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

[GreekBitcoin]

if zerocash comming out soon, than i think drk and xmr will be pointless

So since fusion is coming soon^tm it is pointless to focus on oil/gas/hydro/solar/wind tech. Right?

And as far as i understand there is a trust issue with zerocash.

[vokain]

if zerocash comming out soon, than i think drk and xmr will be pointless

So since fusion is coming soon^tm it is pointless to focus on oil/gas/hydro/solar/wind tech. Right?

And as far as i understand there is a trust issue with zerocash.

Cunningham's law again, beautiful

[BlockchainBoss]

My smartphone has 128 GB. I guess cheaper ones have less, but in a year or two it seems this might be fairly common. The current blockchain is 5 GB stored inefficiently (pretty much everything is duplicated; over time we can improve that, although I'm not sure how how high it ranks as a priority).

I've seen smartphone games that are similar in size to the Monero blockchain, and people install those.

I'm not sure that running full node on a smartphone is what people will necessarily want to do, as other options exist with some partial privacy compromises, but if you really want to do it, the size of the blockchain doesn't get in the way really.

https://i.imgur.com/IaAEBYr.png?1

Case in point:)

The problem with deduplication is we sacrifice performance, which is critical on a smartphone...so the compromise will probably always tend towards less storage efficiency for the sake of performance. I'd be VERY interested to see how the lmdb-vl32 version performs on an ARM phone.

http://bgr.com/2015/03/19/samsung-galaxy-128gb-storage/

[Its About Sharing]

The purpose of "e cash"/Monero is to give you anonymity/privacy on online transactions. Like cash, but without the centralization. If a account app was there for Monero on the appstore, you could use it to buy w/e and retain financial privacy. Blockchain size is irrelevant concerning such things.

Well..  It's technically relevant.

Lets say we scale to 100x our current transaction traffic (And we better hope we do).  How long will it take to fill up a 32G SD card with the blockchain.

This reality will dictate the solutions to these problems...  it's relevant,  But not insurmountable IMHO.

All true, but 32 GB sd cards are pretty low end at this point. There are 512 GB sd cards already (expensive, for now).

Obviously there are other solutions too, besides just storing the whole blockchain, as you say.

And I think it's important that we cater to the lowest common denominator.  And that may be indeed much higher than a 32G SD card, but even though we are technophiles (mostly) here now, we want to shoot for the broadest acceptance possible.  Bitcoin is still a mystery to too many.  And just disseminating why Monero is worthy is a challenge of it's own.

I have been more interested in DRK since the recent drama...  and I did a renewed level of DD over it.

The fact there are SO MANY people who are willing to buy into a platform with SEVERE problems worries me.  Because if people can't understand why DRK is bad, then how will they understand why Monero is good?

Just musing a little...

This is my concern as well and it is multifaceted. First, we have seen the best doesn't always win. e.g., Beta vs VHS, etc. Marketing often has a HUGE role to play, which is why I asked a few times in the last day about getting on a podcast. I don't get the (outward) lack of interest, or have they tried? When I heard security experts speak on podcasts (e.g. Kristov Atlas), he sounded relatively positive on Dark and I'm not sure he said much if anything about XMR (8 months ago or so) as it was relatively unknown imo. In order to make the next big step, it DOESN'T MATTER if you are the best but being great sure will help. Yeah, tech guys will eventually find out (they still have Beta VCR's at home  ) but the common man likely won't. So, in a way: we, the developers, anyone with an interest in Monero - would be wise to pass the word on and go out there with the message. This isn't exclusively about $$$ return either. It is primarily about making sure the best anonymous coin gets used and with good reason. It is in the best interests of the alphabet agencies to make sure the best doesn't win. Chew on that.

I really don't think many know if Monero is better than Dark, from a technical standpoint - they don't look deeply, they just go with the biggest market cap (Perhaps another fork changes that, what the 4th one now?). This reminds me of AOL. Those damn cd's were every where and me being an IT guy at the time thought "Who the hell is going to use these? I can connect easily by putting in the information. No big deal." Well, let's not make the same mistake twice, just as BTC needs that perfect app, so to speak, to hit the masses, Monero needs something akin to that to get the word out there with potential crypto users. I speak to a lot of people due to my job, lots of relatively intelligent people (lots of I.T. guys and business professionals). I know of 2 out of 50 who knew anything worth mentioning about BTC. One had a few. Those who even have a clue about BTC, mostly have little clue about alts.

