[XMR] Monero - A secure, private, untraceable cryptocurrency

[Hueristic]

...
To fix this they may need to institute a minimum deposit or per-deposit fee (can be waived for deposits above some threshold) or some other way to crack down on miners (especially pools Botnets) doing this. Otherwise the cost of people making a lot of very small deposits gets shifted to the exchange itself and/or those making withdrawals.

FTFY

[smooth]

...
To fix this they may need to institute a minimum deposit or per-deposit fee (can be waived for deposits above some threshold) or some other way to crack down on miners (especially pools Botnets) doing this. Otherwise the cost of people making a lot of very small deposits gets shifted to the exchange itself and/or those making withdrawals.

FTFY

No its mostly pools (not solo mining) and its more likely small miners on pools than large ones, though that could certainly include small botnets. A big botnet would get fairly large payouts on most pools, and solo mining deposits or a big botnet on a private pool would be large too

[smooth]

Pretty sure poloniex is working on getting their mixin to 3.

They almost had it working, but reverted for now, im not sure why, but there were a few angryish posts about having to pay higher fees .. maybe that's why they went back?

I'm sure they'll get it working, they're pretty on top of things.

The issue with poloniex is somewhat structural. They get a huge number of small deposits from miners who mine directly to the exchange with frequent small payouts. When they try to use these outputs to pay withdrawals the transactions become huge and thus the fees large.

To fix this they may need to institute a minimum deposit or per-deposit fee (can be waived for deposits above some threshold) or some other way to crack down on miners (especially pools) doing this. Otherwise the cost of people making a lot of very small deposits gets shifted to the exchange itself and/or those making withdrawals.

WTF? I can't believe in this, are the miners putting as the mining address an address which belongs to an exchange insteaad of using their own addresses?

Some pools have a specific feature that lets you specify a payment ID. There is no other purpose for that.

[Hueristic]

...
To fix this they may need to institute a minimum deposit or per-deposit fee (can be waived for deposits above some threshold) or some other way to crack down on miners (especially pools Botnets) doing this. Otherwise the cost of people making a lot of very small deposits gets shifted to the exchange itself and/or those making withdrawals.

FTFY

No its mostly pools (not solo mining) and its more likely small miners on pools than large ones, though that could certainly include small botnets. A big botnet would get fairly large payouts on most pools, and solo mining deposits or a big botnet on a private pool would be large too

I found your

[mmortal03]

Two broader thoughts that have come up in discussions elsewhere.

1.) Luke-Jr stated the other day that he foresees ring signature functionality being implemented into Bitcoin in 2-3 years. My response was that even if that actually happens, it wouldn't have a mandatory mix-in level, limiting the anonymity capabilities that Bitcoin could offer with it. However, I've heard others state that you actually wouldn't need a mandatory mix-in level for it to impart "good enough" anonymity for it to kill interest in anything else. Regardless of whether this is true or not, it does sound like something that could steal some remaining thunder from the anonymity-niche coins, given that Bitcoin already has a huge market share.

2.) I've had discussions recently with Bitcoin maximalists who claim that anything built on an altchain cannot succeed, because Bitcoin's blockchain will remain by far the longest chain, and any other altcoin based on a PoW altchain that *ever* begins to compete with Bitcoin for market share will cause interested parties to attack it with the magnitudes of greater resources that are behind the Bitcoin network. My thought on this was that given that Monero uses a different hashing algorithm than Bitcoin, the resources behind Bitcoin couldn't be redirected at Monero in any direct sense (especially if the predominant resources behind Bitcoin are ASICs). Now, that isn't to say that there couldn't *still* be enough incentive involved, if Monero ever became more popular, for Bitcoin supporters to attack Monero by devoting fresh resources/energy to attack it. Thoughts?

[smooth]

Two broader thoughts that have come up in discussions elsewhere.

1.) Luke-Jr stated the other day that he foresees ring signature functionality being implemented into Bitcoin in 2-3 years. My response was that even if that actually happens, it wouldn't have a mandatory mix-in level, limiting the anonymity capabilities that Bitcoin could offer with it. However, I've heard others state that you actually wouldn't need a mandatory mix-in level for it to impart "good enough" anonymity for it to kill interest in anything else. Regardless of whether this is true or not, it does sound like something that could steal some remaining thunder from the anonymity-niche coins, given that Bitcoin already has a huge market share.

