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

[iCEBREAKER]

anyone speak chinese?

iourzzz/cryptonic are in China.  But that's just one piece of the puzzle.

We need a system to coordinate missive, roadmap, and other content translation into all 32 major languages.

This is one thing our marketing expert friends at Dark-cum-Dash are doing well:

https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/darkcoin/

We don't have to use transifex and could post Help Wanted ads on the various national subs here instead.

It's too early now, but let's have something ready to go when the GUI is done.

[iCEBREAKER]

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.

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?

DARSH users don't care about theoretical superiority.  Because thinking is like, hard and not cool, and stuff.  Only nerds do that.

They will remain blissfully ignorant until DARSH is broken and they get hurt by losing coins or being thrown in jail for buying illegal botanical products from Nuclear and Abraxus.

We can just wait for whoever compromised Silk Road to do the same to DARSH, or catalyze the process with bounties.  Maybe BCX needs something to do...

I for one can't wait to hear the outcry when the remote killswitch "feature" is used to drain or otherwise exploit their dear, trusted MadoffNodes.  

[iCEBREAKER]

Just existing is plenty good enough if the only purpose is to sell people xmr for fiat. Here, give me 10 bucks, and I'll give you some xmr. See? No massive adoption necessary.

How much use does xmr.to or shapeshift.io depend on? None. They buy coins from exchanges as needed to fulfill orders.

Oh yeah sure, let me just get msb licenses and attempt to open bitcoin business accounts for the 10 bucks, gee glad I went through all that trouble, what a great business. It has to make economic sense sure saying I would like this that and the other is fine, I would love amazon to accept accept xmr. I wonder why they don't, do you think it's because it's not worth their time?

Maybe we can get someone that lives somewhere where regulation is a bit more lax to create a XMR/USD exchange.

We need to be on BTC-E.  Not immediately, but in the medium term future.

I wrote their account here a nice sincere letter, explaining that while I have been a happy customer in the past I've since moved to Poloniex because they don't support XMR.

When the GUI is done and the Russian, etc. missive translations are automated, pressure for them to add XMR should start to ratchet up.  KoziTwo's payment gateway will ease the process as well.

If they need a bribe direct incentive maybe some whales can splash a few thou their way.   

[dEBRUYNE]

anyone speak chinese?

iourzzz/cryptonic are in China.  But that's just one piece of the puzzle.

We need a system to coordinate missive, roadmap, and other content translation into all 32 major languages.

This is one thing our marketing expert friends at Dark-cum-Dash are doing well:

https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/darkcoin/

We don't have to use transifex and could post Help Wanted ads on the various national subs here instead.

It's too early now, but let's have something ready to go when the GUI is done.

I would like to help translate to the languages I speak, when such platform is available I'm sure it will make Monero website and wallets much more accessible.

btw xmr.to is getting some well deserved attention:

https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/579092073875308545

This should be added as well:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2zrdxz/withdrawals_halted_as_stolen_evolution_coins_make/cplo3vd

We're going to find out the hard way that Bitcoin will get outcompeted by currencies like Monero and Zerocash if we don't act to get better anonymity and privacy into Bitcoin itself.

[iCEBREAKER]

btw xmr.to is getting some well deserved attention:

https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/579092073875308545

         



*INB4 ItsHappening.gif*

[Joshuar]

I remember reading a quote from Satoshi explaining the essence of Monero itself. Does anyone have a link to it?

[GingerAle]

A. fiat -> monero

http://www.ebay.com/itm/15-XMR-Monero-like-Litecoin-Ripple-Darkcoin-U-S-seller-/121600620272?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c4ff636f0

ebay. Its a hack, but it...... works.

B. Finally found (or the universe presented) the solution to the "how do I really keep my shopping private with monero" problem, considering anything you buy online will be shipping to you.

Say hello to roadie

https://www.roadie.com/

this little peer to peer company is trying to disrupt shipping. So how is this used in the monero private online shopping economy?