We are in the early days here, and Marketing, unfortunately, is going to play AT LEAST as big a role as the technology. Mark it.
Let's not make the same mistake as Beta did. And, btw, much thanks to Risto, developers who are here, etc. I am not meaning to talk down to anyone. I'm just trying to bring something that I have almost a knowing of, to the attention of others. I's sure there is some kind of plan, so again, I am not meaning this derogatorily. Having worked in IT it is clear IT guys that are people persons are hard to find. You often need to go out and get someone like that to help do that "non technical" work.

Its about sharing

[dEBRUYNE]

if zerocash comming out soon, than i think drk and xmr will be pointless

One of the problems with zerocash is, if I recall correctly, that you can't determine if, when there is a bug or exploit, extra coins were created.

[GingerAle]

The purpose of "e cash"/Monero is to give you anonymity/privacy on online transactions. Like cash, but without the centralization. If a account app was there for Monero on the appstore, you could use it to buy w/e and retain financial privacy. Blockchain size is irrelevant concerning such things.

Well..  It's technically relevant.

Lets say we scale to 100x our current transaction traffic (And we better hope we do).  How long will it take to fill up a 32G SD card with the blockchain.

This reality will dictate the solutions to these problems...  it's relevant,  But not insurmountable IMHO.

All true, but 32 GB sd cards are pretty low end at this point. There are 512 GB sd cards already (expensive, for now).

Obviously there are other solutions too, besides just storing the whole blockchain, as you say.

And I think it's important that we cater to the lowest common denominator.  And that may be indeed much higher than a 32G SD card, but even though we are technophiles (mostly) here now, we want to shoot for the broadest acceptance possible.  Bitcoin is still a mystery to too many.  And just disseminating why Monero is worthy is a challenge of it's own.

I have been more interested in DRK since the recent drama...  and I did a renewed level of DD over it.

The fact there are SO MANY people who are willing to buy into a platform with SEVERE problems worries me.  Because if people can't understand why DRK is bad, then how will they understand why Monero is good?

Just musing a little...

This is my concern as well and it is multifaceted. First, we have seen the best doesn't always win. e.g., Beta vs VHS, etc. Marketing often has a HUGE role to play, which is why I asked a few times in the last day about getting on a podcast. I don't get the (outward) lack of interest, or have they tried? When I heard security experts speak on podcasts (e.g. Kristov Atlas), he sounded relatively positive on Dark and I'm not sure he said much if anything about XMR (8 months ago or so) as it was relatively unknown imo. In order to make the next big step, it DOESN'T MATTER if you are the best but being great sure will help. Yeah, tech guys will eventually find out (they still have Beta VCR's at home  ) but the common man likely won't. So, in a way: we, the developers, anyone with an interest in Monero - would be wise to pass the word on and go out there with the message. This isn't exclusively about $$$ return either. It is primarily about making sure the best anonymous coin gets used and with good reason. It is in the best interests of the alphabet agencies to make sure the best doesn't win. Chew on that.

I really don't think many know if Monero is better than Dark, from a technical standpoint - they don't look deeply, they just go with the biggest market cap (Perhaps another fork changes that, what the 4th one now?). This reminds me of AOL. Those damn cd's were every where and me being an IT guy at the time thought "Who the hell is going to use these? I can connect easily by putting in the information. No big deal." Well, let's not make the same mistake twice, just as BTC needs that perfect app, so to speak, to hit the masses, Monero needs something akin to that to get the word out there with potential crypto users. I speak to a lot of people due to my job, lots of relatively intelligent people (lots of I.T. guys and business professionals). I know of 2 out of 50 who knew anything worth mentioning about BTC. One had a few. Those who even have a clue about BTC, mostly have little clue about alts.

