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

[newb4now]

If I understand you correctly, I am creating a new wallet file EVERY time I restore with my 24 key words?  Can't I just use my 24 words to open my old wallet file with the existing name?

No, you're "restoring" the wallet, as in restoring it from a backup. If you have the file you wouldn't need to "restore" it, you'd just open it. But the point of creating a cold wallet is that you don't have the file. If you have the file, that's not a cold wallet, and then you should just use it normally (with a reasonably secure password).

ok, now that makes sense! your tutorial when you said you dont need to remember the password only applied to cold storage then. If I am keeping the file on my computer then I DO need a password to open it right? Otherwise I need to use the seed words to "recover" the wallet like I just did (since I did not have the password, but did have the file). Am I finally understanding things right?

Correct. You need the password to open a wallet file (if you assigned one; it is optional but recommended). You don't need the password to restore from the seed words, because you will be creating a new wallet file with a new password.

Thanks! I feel really silly now that you explained it so well. You would not believe how many hours I spent following every tutorial to see what I was doing wrong. I even tried to download and test out the alpha and beta GUI clients to see if that would help.

Thanks for being patient and answering all my questions. I will send a donation to the dev fund once I get some of my XMR off the exchanges. I think I will test out the Mymonero web wallet too!

[David Latapie]

We should link xmrmonero.com on  monero.cc and in the first post of this thread. No one will find it otherwise. Everything gets buried in this 1000 page thread.

Done.

Perfect knowledge of the transaction ledger also means that any additional information discovered at a later date can be retroactively applied, allowing further pieces of the identity puzzle to be dropped into place at any time. A single disclosure of identity, even years in the future, and every transaction on that address and those connected to it is compromised.

http://www.coindesk.com/anonymous-bitcoin-backgrounder-policymakers/

Added to the FAQ

By coindesk.com (Monero seats at the same location as "cash/barter" in the Coindesk matrix)

[GingerAle]

https://mega.co.nz/#!VM1DTZpC!4Ak4SlPiAAmwG01Hv28clghn_ouAwIhPRaEEg39-24s

Main net database blockchain download. If you want to try the new database build without syncing to the main net for 2-3 days or the blockchain converter doesn't work. Saved in ubuntu.

NOT cross platform (might not work in windows or mac).

[smooth]

https://mega.co.nz/#!VM1DTZpC!4Ak4SlPiAAmwG01Hv28clghn_ouAwIhPRaEEg39-24s

Main net database blockchain download. If you want to try the new database build without syncing to the main net for 2-3 days or the blockchain converter doesn't work. Saved in ubuntu.

Not cross platform, so don't try this on Windows if you do get the code built. Might work on Mac OS.

[David Latapie]

Pictures are worth a thousands words. So what do you think of this one?
I wanted the grey text to have more panache, but my skill ith GIMP is not good enough (I tried these two links)

If anyone wants to improve on it, I'd be happy to provide the original .xcf as well as to update my original post. I'm not an artist, I'm sure other can do better and I encourage you to!

As for credit: I expect I made it clear that adding Monero is not Coindesk.

As for using "true electronic cash" instead of "secure, private, untraceable": this is on purpose, because a) a product can have several slogan at the same time b) even though Monero can be more than a currency (opaque blockchain computing), this is the aspect we are talking about here.

[xa4]

Just curious. What are stealth addresses and how well is anonymity and privacy achieved compared to ring-signatures ?

[David Latapie]

Just curious. What are stealth addresses and how well is anonymity and privacy achieved compared to ring-signatures ?

Decentralised mixing. No middleman. Work from day one, backed up by 10 years of academic cryptology research.
The only thing the outside world can know is that  a transaction occured. But not whence, how much and whither.

For more details:

How does "anonymity" work?

Several posts about it. In time, there will be a consolidated answer:

• anonimity set
• primer on CryptoNote
• CryptoNote vs ZKP and Coinjoin on the OP
• CryptoNote vs Bitcoin-based solutions

And of course:

[Hueristic]

Stands out Monero logo is definitely standing out amongst the other logos.

Anywhere I can bet on Superbowl with XMR?

[Geenstijl]

Just curious. What are stealth addresses and how well is anonymity and privacy achieved compared to ring-signatures ?

Decentralised mixing. No middleman. Work from day one, backed up by 10 years of academic cryptology research.
The only thing the outside world can know is that  a transaction occured. But not whence, how much and whither.

For more details:

How does "anonymity" work?

Several posts about it. In time, there will be a consolidated answer:

• anonimity set
• primer on CryptoNote
• CryptoNote vs ZKP and Coinjoin on the OP
• CryptoNote vs Bitcoin-based solutions

And of course:

Cool Graphic! How do you make that? I mean the moving..

[xa4]

Thx for the links.

So loosely speaking, stealth addresses + coinjoin mechanism = ring-signatures cryptonote, right ?

[fluffypony]

Thx for the links.

So loosely speaking, stealth addresses + coinjoin mechanism = ring-signatures cryptonote, right ?

No, not at all.

Stealth addresses mean that you don't know who was paid in a transaction.

Ring signatures mean that even if you know who was paid (e.g. your drug dealer is bust in a sting op) all they can tell is that 15 or 25 or 50 stealthed people participated in the inputs of a transaction, but they can't figure out which of those participants actually initiated the transaction.