2.) I've had discussions recently with Bitcoin maximalists who claim that anything built on an altchain cannot succeed, because Bitcoin's blockchain will remain by far the longest chain, and any other altcoin based on a PoW altchain that *ever* begins to compete with Bitcoin for market share will cause interested parties to attack it with the magnitudes of greater resources that are behind the Bitcoin network. My thought on this was that given that Monero uses a different hashing algorithm than Bitcoin, the resources behind Bitcoin couldn't be redirected at Monero in any direct sense (especially if the predominant resources behind Bitcoin are ASICs). Now, that isn't to say that there couldn't *still* be enough incentive involved if Monero ever became more popular for Bitcoin supporters to attack Monero by devoting fresh resources/energy to attack it. Thoughts?

Sounds like a lot of ill-thought-out nonsense to me.

I'm definitely going to bet against ring signatures in Bitcoin in 2-3 years if someone offers that bet. How long has it taken (so far) to discuss possibly increasing the block size?

People who mostly know about Bitcoin are generally ignorant about other coins (though this doesn't always stop them from commenting about them). I don't entirely fault them for being ignorant though; there are so many other coins and they are so much smaller than Bitcoin, as a Bitcoiner it probably doesn't rationally make sense to study them unless you have some particular personal interest. I do fault them for speaking out of ignorance though. Learn a little or stfu imo.

[Jungian]

Where can I find his statement on ring signatures?

[dewdeded]

Luke-Jr is an outsider with extreme opinions and has not much following inside the BTC community.
He is also an Bitcoin maximalists or as other people call that: "One World Order"-Bitcoiner.

Point II is not worth discussing.

[mmortal03]

Where can I find his statement on ring signatures?

It was on Facebook. Try this: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MiamiInternationalBitcoin/permalink/424626854358806/?comment_id=424969107657914&offset=50&total_comments=106

[dewdeded]

Can we have something like: https://wiki.anoncoin.net/Development_schedule?

[jehst]

Can we have something like: https://wiki.anoncoin.net/Development_schedule?

There's a design and development goals infographic.
https://getmonero.org/design-goals/

That will at least give you the sequence of what will be worked on before what.

[dewdeded]

Thank you jehst.

[GingerAle]

Two broader thoughts that have come up in discussions elsewhere.

1.) Luke-Jr stated the other day that he foresees ring signature functionality being implemented into Bitcoin in 2-3 years. My response was that even if that actually happens, it wouldn't have a mandatory mix-in level, limiting the anonymity capabilities that Bitcoin could offer with it. However, I've heard others state that you actually wouldn't need a mandatory mix-in level for it to impart "good enough" anonymity for it to kill interest in anything else. Regardless of whether this is true or not, it does sound like something that could steal some remaining thunder from the anonymity-niche coins, given that Bitcoin already has a huge market share.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about the code or cryptography, but my thoughts on this are always related to network consensus (and this was mentioned somewhere else in the threads). There's enough fanfare currently over increasing blocksize - I can't imagine the hurdle faced if the network wants to switch to a core that introduced privacy. I've seen a couple shocking posts by "legendary" members that are essentially "we don't need a private blockchain".

2.) I've had discussions recently with Bitcoin maximalists who claim that anything built on an altchain cannot succeed, because Bitcoin's blockchain will remain by far the longest chain, and any other altcoin based on a PoW altchain that *ever* begins to compete with Bitcoin for market share will cause interested parties to attack it with the magnitudes of greater resources that are behind the Bitcoin network. My thought on this was that given that Monero uses a different hashing algorithm than Bitcoin, the resources behind Bitcoin couldn't be redirected at Monero in any direct sense (especially if the predominant resources behind Bitcoin are ASICs). Now, that isn't to say that there couldn't *still* be enough incentive involved, if Monero ever became more popular, for Bitcoin supporters to attack Monero by devoting fresh resources/energy to attack it. Thoughts?

Regarding the possibilities that bitcoin network operators would attack the monero network by investing resources in either 1) server farms or 2) GPU farms or 3) ASIC development with the explicit purpose of network destabilization: this would require a lot of resources, assuming that at this point monero has grown to the point that it "threatens" the bitcoin network "market share". This would probably require much coordination of the bitcoin network operators.

if it comes to this, IMO, bitcoin has already lost the war in the fight for a decentralized value transfer system. If the above scenario comes to pass, it means that all that bitcoin has done is transfer the power from one set of entrenched elites to another set of entrenched elites. (May the people be always in their good favor.), and the bitcoin network will continue to have to play whackamole.

but enough of this future speak. we're in the now. be here now.  

