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

[dEBRUYNE]

...

If I recall correctly there will not be an ICO you will have to mine them or buy them. There is to be an 11% devtax on mined coins. Somewhat off topic here though.

I would like to hear a comparison of the z-cash and monero. what are the benefits and tradeoffs of the two? I have not spent any time looking into it but I'm sure others in this community have so can someone give us a synopsis if this is a threat as it sounds like it tries to fill the same market space as XMR.

I'll just quote myself again:

Relevant post of Monero vs Zcash. There was also a discussion on reddit, most of it is the same though.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/41vg68/monero_vs_zcash_eli5_fundamental_differences

Also, st0at check the last quote where IP obfuscation is mentioned.

zcash alpha has been launched

https://github.com/Electric-Coin-Company/zcash

http://www.wired.com/2016/01/zcash-an-untraceable-bitcoin-alternative-launches-in-alpha/

I'll just copy my reddit comment here:

I've made this list earlier:

List of possible pitfalls wrt ZeroCash/ZeroCoin:

[1] If ZeroCash/ZeroCoin is launched on behalf of a company, which seems the case here, the company can be given a gag order (e.g. to add a line of malicious code).

[2] If I recall correctly, the creator of the genesis block holds some kind of masterkey. As a result, you have to trust this person. Even if this key was held by a group, you still have to trust that particular group. In addition, you have to trust the program they run to create the Genesis block (the masterkey could be in there).

[3] It's too opaque in my opinion. If a bug existed that would create additional coins, there is no way you would see it.

[4] The math and cryptography backing it isn't peer reviewed yet and in an infancy stage.

[1] seems to be confirmed. They will be launching as a for profit company, see:

For its first four years online, a portion of every mined Zcash coin will go directly to Wilcox’s Zcash company

This could also invoke some legal issues, since they are basically not a decentralid currency and bear in mind they are **US** based (http://www.bizapedia.com/de/THE-ZEROCOIN-ELECTRIC-COIN-COMPANY-LLC.html). Just remember what happened with Ripple.

Basically, with Ring Confidential Transactions included in Monero it's basically pepsi vs coke (thanks to u/smooth_xmr for this analogy), where both have their advantages and disadvantages.

P.S. They are currently only on testnet, the "real-version" is at least 6 months away.

P.P.S. It seems like they transactions are also quit inefficient compared to Monero's. See this description on how to get from the basecoins (the transparent ones) to the zerocoins (anonymous ones):

This operation (called a pour) might take a minute or two depending on your hardware. It is producing a zero-knowledge proof. (This operation's performance will be improved in the coming months.)

Shen Noether (aka NobleSir), who is obviously more knowledgeable about this subject than me, also made a comparison on reddit:

I've done a little bit of comparison in the Ring CT paper / you can also look here for some facts on zcash- there are a few I've seen so far

[1] Setup: Monero (Trustless) vs Zerocash (Must Trust zcash company)

[2] Proof Generation: Monero (100's second ) vs Zcash (1/minute)

[3] Algorithm auditability: Monero (a decent number of people seem to understand ring signatures and confidential transactions) vs Zerocash (I'm not sure how many people actually understand the proofs besides the small group of authors) - although this point is certainly subjective.

[4] Poison-pill attack vulnerability: Monero (attacker would need 51%) vs Zerocash Vulnerable, (see zerocash extended paper section 6.4

[5] Anonymity set: Monero (although the zcash proponents note that a ring signature is a "smaller" anonymity set, they usually don't mention that the stealth address factor actually means that each transaction is masked, whereas the ring signatures provide additional plausible liability, furthermore, since keys appear in different ring signatures in different blocks in time, the anonymity set for when a given key is spent grows infinitely, and could eventually grow larger than the zcash anonymity set at any fixed instant in time) vs Zcash (anonymity set is the entire blockchain )

[6]Anonymous Multisig: Monero (yes! see "written up" link on ring ct sticky, this could make things like lightning potentially possible ) vs Zerocash (?)

