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

[papa_lazzarou]

 it seems just as likely that the coin was mined in closed private circles for several months as it does the chain was entirely faked.

IMO, the fact that the miner released with BCN was deliberately crippled to be orders of magnitude less efficient than it should be its determinant in turning the scales in favor of the blockchain being faked.

Minting Money with Monero ... and CPU vector intrinsics

Followed a day later by raising that to a 5x speedup, and then an 8x speedup, and within a week, an 11x speedup.  That was pretty remarkable, given that a developer had already started trickling optimizations into the codebase.

The more I looked at it, the more clear it became:  The original developers deliberately crippled the miner.  It wasn't just slow, and it wasn't just naive;  it was deliberately obfuscated and made slow by the use of completely superfluous copies, function calls, use of 8 bit pointer types, and accompanied by the most ridiculously slow implementation of the AES encryption algorithm one could imagine.[

(snip)

By May 16th, I'd squeezed about 90% of the optimizations out of it, and we were running 100x faster than the coin was at its initial release.  That didn't stop me from obsessing about speed tweaks for the next week or so, but it gave me a little breathing room to start thinking about the next step.
/quote]

See also how the Monero devs patched the glitch pretty fast:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg11153715#msg11153715
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg11153859#msg11153859

[smooth]

 it seems just as likely that the coin was mined in closed private circles for several months as it does the chain was entirely faked.

IMO, the fact that the miner released with BCN was deliberately crippled to be orders of magnitude less efficient than it should be its determinant in turning the scales in favor of the blockchain being faked.

Agree, but mining it 'in closed private circles for several months' is faking it considering that it claimed to be two years old, and 'closed private circles' for whatever period of time constitutes a premine by definition (mined before public release).

Furthermore, the premise that the cryptographic and programming experts who developed the original technology couldn't do even the most basic of optimizations (or more likely de-unoptimizations) on the mining code they invented over several months (much less two years) is completely implausible. It is likewise implausible even that independent 'mining teams' not directly associated with the original inventors wouldn't have optimized it at least to some degree, leading to a much higher hash rate, which is not seen on the (faked) blockchain.

The reason no such evidence of these optimizations/un-deoptimizations exists is most plausibly that they were actually running un-deoptimzied code on a very small number of computers over a small period of time to fake the whole thing.

There are no facts at hand (except whitepaper forensics) and a lot of educated guesswork

(Putting aside for the moment that your statement reads as "there are no facts at hand except [the facts at hand]"...)

There are many facts at hand, including the first hand reports from many of us who were around at the time and saw the whole clumsily but obviously orchestrated "discovery" of BCN on a dead coin thread, the entire charade of a "message" from Cicada 3301 (100% fake), and all the rest of an obvious altcoin premine scam from the era that was the peak of the altcoin premine scams. The whole thing was a fraud from start to finish, and there are countless first hand reports of it. Moreover there is a lot of "facts at hand" in the rethink-your-strategy post (and various replies on that thread, including attempts to "refute" it from outed sock-puppet and purchased accounts) besides just the whitepaper forensics, all of which point to fraud and scamming. If you don't see it, you are being willfully blind or obstinately contrary.

[kazuki49]

Woah! Monero is getting popular indeed https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/pull/329

IMO, the fact that the miner released with BCN was deliberately crippled to be orders of magnitude less efficient than it should be its determinant in turning the scales in favor of the blockchain being faked.

Lol, you mean it wasn't enough to ninjamine 80%+ they deliberately launched the coin with a cripple miner for us peasants?

[Wanderlust]

 it seems just as likely that the coin was mined in closed private circles for several months as it does the chain was entirely faked.

IMO, the fact that the miner released with BCN was deliberately crippled to be orders of magnitude less efficient than it should be its determinant in turning the scales in favor of the blockchain being faked.

Agree, but mining it 'in closed private circles for several months' is faking it considering that it claimed to be two years old, and 'closed private circles' for whatever period of time constitutes a premine by definition (mined before public release).

Furthermore, the premise that the cryptographic and programming experts who developed the original technology couldn't do even the most basic of optimizations (or more likely de-unoptimizations) on the mining code they invented over several months (much less two years) is completely implausible. It is likewise implausible even that independent 'mining teams' not directly associated with the original inventors wouldn't have optimized it at least to some degree, leading to a much higher hash rate, which is not seen on the (faked) blockchain.

The reason no such evidence of these optimizations/un-deoptimizations exists is most plausibly that they were actually running un-deoptimzied code on a very small number of computers over a small period of time to fake the whole thing.

There are no facts at hand (except whitepaper forensics) and a lot of educated guesswork

(Putting aside for the moment that your statement reads as "there are no facts at hand except [the facts at hand]"...)