1. network of "shyptos" would exist (shypto is a horrible portmanteau of ship, cryptography, and shop. It might not be the best. Maybe shoptopgraphy)
2. Alice wants to buy something from amazon, but doesn't want anyone to know about it. And she means ANYONE.
3. Alice goes to shypto network and places a buy ticket - basically lists the item she wants. Someone from shypto network claims that ticket (bob), engages with Alice via some secure, encrypted messaging system. Main information that needs to be sent Alice -> shypto member is the destination wafflehouse (yes, because wafflehouse is involved in the roadie system) http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/24/waffle-house-partners-with-roadie/#lcX6TT:1i6d
3b. Alice and Bob work out some way to trust each other re: reimbursement.
4. Bob orders the item from amazon (using FIAT!!), has it shipped to his house. based on whatever he and alice figured out, he proves to alice he bought it (or alice had paid upfront, whatever). Alice then sends the XMR payment to Bob.
5. Bob then finds a gig on Roadie to deliver the package. He drops it off at the wafflehouse, roadie person drives it from bobs wafflehouse to alice's wafflehouse.
6. Alice picks up her package at the wafflehouse.

And there yah have it. Alice now bought something from amazon, and only Bob really knows what it is, but bob really doesn't know who Alice is, because Alice contacted bob on some anonymouse straw purchase network website and alice paid with monero, so....

[Joshuar]

I remember reading a quote from Satoshi explaining the essence of Monero itself. Does anyone have a link to it?

I think its this one:

I'm not grasping your idea yet.  Does it hide any information from the public network?  What is the advantage?

If at least 50% of nodes validated transactions enough that old transactions can be discarded, then everyone saw everything and could keep a record of it.

Can public nodes see the values of transactions?  Can they see which previous transaction the value came from?  If they can, then they know everything.  If they can't, then they couldn't verify that the value came from a valid source, so you couldn't take their generated chain as verification of it.

Does it hide the bitcoin addresses?  Is that it?  OK, maybe now I see, if that's it.

Crypto may offer a way to do "key blinding".  I did some research and it was obscure, but there may be something there.  "group signatures" may be related.

There's something here in the general area:
http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hopwood/crypto/rh/

What we need is a way to generate additional blinded variations of a public key.  The blinded variations would have the same properties as the root public key, such that the private key could generate a signature for any one of them.  Others could not tell if a blinded key is related to the root key, or other blinded keys from the same root key.  These are the properties of blinding.  Blinding, in a nutshell, is x = (x * large_random_int) mod m.

When paying to a bitcoin address, you would generate a new blinded key for each use.

Then you need to be able to sign a signature such that you can't tell that two signatures came from the same private key.  I'm not sure if always signing a different blinded public key would already give you this property.  If not, I think that's where group signatures comes in.  With group signatures, it is possible for something to be signed but not know who signed it.

As an example, say some unpopular military attack has to be ordered, but nobody wants to go down in history as the one who ordered it.  If 10 leaders have private keys, one of them could sign the order and you wouldn't know who did it.

Oh that could work too, but it was this that I specifically remember: got it from the cryptonote thread

This is a very interesting topic.  If a solution was found, a much better, easier, more convenient implementation of Bitcoin would be possible.

Originally, a coin can be just a chain of signatures.  With a timestamp service, the old ones could be dropped eventually before there's too much backtrace fan-out, or coins could be kept individually or in denominations.  It's the need to check for the absence of double-spends that requires global knowledge of all transactions.

The challenge is, how do you prove that no other spends exist?  It seems a node must know about all transactions to be able to verify that.  If it only knows the hash of the in/outpoints, it can't check the signatures to see if an outpoint has been spent before.  Do you have any ideas on this?

It's hard to think of how to apply zero-knowledge-proofs in this case.

We're trying to prove the absence of something, which seems to require knowing about all and checking that the something isn't included.

[Anon136]

A. fiat -> monero

http://www.ebay.com/itm/15-XMR-Monero-like-Litecoin-Ripple-Darkcoin-U-S-seller-/121600620272?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1c4ff636f0

ebay. Its a hack, but it...... works.

B. Finally found (or the universe presented) the solution to the "how do I really keep my shopping private with monero" problem, considering anything you buy online will be shipping to you.

Say hello to roadie

https://www.roadie.com/

this little peer to peer company is trying to disrupt shipping. So how is this used in the monero private online shopping economy?