We are in the early days here, and Marketing, unfortunately, is going to play AT LEAST as big a role as the technology. Mark it.
Let's not make the same mistake as Beta did. And, btw, much thanks to Risto, developers who are here, etc. I am not meaning to talk down to anyone. I'm just trying to bring something that I have almost a knowing of, to the attention of others. I's sure there is some kind of plan, so again, I am not meaning this derogatorily. Having worked in IT it is clear IT guys that are people persons are hard to find. You often need to go out and get someone like that to help do that "non technical" work.

Its about sharing

Welp, the one rebuttal is that marketing an incomplete *thing* will lead to newcomers coming in, trying it out, getting flummoxed over the lack of "point, click, done", and then abandon it and possibly worse, tell others that what going on with Monero is crap.

Of course the questions is who are we marketing TO. Point and clickers (the drooling masses)? or ..... those that are on bitcointalk?

And then there's the question of the need to market. I try to draw parallels to linux and its eventual evolution to a "point, click, done" that I am familiar with that is embodied by Ubuntu (I mean, I was really blown away with Ubuntu.... until my wifi stopped working).  Was early linux marketed? I don't think so (i dunno though, anyone feel free to step in). Yet it still exists, and it runs the internet, even though Microsoft / Apple was first to the punch in terms of OSs. Why? How did this happen?

[Wekkel]

[Why? How did this happen?

It's the best in its field (and free).

[Its About Sharing]

The purpose of "e cash"/Monero is to give you anonymity/privacy on online transactions. Like cash, but without the centralization. If a account app was there for Monero on the appstore, you could use it to buy w/e and retain financial privacy. Blockchain size is irrelevant concerning such things.

Well..  It's technically relevant.

Lets say we scale to 100x our current transaction traffic (And we better hope we do).  How long will it take to fill up a 32G SD card with the blockchain.

This reality will dictate the solutions to these problems...  it's relevant,  But not insurmountable IMHO.

All true, but 32 GB sd cards are pretty low end at this point. There are 512 GB sd cards already (expensive, for now).

Obviously there are other solutions too, besides just storing the whole blockchain, as you say.

And I think it's important that we cater to the lowest common denominator.  And that may be indeed much higher than a 32G SD card, but even though we are technophiles (mostly) here now, we want to shoot for the broadest acceptance possible.  Bitcoin is still a mystery to too many.  And just disseminating why Monero is worthy is a challenge of it's own.

I have been more interested in DRK since the recent drama...  and I did a renewed level of DD over it.

The fact there are SO MANY people who are willing to buy into a platform with SEVERE problems worries me.  Because if people can't understand why DRK is bad, then how will they understand why Monero is good?

Just musing a little...

This is my concern as well and it is multifaceted. First, we have seen the best doesn't always win. e.g., Beta vs VHS, etc. Marketing often has a HUGE role to play, which is why I asked a few times in the last day about getting on a podcast. I don't get the (outward) lack of interest, or have they tried? When I heard security experts speak on podcasts (e.g. Kristov Atlas), he sounded relatively positive on Dark and I'm not sure he said much if anything about XMR (8 months ago or so) as it was relatively unknown imo. In order to make the next big step, it DOESN'T MATTER if you are the best but being great sure will help. Yeah, tech guys will eventually find out (they still have Beta VCR's at home  ) but the common man likely won't. So, in a way: we, the developers, anyone with an interest in Monero - would be wise to pass the word on and go out there with the message. This isn't exclusively about $$$ return either. It is primarily about making sure the best anonymous coin gets used and with good reason. It is in the best interests of the alphabet agencies to make sure the best doesn't win. Chew on that.

I really don't think many know if Monero is better than Dark, from a technical standpoint - they don't look deeply, they just go with the biggest market cap (Perhaps another fork changes that, what the 4th one now?). This reminds me of AOL. Those damn cd's were every where and me being an IT guy at the time thought "Who the hell is going to use these? I can connect easily by putting in the information. No big deal." Well, let's not make the same mistake twice, just as BTC needs that perfect app, so to speak, to hit the masses, Monero needs something akin to that to get the word out there with potential crypto users. I speak to a lot of people due to my job, lots of relatively intelligent people (lots of I.T. guys and business professionals). I know of 2 out of 50 who knew anything worth mentioning about BTC. One had a few. Those who even have a clue about BTC, mostly have little clue about alts.