There are many facts at hand, including the first hand reports from many of us who were around at the time and saw the whole clumsily but obviously orchestrated "discovery" of BCN on a dead coin thread, the entire charade of a "message" from Cicada 3301 (100% fake), and all the rest of an obvious altcoin premine scam from the era that was the peak of the altcoin premine scams. The whole thing was a fraud from start to finish, and there are countless first hand reports of it. Moreover there is a lot of "facts at hand" in the rethink-your-strategy post (and various replies on that thread, including attempts to "refute" it from outed sock-puppet and purchased accounts) besides just the whitepaper forensics, all of which point to fraud and scamming. If you don't see it, you are being willfully blind or obstinately contrary.

1. There a few "facts at hand". I should have said few.
2. Im not sure how u can claim it was a scam from "start to finish". GingerAle's remembered theory of a rift in the original team seems plausible
3. am i being "obstinately contrary"? quite possibly, but im learning a lot. thanks

4. Q How much Bitcoin was mined in "private circles" before the launch of bitcointalk and/or a wider mining community

5. smooth, u know ur stuff - kudos.
Q. clearly owning 80% of a CN coin allows de-anon (is this proven byw?). my final question is, in ur opinion what is the minimum amount required to achieve a 50% chance de-anon'ing tx's. could one "crash the plane" with 50%?

6. who is rethink-your-strategy? when i google "bytecoin scam" it all points to his original post.

many many thanks for ur inputs


@kazuki - thanks for this post… interesting. the part emboldened is why i began looking into this. as i said before i assumed BCN was dead.

I repeat: It seems just as likely that the coin was mined in closed private circles as it does the blockchain was entirely faked. There is no way of knowing if the entire BCN Team or just a part of it is responsible for this mystery. also despite the "fake dates" on the paper it seems very likely that CN was being developed in 2012.

I'm not stranger to this conclusion, there is definitely fake dates in the whitepaper, as it has been proved, but it does not discard the technology that has been "saved" through Monero, moreover it continues being developed this means another clean fork could take place in the future, I think the problem with this history is how deeply ignored it is outside Bytecoin/Cryptonote/Monero circles, like you said, you don't see a single interview with the "Bytecoin team" where the guy asks what the fucking is wrong with the timestamps and why there is not proof that it has been mined since 2012, one of the few mainstream publications that tried to explain with a honest approach all these issue was Lets Talk Bitcoin back September, 2014: http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mind-to-matter/lets-talk-bitcoin/e/lets-talk-bitcoin-144-news-talk-35387986 I continue to observe Bytecoin and I have to confess the level of activity around this coin is surprisingly large which makes me wonder if they are planning something in the future, but so far the only move that could save it from eternal scrutiny would be a reset of the blockchain or a at least of all that mined before it was made public (March 2014 I think) even making it permanently inflationary would not excuses the massive amount mined in secret, if this was a darknet coin so why did it was made public after 80%+ mined? Why not let it being a "darknet coin" and launch clean ones with verifiable honest launch on the clearnet... oh wait that was already been done: Monero and others.

No intention here to shill BCN. Just replying. thanks. Luckily the "opening lid" thread has sparked up and we can move things over there. Pls quote this post over there if u wish. cheers.

[smooth]

Im not sure how u can claim it was a scam from "start to finish".

By "start" I mean the public launch/reveal/"discovery". Before that I don't know what happened, nor do I particularly care, since the subsequent fraud made the whole thing uninteresting to me, except as a project ripe to be forked away from developers who had destroyed any possibility of community trust or respect.

4. Q How much Bitcoin was mined in "private circles" before the launch of bitcointalk and/or a wider mining community

None, and I answered this question comprehensively on the "Blowing the lid off the CryptoNote/Bytecoin scam" thread. I don't really know that it is on topic there, but it is certainly off topic here. Please be respectful of forum rules and etiquette about thread topics and head elsewhere unless this has some relevance to Monero.

Q. clearly owning 80% of a CN coin allows de-anon (is this proven byw?). my final question is, in ur opinion what is the minimum amount required to achieve a 50% chance de-anon'ing tx's. could one "crash the plane" with 50%?

See MRL-0001 at lab.getmonero.org

who is rethink-your-strategy? when i google "bytecoin scam" it all points to his original post.

Some forum guy who has been around for a while and wrote mostly about various altcoin, etc. scams. He was looking into the Bytecoin scam before that post though, I remember him writing about it on the coinmarketcap thread a few months earlier, possibly elsewhere as well (Bytecoin thread?). Apparently he was/is a student at Princeton, I don't remember seeing him identify himself other than that.

Quoted message trimmed for brevity and relevance.

[cAPSLOCK]

Woah! Monero is getting popular indeed https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/pull/329

Neato.  I wonder what his intentions/interest are?