1. network of "shyptos" would exist (shypto is a horrible portmanteau of ship, cryptography, and shop. It might not be the best. Maybe shoptopgraphy)
2. Alice wants to buy something from amazon, but doesn't want anyone to know about it. And she means ANYONE.
3. Alice goes to shypto network and places a buy ticket - basically lists the item she wants. Someone from shypto network claims that ticket (bob), engages with Alice via some secure, encrypted messaging system. Main information that needs to be sent Alice -> shypto member is the destination wafflehouse (yes, because wafflehouse is involved in the roadie system) http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/24/waffle-house-partners-with-roadie/#lcX6TT:1i6d
3b. Alice and Bob work out some way to trust each other re: reimbursement.
4. Bob orders the item from amazon (using FIAT!!), has it shipped to his house. based on whatever he and alice figured out, he proves to alice he bought it (or alice had paid upfront, whatever). Alice then sends the XMR payment to Bob.
5. Bob then finds a gig on Roadie to deliver the package. He drops it off at the wafflehouse, roadie person drives it from bobs wafflehouse to alice's wafflehouse.
6. Alice picks up her package at the wafflehouse.

And there yah have it. Alice now bought something from amazon, and only Bob really knows what it is, but bob really doesn't know who Alice is, because Alice contacted bob on some anonymouse straw purchase network website and alice paid with monero, so....

hey thanks for showing me this. someone here lets try to use monero + roadie to make transaction. it will be fun! i could sell some silver if anyone is interested. ill see if i can think of anything else i could sell.

[vokain]

btw xmr.to is getting some well deserved attention:

https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/579092073875308545

         

*INB4 ItsHappening.gif*

Hehe I first introduced Monero to him last year when I had a question about how to bridge separate blockchains

[cryptodaknight]

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

^^^ agree with this 1000%^^^

[smooth]

Is this even possible without a privatekey? http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2zrdxz/withdrawals_halted_as_stolen_evolution_coins_make/cplovwe?context=3

You can after-the-fact deanonymize ring signatures unfortunately with co-operation of one or more ring signature members. Leads to a lot of ugly situations that Zerocash resolves.

This is basically the issue described in MRL-0001. If you have a ring signature with 5 possible signers, and 4 of them come forward and prove it wasn't theirs, it must belong to the 5th.  

I don't really see the practical application of this, aside from the cascading failure scenarios described in that document of too much usage of mix=0 or mix=1 (which are addressed by the solution given in MRL-0004 of requiring a minimum mix factor). For example, if you are deliberately trying to trace transactions, how are you going to track down those four people given no other information? At that point all you have are one-time addresses on the blockchain. And then they still have to cooperate; if one or two decline, you're stuck. It is almost impossible and all that does is get you one output. To trace another output  (which will have a completely different set of mixes) you have to start over, find four different people, and get those four to cooperate. Then go on to the next output and start over again. Etc. And if somebody along the way decides to use a mix of 10 or 20 or 50, good luck!

The replies on reddit are essentially correct on this point. Of course Peter is also correct that zerocoin is "more anonymous" but in practice that last 1% may not matter, certainly compared to BTC at least.

[smooth]

Let's not make the same mistake as Beta did.

The VHS/beta argument is way overplayed in my view. Yes beta had better picture quality. VHS had longer recording time and lower cost. Does that make one better than the other? Not really. People really felt the recording time and cost were the more important factors. There is no need to resort to arguments about the worse technology winning because of better marketing or suggest that people were being tricked into buying the objectively worse product. Does that ever happen? Maybe, but not nearly as often as the argument is made about beta/vhs for example (and a few others).

Anyway, user-frendliness and good enough marketing that people are at least aware of the solution and its advantages are necessary. I mean you can make the same case about "better anonymity" vs. "ease of use" that I made in the previous paragraph about better picture quality vs recording time. I think this is valid.

[drawingthesun]

It seems like the rise of the past few weeks has run out of steam, I wonder if we'll slowly bottom out ready for another rise in a month or two?

[nioc]

When is Monero's first birthday?  I would like to give it a small present.

[Its About Sharing]

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.

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?

DARSH users don't care about theoretical superiority.  Because thinking is like, hard and not cool, and stuff.  Only nerds do that.

They will remain blissfully ignorant until DARSH is broken and they get hurt by losing coins or being thrown in jail for buying illegal botanical products from Nuclear and Abraxus.

We can just wait for whoever compromised Silk Road to do the same to DARSH, or catalyze the process with bounties.  Maybe BCX needs something to do...

I for one can't wait to hear the outcry when the remote killswitch "feature" is used to drain or otherwise exploit their dear, trusted MadoffNodes.  

To non technical people just comparing the two coins, Dark may seem good enough. And what additionally worries me in a way is that many people thought OS' like Windows would eventually fall away as they were so problematic (e.g. Blue Screen of Death) but money was put into marketing. I was a DBA for Sybase in the 90's and I found it superior (at the time) and easier to use than Oracle. This was both functionally and technically (e.g. File systems on oracle and no raw partitions at the time), yet Oracle slammed Sybase with an inferior product.