We are in the early days here, and Marketing, unfortunately, is going to play AT LEAST as big a role as the technology. Mark it.
Let's not make the same mistake as Beta did. And, btw, much thanks to Risto, developers who are here, etc. I am not meaning to talk down to anyone. I'm just trying to bring something that I have almost a knowing of, to the attention of others. I's sure there is some kind of plan, so again, I am not meaning this derogatorily. Having worked in IT it is clear IT guys that are people persons are hard to find. You often need to go out and get someone like that to help do that "non technical" work.

Its about sharing

Welp, the one rebuttal is that marketing an incomplete *thing* will lead to newcomers coming in, trying it out, getting flummoxed over the lack of "point, click, done", and then abandon it and possibly worse, tell others that what going on with Monero is crap.

Of course the questions is who are we marketing TO. Point and clickers (the drooling masses)? or ..... those that are on bitcointalk?

And then there's the question of the need to market. I try to draw parallels to linux and its eventual evolution to a "point, click, done" that I am familiar with that is embodied by Ubuntu (I mean, I was really blown away with Ubuntu.... until my wifi stopped working).  Was early linux marketed? I don't think so (i dunno though, anyone feel free to step in). Yet it still exists, and it runs the internet, even though Microsoft / Apple was first to the punch in terms of OSs. Why? How did this happen?

Fair enough, but is Dark more developed than Monero? How long should "we" wait? I'm not against a timed "campaign" but inaction (with no offense meant, might just be my perspective) in general, in other words an absence of communication to the common Crypto man, is DANGEROUS. Again I look to the podcasts and such. Being on a few with good listnership would do wonders. Fellows with Money (not sure this is the best way) can help subsidize getting the word out. Just an idea. And this gives people time to do their DD.

Linux is a specialized operating system, a bit incomplete for the masses (at least it was and imo still is to a point). Is Dark/Dash where Windows is and Monero where Linux is? I don't think there is anywhere near that separation. Mainly we are waiting on a wallet and you could easily argue (e.g. mixing levels, accounting possibilities) we are more ready for where Crypto is going than Dark/Dash.

You might be right, is there a need to market? Well, considering we are 1/5 of Darks market cap (at least right now, I know, subject to change and quite dramatically at that), there is reason to not be passive. It would be a bit sad to "lose" if you are superior and now we are not talking superior in a "good enough" way - like VHS was, we are talking potential violent repercussions from not being good enough. I don't think we should lose sight of what we are talking about here. This is not just marketing per say, not by a longshot.

Hopefully we can just look at this as a brainstorm for all, not so much a right or wrong or I told you so, thing.

Who knows, maybe there will be a Dash from Dark into Monero.  
IAS

[vokain]

@GingerAle: I remember being at a computer fair in Indianapolis when I was still probably a preteen (maybe about 10 years ago) and they gave out Ubuntu (I believe 4.10, "Warty Warthog", its first release) live demo disks for free, but it was good software.

[GTO911]

Untill we have a wallet, nobody out of this forum is going to use Monero (period)

Nobody is going to use a commandline wallet or trust a web wallet much. Nobody is going to search for 3rd party wrappers for simplewallet.

No marketing is possible untill we have an Official Graphics User Interface for noobs

[BlockchainBoss]

Create this and the rest will follow:

Code a new decentralized marketplace that uses XMR as the currency, with a multi-sig option. Doing this could facilitate millions of dollars of liquidity in the new XMR decentralized exchange, when it later emerges.

DRK (Evancoin) is already available on both Nuclear and Abraxus markets.

Using Monero in a new market addresses both supply and demand - and will allow the privacy/security technology to shine. More so, with more XMR flowing there will be tangible incentives for other e-commerce websites to accept it. Doing this NOW would also be good timing, as consumers are awaiting this in the wake of Evolution admins Vert & Kimble destroying their site & taking off with the coins. Not to mention, recently, Peter Todd also helped expose Chainanalysis data mining & spying on IPs w/ btc nodes. Again, Monero could come to the rescue here, but alas there is nowhere to spend it.