[Wanderlust]

@smooth. re the above. thanks

the BTC q was asked to see if there were any parallels. not out of disrespect . without BTC none of us would be here.

I would say there is an understandable obsession with fair distro. sadly IMO fair distro simply does not exist in crypto, mostly to do with mining farms, pnd groups, BTC whales messing with altcoins etc etc

The BCN story is undeniably dodgy.Does it make a diff if BCN was privately mined rather than its blockchain being faked? to me it does, if only slightly

regarding my Q about minimum CN coin supply required for de-anon - i asked that to establish if the amount allegedly pre-mined was exactly equal to the amount required to de-anon the tech.

moving forward it is only fair to assume some 3-letter agencies are accumulating these types of currencies, if only as a precaution. Ill read the MRL doc u linked in the hope that the answer to what the min % of CN supply is required for a de-anon is plain to see. needless to say the notion a fascist gov would only need to "buy de-anonymisation" by gradually accumulating a certain % of coin is fing disturbing, as much or more than the BCN origin story. Yes it might take time, yes it might spike the price and yes they could do it. ironically the only way to prevent a gov buying-in/mining in order to de-anon the system would be to premine a huge amount and vow to not sell it. LOL. I know that sounds like trolling but the logic is sound, yes?

[smooth]

regarding my Q about minimum CN coin supply required for de-anon - i asked that to establish if the amount allegedly pre-mined was exactly equal to the amount required to de-anon the tech.

There is no specific set amount, but 80% is very high. It is a question of probabilities. Someone who controls e.g. 80% has a high probability to control all of the mixins of any new transaction and therefore know which is the real one (since it is the only one that isn't theirs). With a mix of 5+1 that 80% owner will be able to trace about 33% of new transactions. In that same situation someone who owns 20% (still a lot in any remotely reasonably distributed coin) would only be able to trace 0.032% of new transactions, so obviously that is a huge difference.

ironically the only way to prevent a gov buying-in/mining in order to de-anon the system would be to premine a huge amount and vow to not sell it. LOL. I know that sounds like trolling but the logic is sound, yes?

No, because such a vow could never be verified or enforced, and furthermore you don't need to sell it, just share information about it. There is certainly no possibility of confidence as long as someone is in a position to do that in an invisible and undetectable manner.

The only protection against this vulnerability is for the coin to be launched, traded, and mined, in a public process where market dynamics and transparency give anyone observing the process reasonable confidence that such disproprtionate control is unlikely or impossible. The best way for major stakeholders to do that is to just hold a significant portion themselves, which is far easier to do when distribution is fair and gradual.

As long as there is a significant number of people doing this (as there is in any well-launched, and well-distributed coin such as Bitcoin or Monero), there is an exceedingly small likelihood of anyone controlling an unacceptably large portion (for example, as above, 80% vs. 20% or less).

Quoted message trimmed for brevity and relevance.

[Wanderlust]

regarding my Q about minimum CN coin supply required for de-anon - i asked that to establish if the amount allegedly pre-mined was exactly equal to the amount required to de-anon the tech.

There is no specific set amount, but 80% is very high. It is a question of probabilities. Someone who controls e.g. 80% has a high probability to control all of the mixin of any new transaction and therefore know which is the real one (since it is the only one that isn't theirs). With a mix of 5+1 that 80% owner will be able to trace about 33% of new transactions. In that same situation someone who owns 20% (still a lot in any remotely reasonably distributed coin) would only be able to trace 0.032% of new transactions, so obviously that is a huge difference.

understood.

and (sorry to repeat) do you agree with the following statement?:

The only way to prevent gov(s)/attacker(s)/whoever(s) buying-in and/or mining in order to de-anon the CN system would be to premine a huge amount and vow to not sell it.

(LOL. I know that sounds like trolling but the logic is sound, yes? In this scenario the creators, aware of the fatal flaw, take the only measure possible to securie its anonymity forever*, assuming they keep their vow to never sell)

thanks
*shouldnt use that word. sorry.

(will look/see how much has been sold in last 12 months)

[kazuki49]

this should put things in perspective:

[cAPSLOCK]

The only way to prevent gov(s)/attacker(s)/whoever(s) buying-in and/or mining in order to de-anon the CN system would be to premine a huge amount and vow to not sell it.

That is a central bank.

(LOL. I know that sounds like trolling but the logic is sound, yes? In this scenario the creators, aware of the fatal flaw, take the only measure possible to securie its anonymity forever*, assuming they keep their vow to never sell)

FWIW I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt as we get to know you.

You just added enough to the "doubt" pile that I am second guessing that benefit.

[Wanderlust]

The only way to prevent gov(s)/attacker(s)/whoever(s) buying-in and/or mining in order to de-anon the CN system would be to premine a huge amount and vow to not sell it.

That is a central bank.