The best doesn't win and since market cap / price might be the big attractor (LTC excluded lol), we should be careful with Monero in not "hedging" our bets regarding getting the word out on podcasts and such.

I'm not sure if the huge rise today in DRK is just inside buying but the volume on Poloniex has just shifted from XMR to DRK, so it makes one wonder.

[Its About Sharing]

Let's not make the same mistake as Beta did.

The VHS/beta argument is way overplayed in my view. Yes beta had better picture quality. VHS had longer recording time and lower cost. Does that make one better than the other? Not really. People really felt the recording time and cost were the more important factors. There is no need to resort to arguments about the worse technology winning because of better marketing or suggest that people were being tricked into buying the objectively worse product. Does that ever happen? Maybe, but not nearly as often as the argument is made about beta/vhs for example (and a few others).

Anyway, user-frendliness and good enough marketing that people are at least aware of the solution and its advantages are necessary. I mean you can make the same case about "better anonymity" vs. "ease of use" that I made in the previous paragraph about better picture quality vs recording time. I think this is valid.

I don't disagree with you. That old example came to mind but of course there are many. Instead of focusing on why "my" argument may be wrong, it might be safer to think about why it might be right. It can't hurt to have all bases covered.

Again, I'm not meaning this in a way against any of the supporters as I am one (via holding XMR, not DRK) but just speaking my mind in a less technical way, for as observed time and time again, the best doesn't always win. An example that I know of personally was Oracle over Sybase (back in the day). I was pissed to move to Oracle as I objectively found Sybase superior, not just better, than Oracle back in the 90's (late). Within a few years the marketing of Oracle drew the customers and then money was poured into research, integration, etc. and then it was better. After seeing Dark have had forks and still a following, don't discount stupidity of people to stick with it even though it has given warning signs.

I have not used Dash, so I have no idea of user friendliness between it and XMR. At this stage I don't think that is an issue, as most haven'T even heard of XMR or DRK. But those that have, how do you sway? I think enough money is in DRK and they will prop up that position. Once XMR has that money in (and it is coming unless the volume is all fake), then it will be protected and built upon. In the meantime, it just gets a bit antsy (on days like today.)

[jehst]

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.

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?

DARSH users don't care about theoretical superiority.  Because thinking is like, hard and not cool, and stuff.  Only nerds do that.

They will remain blissfully ignorant until DARSH is broken and they get hurt by losing coins or being thrown in jail for buying illegal botanical products from Nuclear and Abraxus.

We can just wait for whoever compromised Silk Road to do the same to DARSH, or catalyze the process with bounties.  Maybe BCX needs something to do...

I for one can't wait to hear the outcry when the remote killswitch "feature" is used to drain or otherwise exploit their dear, trusted MadoffNodes.  

To non technical people just comparing the two coins, Dark may seem good enough. And what additionally worries me in a way is that many people thought OS' like Windows would eventually fall away as they were so problematic (e.g. Blue Screen of Death) but money was put into marketing. I was a DBA for Sybase in the 90's and I found it superior (at the time) and easier to use than Oracle. This was both functionally and technically (e.g. File systems on oracle and no raw partitions at the time), yet Oracle slammed Sybase with an inferior product.

The best doesn't win and since market cap / price might be the big attractor (LTC excluded lol), we should be careful with Monero in not "hedging" our bets regarding getting the word out on podcasts and such.

I'm not sure if the huge rise today in DRK is just inside buying but the volume on Poloniex has just shifted from XMR to DRK, so it makes one wonder.

Evo coin thieves got burned by BTC-E. They may have decided to use DRK because Monero's market cap isn't big enough for 130k BTC or however much they are trying to wash.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

The best doesn't win and since market cap / price might be the big attractor (LTC excluded lol), we should be careful with Monero in not "hedging" our bets regarding getting the word out on podcasts and such.

The miniscule market caps of these altcoins mean nothing to the mass of potential outside adopters looking for something useful, which I have yet to see from any crypto, including Bitcoin.

Saying that Monero has to win tiny market cap battles in order to achieve wider adoption is like saying you have to be the most popular kid in high school in order be successful in the real world.

[Xdragon]

When is Monero's first birthday?  I would like to give it a small present.

It is around April 19th