researched cryptography

Cons:
•Proof sizes are currently large
•Requires a trusted setup
•Incorrect implementation or leakage of trusted setup parameters can lead to forgery of coins.
•Some care is required when doing Zerocoin mints and spends.


Cryptocurrency Tumblers and CoinJoin
As used in: Dash

Pros:
•Works on top of most cryptocurrencies without the need for specific consensus rules
•Relatively simple to implement
•Lightweight

Cons:
•Basic anonymity
•Requires mixers to be online
•Earlier implementations involve trust in a third party mixer

[Gery_jerry]

it looks like monero will be a lucky coin after bitcoin.
Monero has a large enough interest to boost it to a high level

[denis-z12]

Sooner or later there will be some sort of regulation in the crypto world and once that happens privacy coins will be in trouble if there is no way to check who is moving money and where to. I like Monero the most.

[carlisle1]

There is one winner here and that is Bitcoin, I know some people think BTC is not a privacy coin but it is absolutely one and will certainly shallow all these Altcoins. There are alot of privacy features that would be added to it in coming months and the tech would be better than what if have seen in the space

You right dude,bitcoin is privacy coin and theres a lot of stupid and fool people there claiming that its not i dont know whats the motive behind this maybe they just wanna put down the number one coin so their shitcoin may have good position and ratings.but in the end it was bitcoin who i choose

[leea-1334]

Monero all the way. You can argue that all the other coins in the list are superior, but none of them actually have passed the sort of tests in stress and utility the way Monero has. It is like Bitcoin,,, first mover and "poorest" technology, with altcoins all superior. But then come to stress, overloading the network or attacking it, Bitcoin is too strong unlike other alts. Monero is the same among all privacy coins.

Anyway Bitcoin will also be developing privacy upgrades so maybe one day even privacy coins are useless.

[b9ron]

Nice you forget : Dero.

First CryptoNote coin to have :

• Bulletproofs ultrafast edition
• Using BlockDAG paradigm instead Blockchain.
• Atomic Swap (soon)
• Private Smart Contract (soon)

 

[ai8000]

I believe Spectrecoin has most room to grow by value. The Tech is amazing and the tech team is very efficient under Mandica's leadership.
With market turnaround & overall market focus on privacy coins, I can definitely see Spectrecoin going back to ATH of 5$ and behind. Definitely holding some.

[mandica]

Looking ahead try deeponion, the roadmap and current price makes it a very attractive investment. An immutable online database and soon smart contracts are just 2 great features that differentiate it from other normal privacy coins

I'm curious if any Deeponion fans can explain how Deeponion protects the privacy of the sender in a transaction? I don't think deepnion does that at all and neither do Verge or DASH? What other schemes to protect sender privacy do we have besides Ring Signatures or Zerocoin / Zerocash ZKP?

Please enlighten me, someone....

[BitcoinHodler]

i say it is going to be Monero as the kind of the anonymous coins for the foreseeable future.

i have seen many anon coins so far and some of them may even be good but the thing is there are problems with most of them. for instance they don't enforce privacy features so they are not really fully anonymous. or some don't even have strong obfuscation to make them anon.
so a coin like Monero that has been working fine and more importantly is old and has adoption already can keep its superiority.

[generalizethis]

There is one winner here and that is Bitcoin, I know some people think BTC is not a privacy coin but it is absolutely one and will certainly shallow all these Altcoins. There are alot of privacy features that would be added to it in coming months and the tech would be better than what if have seen in the space

You right dude,bitcoin is privacy coin and theres a lot of stupid and fool people there claiming that its not i dont know whats the motive behind this maybe they just wanna put down the number one coin so their shitcoin may have good position and ratings.but in the end it was bitcoin who i choose

The only fool is someone who doesn't understand the corolation between pseudoanonymity, linkability and blockchain analytics--if you can't put these concepts together and really need privacy, have fun with authorities or criminals looking to monkey wrench you from your stash--though I'm guessing if you can't make the link, you aren't hodling enough for it to matter in either case.

[TravelMug]

There is one winner here and that is Bitcoin, I know some people think BTC is not a privacy coin but it is absolutely one and will certainly shallow all these Altcoins. There are alot of privacy features that would be added to it in coming months and the tech would be better than what if have seen in the space

The thread says privacy coins, I'm sure that you know bitcoin is not anonymous as everything can be tracked in blockchain and chain analysis can accurately narrow down the address and chances are you 99% they are correct.

I think Monero will win the race as evident of the price. We might not have enough data though because after all its privacy coins and no one will admit that they have been using Monero to hide their stash from government. Monero is like the Bitcoin of privacy coins, plus they have the technology to back up its claims as the top coins in terms of privacy.

[jawakoak]

i think monero will win this race, first and large community its make this better than the other private coin, what you expect from private is on monero

[vlom]

in your list a coin called backbytes (https://byteball.org scroll down) is missing. you can even send these coins via e-mail or other messages. and it is cheap at the moment 

[wolfie12]

I hold Monero, Komodo and also some XSPEC. I have strong faith in Monero, am holding my Komodo til I can at least recoup my investment, and have totally given up on XSPEC. Yup, I fell for the shilling back when I was a noob and while I haven't lost a lot, it's definitely been one of my best lessons to date.  There's a lot more to a coin than talking the talk. Today's trading volume was less than 5000 USD. I mean.. come on. If XSPEC is truly as amazing as posters claim, then why isn't anyone buying it? 2.5 BTC total in buy orders on the order book in your highest volume exchange (Cryptopia) doesn't exactly inspire confidence moving forward,..

Its because the XSPEC team is too busy focusing on improving the tech and implementing stealth staking rather than marketing

[Babber]

Monero is certainly awesome as many noted before me, and it will be around for a long while, but I don't think there will be only one winner of this race. To be honest, I am rather rooting for a PoS contender, Spectrecoin, and if only one vote can be cast, I vote for this one. At some point, the advantages of PoS over PoW will flip this race.

[Esterklu]

I like all privacy coins, but Monero is the best for me. I think it is worth to hold such coin for long term. It is valuable, popular and it has really great team and community. So, my choice is XMR.