(LOL. I know that sounds like trolling but the logic is sound, yes? In this scenario the creators, aware of the fatal flaw, take the only measure possible to securie its anonymity forever*, assuming they keep their vow to never sell)

FWIW I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt as we get to know you.

You just added enough to the "doubt" pile that I am second guessing that benefit.

preposterous as it sounds the statement it seems to me is true. bytecoin scam or no bytecoin scam. as I say Ill now look to see the last 12 months+ trading history to see if it has already been disproved by large% sales.

why stop giving me the benefit of the doubt after my most curious insight thus far that arguably a CN coin's anon cannot be safeguarded unless a large % is never sold on exchanges or mined by bad actors or both, and (very tentatively, perhaps regrettably) provides BCN with a justification for a premine.

understand this is purely a thought-experment. i am not vouching for anything here.

[smooth]

The only way to prevent gov(s)/attacker(s)/whoever(s) buying-in and/or mining in order to de-anon the CN system would be to premine a huge amount and vow to not sell it.

That is a central bank.

(LOL. I know that sounds like trolling but the logic is sound, yes? In this scenario the creators, aware of the fatal flaw, take the only measure possible to securie its anonymity forever*, assuming they keep their vow to never sell)

FWIW I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt as we get to know you.

You just added enough to the "doubt" pile that I am second guessing that benefit.

preposterous as it sounds the statement it seems to me is true. bytecoin scam or no bytecoin scam. as I say Ill now look to see the last 12 months+ trading history to see if it has already been disproved by large% sales.

why stop giving me the benefit of the doubt after my most curious insight thus far that arguably a CN coin's anon cannot be safeguarded unless a large % is never sold on exchanges or mined by bad actors or both, and (very tentatively, perhaps regrettably) provides BCN with a justification for a premine.

understand this is purely a thought-experment. i am not vouching for anything here.

Since you are repeating this nonsense, you obviously missed the correct answer I already gave earlier.

No, because such a vow could never be verified or enforced, and furthermore you don't need to sell it, just share information about it. There is certainly no possibility of confidence as long as someone is in a position to do that in an invisible and undetectable manner.

Furthermore I'd add that it won't work, because given such a premine and intelligent users (or wallet developers) they will simply avoid mixing with the premine outputs. This in turn makes the task of an attacker easier, because now that attacker need only control a large portion of the remaining outputs, a far smaller number.

So you can choose your poison. Either certain traceability by the original fraudulent developers, or easier traceability by a subsequent attacker.

Or you can just leave the scammers to the dustbin of history and use a true open source coin with a open, community-driven development process and a fair ongoing distribution process that makes it extraordinarily unlikely for anyone to control anywhere near 80%, particularly if the coin actually sees widespread use.

Isn't life a bit too short to be wasting your mental effort trying to come up with increasingly contrived excuses for Bytecoin's fraud and greed?

[myagui]

By repeating false enough times, it surely becomes true, no? 

[newb4now]

Will there be another Monero Missive released soon?

Any updates on database testing?

[dnaleor]

dnaleor played some agar.io again today

[Anon136]

dnaleor played some agar.io again today
http://i.gyazo.com/77f072664463e84cb3ccda561e8b0589.png

I've gotten #2 before but never yet #1. Did you have allies or did you manage that solo?

[GingerAle]

Will there be another Monero Missive released soon?

Any updates on database testing?

because im involved in the missives, I guess I can speak up. We record them. I edit them. People transcribe them. And then they sit in a magical digital incubator until the moon turns the proper shade of purple and enough animal un-sacrifices are made (thats when you set up animals to breed. The Monero gods are pro-life. So go find some turtles and put on some Barry White)

re: database testing. The latest bug that my daemon keeps hitting is some threading issue. Anybody have any experience debugging threading problems?

https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/issues/328

[numismatist]

my problem is motive.

1) GREED

2) To DE-ANON

3) To prevent a DE-ANON

consider investigating a possibility number 4

4) A setup game of good cop vs. bad cop.
One group, both sides same party, staging the villains part and the heroics.
Prerequisites: would have to be cops.

Test environment: place a donut into this thread and take a look at who bites into it, or quotes it. Pretty simple and not boring at all.

[cAPSLOCK]

why stop giving me the benefit of the doubt after my most curious insight thus far that arguably a CN coin's anon cannot be safeguarded unless a large % is never sold on exchanges or mined by bad actors or both, and (very tentatively, perhaps regrettably) provides BCN with a justification for a premine.

Because you are acting as a BCN apologist.  You are trying to stretch reason to the point of snapping to defend an 80% premine.

Why would you be doing this?  I can only think of a couple reasons.  The one you are portraying is that of "honest curiosity".

You will not often see me accuse a poster of attempting to pump a coin...  I am getting close though.