Before you bawk, scoff, and sneer at the suggestion of a dark net market, realize that cannabis, opium, and coca are literally among the biggest markets on this planet - after tea, coffee, and oil, etc.

This isn't a light-hearted suggestion. At this point it's almost mandatory to be taken seriously. Monero offers anonymity? Awesome. But most of the world doesn't give a damn about their own security and freedom (obviously, just take a look at the world we live in, OK?). Bitcoin is currently the de facto coin for the markets, but it doesn't have to be. And when people learn that Monero offers better anonymity, they will flock accordingly. Just build them a new home.

I could list a dozen more advantages, but it's almost overkill as this should be obvious. The dark net trade is way more applicable at this point than hoping scores of people somehow magically become concerned with the privacy of their money in a retail environment. Keep placing bets on the sheeple market. That won't lead you very far. The only people concerned with anon-coin right now are the folks on the dark net markets. Get used to it.

This is my $0.02. And I've been around the block, you could say.

Until this is done, there is really nothing else but speculation & swapping hypotheticals.

[GingerAle]

Untill we have a wallet, nobody out of this forum is going to use Monero (period)

Nobody is going to use a commandline wallet or trust a web wallet much. Nobody is going to search for 3rd party wrappers for simplewallet.

No marketing is possible untill we have an Official Graphics User Interface for noobs

+1

yes, there has been lots of discussion on this.

one recent proposition was to make official one of the 3rd party wallets. (temporarily)

based on what I've read of the core-devs position on keeping things sparkly awesome, and keeping things associated with monero-core to be straight from core-devs, I don't know that this will happen.

Alternatively, due to the nature of monero (still wild and free), the community can help unofficially make official these 3rd party wallets. Someone recently suggested making a video on how they work etc. I don't do the youtubes so much, so I can't really tackle this. But to encourage it, i'll kick 5 XMR towards it. Bounty time. (unless one exists and I've just missed it)

[pandher]

We just need a simple and elegant looking wrapper. That will do the job for now, the account manager can come as a huge update. We can start contacting services for using monero when we have the install and run solution.

Lets get that DB out now, make an official wrapper. Thats all

[GingerAle]

Create this and the rest will follow:

Code a new decentralized marketplace that uses XMR as the currency, with a multi-sig option. Doing this could facilitate millions of dollars of liquidity in the new XMR decentralized exchange, when it later emerges.

FreeBazaar is in development
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg10492521#msg10492521

apparently things take time.

DRK (Evancoin) is already available on both Nuclear and Abraxus markets.

Using Monero in a new market addresses both supply and demand - and will allow the privacy/security technology to shine. More so, with more XMR flowing there will be tangible incentives for other e-commerce websites to accept it. Doing this NOW would also be good timing, as consumers are awaiting this in the wake of Evolution admins Vert & Kimble destroying their site & taking off with the coins. Not to mention, recently, Peter Todd also helped expose Chainanalysis data mining & spying on IPs w/ btc nodes. Again, Monero could come to the rescue here, but alas there is nowhere to spend it.

xmr.to

(thats a website that enables you to pay anyone with a bitcoin address with monero)

[fluffypony]

We just need a simple and elegant looking wrapper. That will do the job for now, the account manager can come as a huge update. We can start contacting services for using monero when we have the install and run solution.

Lets get that DB out now, make an official wrapper. Thats all

I've mentioned this before, but a GUI will make diddly-squat difference to merchant adoption, it'll only make a difference to ease of user adoption, and even then 90% of the users will complain about the size of the blockchain or the speed of the sync or the amount of bandwidth it uses.

Merchants, exchanges, and automated systems need several things, and the database is just the first step. Without walletnotify / blocknotify functionality, and without an RPC layer that supports HTTPS and Simple Auth it is immensely painful for merchants to build systems, the paradigm shift is too large. Further to that, only recently (like in the last week) has anyone actually started building out libraries for Monero integration (even though this could have been done by anyone willing months ago) -

https://github.com/tippero/python-monero
https://github.com/MalMen/PHP-Monero

The enthusiasm is great, but pragmatically speaking I fear we will lose merchants if the onboarding process is as painful as it is right now.

