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

[luigi1111]

This is nothing at all like the emissions debate.

As far as technical reasons, will increasing the blocktime and thereby decreasing the # of blocks reduce the size of the blockchain to any meaningful degree?  

It might. The prevalence of zero transaction blocks is mainly filling the blockchain now. In the future, who knows. So, if we might see a decrease in size of blockchain if transaction levels continue as they are, but hopefully we see more transactions, not less. So I don't think this rationale has weight.

I'm with ArcticMine re: tabling this issue until later.

However, I do see the rationale in decreasing orphan rate, even though I am not entirely aware of the negative consequences of orphan blocks - I just get the gist that they are not ideal.

Thus, I would be fine with a 2 minute blocktime. I did some digging into the original TFT bitmonero thread, and indeed this is an old issue. Back then, the compromise / rationalization was 1 min blocktimes during the solo mining phase, and then 2 minute blocktimes later.

I believe "tabling for later" will just result in status quo forever. It won't get easier to change. We say we are young, nimble, able to make the changes we want without all the politics of BTC. Are we?

This change, being trivial technically, is all about discussion, and talk is cheap anyway. I don't see how discussing it in this thread (by mostly non-developers - at least of Monero) will have any measurable impact WRT slowing down the achievement of the design goals.

Orphans are wasted hashrate; they make the network less secure than it would be without them. They can also cause "false" confirms that are reorged out later. Bigger blocks (more transactions) would make the problem worse.
Also, combining a slow-to-verify POW with a 60 second blocktime results in a nice little advantage for large pools (even without any malice on their part).

Is blockchain size even still relevant when moved to DB  ?

Absolutely.

[ShapeShift.io]

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[dEBRUYNE]

There seems to be some confusion around the upcoming "hardfork", so I gave a bit of clarity about it:

smooth said yesterday that the hardfork will happen in 6 months. Implementing the recommendations from MRL0004 is important, so it is clear that the price somehow reacts to this "delay" (its not a delay, they had just wrong expectations i guess)

All right, I am going to clear some things up here with respect to the bolded part. First of all, the hardfork code (the one that implements the recommendations from MRL-0004) is implemented into the new binaries (0.9). As a result, everyone who uses the new binaries will use this new code with the recommendations from MRL-0004. So it won't take six months before you can use these recommendations. However, after 6 months these changes will be enforced and thus everyone will be using them. But, as 0.9 is a significant improvement over 0.8.8.6 I guess almost everybody will be using the new binaries. Furthermore, if you compile yourself from the latest commits you will also use this new hardfork code. In addition, after 6 months there will be a new hardfork code with new recommendations and new binaries. So for example, in April they will release binaries 1.0 (guessing here) with hardfork code 2.0 and everyone can use that already. So in conclusion, only the enforcement happens in 6 months, it can already be used when the new binaries are released. I hope this clears things up.

[dEBRUYNE]

Great post from dnaleor about ZeroCash:

about zerocash. This is what can be found on the website

How does Zerocash work?

Zerocash extends the protocol and software underlying Bitcoin by adding new, privacy-preserving payments. In doing so it forms a new protocol that, while using some of the same technology and software as Bitcoin, is distinct from it. This new protocol has both anonymous coins, dubbed zerocoins, and non-anonymous ones, which, for purposes of disambiguation, we call basecoins. In contrast to Bitcoin's transactions, payment transactions using the Zerocash protocol do not contain any public information about the payment's origin, destination, or amount; instead, the correctness of the transaction is demonstrated via the use of a zero-knowledge proof. Users can convert from basecoins to zerocoins, send zerocoins to other users, and split or merge zerocoins they own in any way that preserves the total value. Users may also convert zerocoins back into basecoins, though in principle this is not necessary: all transactions can be made in terms of zerocoins.

There are some issues with this protocol

1) fungibility: by introducing basecoins, payment processors, exchnages, governments etc can force you to use these basecoins. When you use the zerocoins, you are flagged by default. Basically there is no difference when you use the ConfidentialTransactions-Sidechain or coinjoin.
2) zerocoin transactions will probably be larger, so people will try to avoid paying the fees by making as little zerocoin transactions as possible
3) due to the fact that eventually only people who want to hide a crime will use the zerocoins, it will be possible that when you get coins out, there is a possibility to link those coins to coins that were put into the zerocoin-pool. So it's tricky... Be aware of this or you'll use your anonimity.

compare this to XMR:
1) when mixin 0 isn't possible anymore (soon^TM) all transaction outputs (except the minted coins) are mixed by default. So you can't be forced not to use mixing.
2) because all tractions will have a minimum mixin, you can't avoid paying the fees. Paranoid people pay more for higher mixin.
3) everybody uses mixin, so it's impossible to detect money flows on the network

[d0om]

Props on the FreeBSD wallet - building the wallet was a breeze.

[8XMR]

ShapeShift.io is excited to announce the launch of our newest tool, Skeleton. Skeleton allows websites to offer on-site exchanges so that their users don't have to leave the site in order to do an exchange. Allow your website users to buy or sell Monero directly from your site! Learn more about how you can add this to your site here and see a VIDEO example of how CoinCap has utilized this offering: http://[Suspicious link removed]/1WvSoBx

Shapeshift is useful. Makes things easier when dealing with multiple coins

[smoothie]

Also, one of you asked Andreas Antonopoulos about the fungibility of bitcoin at this Rotterdam presentation.  Good job: 
 
https://youtu.be/ak1iojpiHpM?t=33m6s

it was me

Yeah good job. At least Andreas sees the fungibiility issues Bitcoin has and is willing to acknowledge it.