[David Latapie]

(e.g. your drug dealer is bust in a sting op)

Ttt... If a core dev starts to use drug examples, it will be harder to explain that privacy is not just illegal stuff

stealth address + ring signature = the privacy part of CryptoNote. Cryptonote is more than privacy; it is also less constrained parameters which, for instance, render any Cryptonote immune to the 1 MB blocksize that affect Bitcoin. The CryptoNote protocol has "no hard limit" (whitepaper, sic), which helps scalability. Not counting the "chosen transparency that is the viewkey and later auditable addresses, like fluffy mentionned it on reddit

On top of this, Monero added some more features, like tail emission to mitigate the predicted loss of interest of miner for a crypto if all they have left is transaction fees, openalias (granted, it can be used with more than Monero, even Bitcoin), mnelmonic seed (AFAIK, only Bitcoin has it, whith Electrum).

[pa]

If I use openalias to pay example.domain.com in simplewallet, doesn't my IP address get stored in some time-stamped log on the domain.com nameserver? Anyone who hacks or subpoenas the nameservers could learn who paid whom, right?

[TheKoziTwo]

If Poloniex and Bter and Hitbtc can figure out how to detect XMR deposits and send XMR, then the groundwork has basically been done. There are a bunch of marketplaces that would be accepting XMR right now, such as Cryptsy, that aren't accepting XMR simply because it's not super-easy for them to figure it out.

But not publicly documented - and this what we want.
TheKoziTwo, as far as I remember, Poloniex got massive inspiration from your code at cryptonote.exchange.to for inclusion in Poloniex (and swaphole too). Could you prepare some documentation, that the community would happily polish?

I'll see what I can do. Perhaps a code example / working demo would be useful.

To give an update on this. I have begun coding a script (with database) that should include all basic functions required to accept monero (deposit/purchase,withdraw/transfer,check balance).

While doing this I can also document the functions. I'm using the available pre-built libraries for development, it seems some parameters I need to make it scalable are currently not included in those, or maybe I'm missing something (asking on irc).

Once these issues are resolved I'll continue development.

To get an idea, this is what it looks like currently (and incomplete)


Feel free to give suggestions.

[TheKoziTwo]

I think "Mixing Count" is confusing, "No privacy (0)", "Low", "Medium" and "High" levels or something like that are much better

This looks important for Monero,kudos to you sir.

I agree, I'll probably change it to that, but this is meant for developers, it's not a user interface and the idea is that developers will create their own. It's more like a demo for devs, so that they know how to implement all functions, and can copy / paste into their own environment.

[Come-In-Behind]

If Poloniex and Bter and Hitbtc can figure out how to detect XMR deposits and send XMR, then the groundwork has basically been done. There are a bunch of marketplaces that would be accepting XMR right now, such as Cryptsy, that aren't accepting XMR simply because it's not super-easy for them to figure it out.

But not publicly documented - and this what we want.
TheKoziTwo, as far as I remember, Poloniex got massive inspiration from your code at cryptonote.exchange.to for inclusion in Poloniex (and swaphole too). Could you prepare some documentation, that the community would happily polish?

I'll see what I can do. Perhaps a code example / working demo would be useful.

To give an update on this. I have begun coding a script (with database) that should include all basic functions required to accept monero (deposit/purchase,withdraw/transfer,check balance).

While doing this I can also document the functions. I'm using the available pre-built libraries for development, it seems some parameters I need to make it scalable are currently not included in those, or maybe I'm missing something (asking on irc).

Once these issues are resolved I'll continue development.

To get an idea, this is what it looks like currently (and incomplete)


Feel free to give suggestions.

Beautiful beautiful.

[jwinterm]

Cool Graphic! How do you make that? I mean the moving..

It was done in Blender, which exports the animation as a whole bunch of png files that were then made into a gif using ImageMagick.

[smooth]

If I use openalias to pay example.domain.com in simplewallet, doesn't my IP address get stored in some time-stamped log on the domain.com nameserver? Anyone who hacks or subpoenas the nameservers could learn who paid whom, right?

Maybe.  There are some name servers that claim not to log, though you can't really verify this. Also, in most cases your request goes through intermediate name servers (at your ISP, or google, or some such).

However, for maximum privacy you probably don't want to use this feature.

[smooth]

Thx for the links.

So loosely speaking, stealth addresses + coinjoin mechanism = ring-signatures cryptonote, right ?

No.

stealth addresses + ring signatures = the anonymity/privacy part of cryptonote. There are other parts of cryptonote too, that have nothing to do with privacy. I2p integration is planned to add another expect of privacy to Monero, though that isn't part of the original cryptonote design. There is no coinjoin to it at all, that's a completely different approach.

[pa]

If I use openalias to pay example.domain.com in simplewallet, doesn't my IP address get stored in some time-stamped log on the domain.com nameserver? Anyone who hacks or subpoenas the nameservers could learn who paid whom, right?

Maybe.  There are some name servers that claim not to log, though you can't really verify this. Also, in most cases your request goes through intermediate name servers (at your ISP, or google, or some such).

However, for maximum privacy you probably don't want to use this feature.

Thanks for the clarification. When i2p is integrated, will openalias be useable without exposing ip addresses?