[dreamspark]

We just need a simple and elegant looking wrapper. That will do the job for now, the account manager can come as a huge update. We can start contacting services for using monero when we have the install and run solution.

Lets get that DB out now, make an official wrapper. Thats all

I've mentioned this before, but a GUI will make diddly-squat difference to merchant adoption, it'll only make a difference to ease of user adoption, and even then 90% of the users will complain about the size of the blockchain or the speed of the sync or the amount of bandwidth it uses.

Merchants, exchanges, and automated systems need several things, and the database is just the first step. Without walletnotify / blocknotify functionality, and without an RPC layer that supports HTTPS and Simple Auth it is immensely painful for merchants to build systems, the paradigm shift is too large. Further to that, only recently (like in the last week) has anyone actually started building out libraries for Monero integration (even though this could have been done by anyone willing months ago) -

https://github.com/tippero/python-monero
https://github.com/MalMen/PHP-Monero

The enthusiasm is great, but pragmatically speaking I fear we will lose merchants if the onboarding process is as painful as it is right now.

Isn't that a little bit of an oxymoron?

User adoption has to come before merchant adoption, why would a merchant accept or begin to accept something without the user adoption first to justify it.

Of course merchant adoption needs to be as easy as possible but merchants won't adopt without the demand from users.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Monero will never be a contender until it loses its dependency on BTC.

If consumers can't easily acquire XMR, then merchant adoption is out of the question. Fluffypony is right that a GUI means nothing. The core team builds the protocol. It's the responsibility of third parties to develop the necessary tools for consumers.

But we will never have the consumer demand to drive such third party development without a dedicated and easy fiat exchange. Notice I said "dedicated." It's not enough to be included on some BTC-fiat platform with other alts. There needs to be a stupidly easy way to purchase XMR with fiat money. And yes, I realize that achieving this (legally) is an extremely challenging problem.

[dreamspark]

Monero will never be a contender until it loses its dependency on BTC.

If consumers can't easily acquire XMR, then merchant adoption is out of the question. Fluffypony is right that a GUI means nothing. The core team builds the protocol. It's the responsibility of third parties to develop the necessary tools for consumers.

But we will never have the consumer demand to drive such third party development without a dedicated and easy fiat exchange. Notice I said "dedicated." It's not enough to be included on some BTC-fiat platform with other alts. There needs to be a stupidly easy way to purchase XMR with fiat money. And yes, I realize that achieving this (legally) is an extremely challenging problem.

We had a dedicated exchange which could have morphed into accepting fiat but the cold hard reality is all the volume moved to Polo, people will always trade alts on multi alt platforms until a crypto is big enough to support a dedicated platform.

[dEBRUYNE]

Monero will never be a contender until it loses its dependency on BTC.

If consumers can't easily acquire XMR, then merchant adoption is out of the question. Fluffypony is right that a GUI means nothing. The core team builds the protocol. It's the responsibility of third parties to develop the necessary tools for consumers.

But we will never have the consumer demand to drive such third party development without a dedicated and easy fiat exchange. Notice I said "dedicated." It's not enough to be included on some BTC-fiat platform with other alts. There needs to be a stupidly easy way to purchase XMR with fiat money. And yes, I realize that achieving this (legally) is an extremely challenging problem.

We had a dedicated exchange which could have morphed into accepting fiat but the cold hard reality is all the volume moved to Polo, people will always trade alts on multi alt platforms until a crypto is big enough to support a dedicated platform.

Which one are you talking about then? I think if some reputable member of the Monero community started a fiat <-> XMR exchange, most of the volume will move to it. Lack of trust in other exchanges is one of the reasons people stay on poloniex.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

We already have mymonero.com, which functions just fine as an easy safe storage option for the average joe. But that's only useful after he acquires his XMR in the first place. Hence the need for super easy fiat trade.

xmr.to, as cool as it is, is somewhat ahead of itself because it only caters to current monero supporters or savvy btc users. This is fine, but it still doesn't free us from the bitcoin dependency bubble.

Pay any BTC address anonymousely! First buy btc, then trade it on some exchange for xmr, then send your new xmr to a btc address!

You have to admit the above sounds rather silly.