[americanpegasus]

When trying to figure out when hyper-Monerozation will occur, remember to take into account Hofstadter's Law:  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter's_law  
  
"In the early days of computer chess, people used to estimate that it would be ten years until a computer (or program) was world champion. But after ten years had passed, it seemed that the day a computer would become world champion was still more than ten years away"  
  
So in 2014 when you think, "Surely cryptocurrency will consume everything by 2016" and then 2016 arrives and it seems at least two more years away... don't be surprised.  
  
 
  
Don't forget about that other law too where the longer something persists, the longer it will likely continue to persist (the name escapes me at the moment).  We have persisted for a year and a half; that's a pretty good start.

[farfiman]

Also, one of you asked Andreas Antonopoulos about the fungibility of bitcoin at this Rotterdam presentation.  Good job: 
 
https://youtu.be/ak1iojpiHpM?t=33m6s

it was me

Yeah good job. At least Andreas sees the fungibiility issues Bitcoin has and is willing to acknowledge it.

He acknowledged it ,but he didn't really offer any type of solution-just that's it's bad and "complain to your government".

[americanpegasus]

Also, one of you asked Andreas Antonopoulos about the fungibility of bitcoin at this Rotterdam presentation.  Good job:  
  
https://youtu.be/ak1iojpiHpM?t=33m6s

it was me

Yeah good job. At least Andreas sees the fungibiility issues Bitcoin has and is willing to acknowledge it.

He acknowledged it ,but he didn't really offer any type of solution-just that's it's bad and "complain to your government".

 
  
He should be smarter than that; what a logical fallacy.  
  
If a system allows a bad actor to wreck havoc on those who use the system, the flaw is not with the users.  
  
If I design a video game that's AWESOME... except that you can also right click on any player and see their credit card number.... that's not the users fault.  I can't very well stand on stage and say, "You ask why my game lets people see credit card numbers, but I pose that to YOU: what we need is users who respect the privacy of other players!"  
  
Bitcoin was amazing.  It was revolutionary.  Without it, we would have never had cryptonote.  
  
You know what else was revolutionary and amazing?  Usenet.

[nioc]

Also, one of you asked Andreas Antonopoulos about the fungibility of bitcoin at this Rotterdam presentation.  Good job:  
  
https://youtu.be/ak1iojpiHpM?t=33m6s

it was me

Yeah good job. At least Andreas sees the fungibiility issues Bitcoin has and is willing to acknowledge it.

He acknowledged it ,but he didn't really offer any type of solution-just that's it's bad and "complain to your government".

Andreas Antonopoulos starts his response with saying that blacklisting is evil.

As far as your quote,  actually he said "you have to ask what the hell is wrong with my government not what the hell is wrong with btc?"

This is after hand waving about btc fungibility improvements and then extolling the public ledger and the ability to do "archaeological blockchain analysis".
 

As always, thank you dnaleor
  

[medusa13]

yeah its somehow a crazy kind of view. what has gov to do with it at all? if traceability/linkability its is technically possible, some people will always do it, if not governments themselfs.
or does he think gov should prevent blockchain analysis/blacklisting with laws ?  

no no no, the only way to make something not happen is trying to prevent it with all force. to make it impossible/as hard as possible

[binaryFate]

Fungibility cannot be obtained on a voluntary basis, period. Anybody suggesting otherwise is being irrational (which is surprising in the case of Antonopoulos).
That is why privacy is the only possible enabler of fungibility in cryptocurrencies.

[smooth]

It's time to go to the db version ?

Yes it is. The old version takes about 8 GB of physical RAM on Linux so I'm not surprised you might have trouble running it on Windows with only that much to fit the process and the rest of the OS.

If you can build it yourself or wait for the next release candidate build I recommend doing that.

[sleepdog]

Somebody posted up a link to a compiled Windows version a while back, I've been using that without any issues for at least a month I reckon. Good luck finding it in the thread though! 

[bclcjunkie]

what's your swap size? i never encountered this sort of problem. i think blockchain takes up whatever physical RAM you have but shouldn't cause the error message you mentioned.

Hello,

 Seems that 8GB of memory is no more sufficent to load the blockchain on Windows... When i launch the bitmonero daemon, Windows says there's no more memory available for the process and kill it. I try to unload many things and boot windows very light, but same problem.

 It's time to go to the db version ?

[GingerAle]

Hello,

 Seems that 8GB of memory is no more sufficent to load the blockchain on Windows... When i launch the bitmonero daemon, Windows says there's no more memory available for the process and kill it. I try to unload many things and boot windows very light, but same problem.

 It's time to go to the db version ?

Check out the Win 64 beta binaries in my signature.

[Shrikez]

Hello,

 Seems that 8GB of memory is no more sufficent to load the blockchain on Windows... When i launch the bitmonero daemon, Windows says there's no more memory available for the process and kill it. I try to unload many things and boot windows very light, but same problem.

 It's time to go to the db version ?

Hm there must be something else causing this issue.

Today I loaded an old 0.8.8.6 wallet on a Win7 64bit subnotebook with 4 GB RAM. I took a looooooong time to load (30 mins) and synch (7 hours) the last 151 days but now it is running and I can empty the balance to my 1337 Linux box with the DB wallet

[kazuki49]

Fungibility cannot be obtained on a voluntary basis, period. Anybody suggesting otherwise is being irrational (which is surprising in the case of Antonopoulos).
That is why privacy is the only possible enabler of fungibility in cryptocurrencies.

I was watching his talk and coudn't stop thinking how it feels wrong as we still sit around one talking head and take his words as holy. I don't believe Bitcoin represents my best interests anymore.

kudos to dnaleor for asking a real question so we can see through the cracks.

[smoothie]

reading through the source and had a question:

What is the difference between a public address and a public integrated address?