[Hueristic]

2.) I've had discussions recently with Bitcoin maximalists who claim that anything built on an altchain cannot succeed, because Bitcoin's blockchain will remain by far the longest chain, and any other altcoin based on a PoW altchain that *ever* begins to compete with Bitcoin for market share will cause interested parties to attack it with the magnitudes of greater resources that are behind the Bitcoin network. My thought on this was that given that Monero uses a different hashing algorithm than Bitcoin, the resources behind Bitcoin couldn't be redirected at Monero in any direct sense (especially if the predominant resources behind Bitcoin are ASICs). Now, that isn't to say that there couldn't *still* be enough incentive involved, if Monero ever became more popular, for Bitcoin supporters to attack Monero by devoting fresh resources/energy to attack it. Thoughts?

By that time a large percentage of BTC holders will have moved into XMR (or another cryptonote) and BTC will be delegated to GOV control and support and regulation (filling it's own niche role that will not change for any foreseeable future). Those that were stupid (or stubborn) enough to still be heavily in BTC will not have the resources to make a meaningful attack even if they wanted to.

It is not like Privacy is a BTC killer, it will just take a portion of the market.

[GingerAle]

Regarding the possibilities that bitcoin network operators would attack the monero network by investing resources in either 1) server farms or 2) GPU farms or 3) ASIC development with the explicit purpose of network destabilization: this would require a lot of resources, assuming that at this point monero has grown to the point that it "threatens" the bitcoin network "market share". This would probably require much coordination of the bitcoin network operators.

If they have such great resources, wouldn't it be much more strategic and intelligent to put a percentage of their wealth into purchasing the currency so that if it came to dominate they would be in the same standing? There is a scenario where they have "pissed away" the resources in either case, but the attack scenario is a lot more complicated and carries many more risks than simply investing.

guess it depends on how much they hodl.

[thelibertycap]

1.) Luke-Jr stated the other day that he foresees ring signature functionality being implemented into Bitcoin in 2-3 years.

ROTFL

i would rather trust my cat with bitcoin predictions

it is certainly not going to happen in 2-3 years and probably ever - no matter how strong vision some random guy on the internet had in his dream

[dewdeded]

Hehehe. Great posting, thelibertycap. Nice wording.

[GTO911]

We need to really chalk out a funding plan. Donations are not going to keep the ship sailing

[Hueristic]

We need to really chalk out a funding plan. Donations are not going to keep the ship sailing

Funny, I just posted this.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=753252.msg10702454#msg10702454

[GingerAle]

We need to really chalk out a funding plan. Donations are not going to keep the ship sailing

define: "funding" . Funds are usually used to pay people to do things. Why does monero need to pay people to do things? Because there is a lot to do? And paying people to do things get them to focus? IMO, monero is more organic than that, but thats a different topic.

But what is there to do?

All outlined here: https://getmonero.org/design-goals/

Now, can you do any of these things? If the answer is yes, then great - you probably already know how to use github and you can go code stuff.

If the answer is no, then one could immediately jump to the conclusion that you must increase funding in order to create incentive for those that can code to go make awesome happen in github.

However, if you believe that time=money and money=time, then you can conclude that "funding" can also occur in the form of "time".

Thus, if you are not a programmer and can't contribute to core development, then one can "fund" monero by doing stuff for core devs that they would have to do if no one else does it, thus taking time away from core development.

Case in point:

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/user-guides/

currently blank. How does one fill it?

https://github.com/monero-project/monero-site/tree/master/knowledge-base/user-guides

thats the github site for the getmonero.org website, so you can directly make stuff to fill the blank pages.

Also, case in point, we still have yet to find a way to transcribe the monero missives in a timely manner. Because no one stepped up to do it, some of the core-dev team used their time to start transcribing the one last week. This is time that could have spent staring at the crazy cryptonote codebase with pals json and rpi and ipc and whatever.

So literally, you could "fund" monero simply by listening to the podcasts and writing down what you hear.

I started a github for that here:

https://github.com/Gingeropolous/MoneroMissiveTranscribe

So yes - one route to increase the amount of resources available for core development is to increase funding. But in the absence of the capital to do so, another route is to increase the amount of time available for core development by offloading non-core activities.