[7] Mining: Monero (has it's own strongly decentralized mining process) vs Zerocash protocol from the paper lacks it's own mining (it's essentially just a distributed anonymous database), so there must be another coin which is mined to convert to zerocash tokens

--note that point 4. is an actual potential compromise of anonymity, which contradicts some of the statements the zerocash team has made.
.
Other Differences are slight: Slight differences in transaction size - however Monero transactions should end up being a bit larger when transmitted, but cost less in terms of storage (their eventual block-chain cost will be approximately 32 bytes* (n+1) where n is mixin + epsilon, where epsilon is the current tx size - ring signatures (Note in the recent Ring CT drafts, there is pruning mentioned for the range proofs, see the "written up" link)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/41vg68/monero_vs_zcash_eli5_fundamental_differences/cz63pqw

And:

TPTB_need_war has repeatedly been stating that Zerocash does not need IP obfuscation and therefore is not subject to I2P/TOR, which are, in his opinion, flawed.

However, it seems like Zerocash actually needs IP obfuscation as well and they seem to go with TOR, see -> https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/689958030859960321

I took out this excerpt from the discussion in this thread -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1139756.msg13623846#msg13623846 (starting point).

Look way back in 2014 when you launched Monero, I told you smooth and fluffypony that IP address correlation was the weakness. Fluffypony proceed to try to integrate I2P. I warned you all many times that was not an adequate direction. But you wouldn't listen.

I2P, and even somewhat Tor, is perceived as adequate by 99% of the market. The remaining 1% may be smarter but isn't obviously much of a market at all. Very niche-y.

By the speculators because they are clueless.

But the corporations do not use darknets. They want privacy on the block chain, like we have disk encryption. Mention dark nets, illegal drug trade, etc, and they won't touch it with a 100 foot pole.

I would guess that many corporations do use Tor now for certain things. I2P will be integrated and invisible. No one will know or care how it works, except that the obvious network level vulnerabilities having to do with broadcasting transactions will be removed, and it will pass routine (though not intelligence agency level) technical muster for being private sufficient to satisfy most of the market. That's my opinion, and you are welcome to disagree.

Zerocash still needs IP obfuscation for a lot of private usages in practice too. They acknowledge it in the paper.

Zerocash does not need IP obfuscation when all the transactions are in the private zerocoins. Cite the section of the paper. I think you must be misunderstanding something. You are probably conflating the use of the regular non-anonymous coins mentioned in the paper.

Here you are making excuses again. Corporations are not going to trust unprovable shit. And moreover, mixnets are always vulnerable to flood attacks. They are very, very unreliable. Not only do I disagree, but I also think you are ignoring basic fundamental realities about the technologies.

Edit: arguing for Tor/I2P is akin to arguing for Dash's off chain mixing. Now look in the mirror and remember your arguments for End-to-End Principled ring sigs (versus off chain mixing) and realize the same logic applies to why Zerocash is superior to using off chain mixnets. Hypocrite.

Edit#2: okay I see the section you are referring to:

6.4 Additional anonymity considerations
Zerocash only anonymizes the transaction ledger. Network trac used to announce transactions,
retrieve blocks, and contact merchants still leaks identifying information (e.g., IP addresses). Thus
users need some anonymity network to safely use Zerocash. The most obvious way to do this is
via Tor [DMS04]. Given that Zerocash transactions are not low latency themselves, Mixnets (e.g.,
Mixminion [DDM03]) are also a viable way to add anonymity (and one that, unlike Tor, is not as
vulnerable to trac analysis). Using mixnets that provide email-like functionality has the added
benet of providing an out-of-band notication mechanism that can replace
Receive
.
Additionally, although in theory all users have a single view of the block chain, a powerful
attacker could potentially fabricate an additional block
solely
for a targeted user. Spending any
coins with respect to the updated Merkle tree in this \poison-pill" block will uniquely identify the
targeted user. To mitigate such attacks, users should check with trusted peers their view of the
block chain and, for sensitive transactions, only spend coins relative to blocks further back in the
ledger (since creating the illusion for multiple blocks is far harder).

I will need to understand this attack better. Seems to me they are saying that you need to spend from a block where your pour transaction was the only transaction in the block. But the user would I think know this and thus not spend the coin any more. Thus I believe the anonymity remains provable without the use of any mixnet. I will need to understand this more deeply to be sure.

Bear in mind that I2P will be integrated in Monero, but you can always choose to run Monero over TOR if you want.

[Hueristic]

...

[2] If I recall correctly, the creator of the genesis block holds some kind of masterkey. As a result, you have to trust this person. Even if this key was held by a group, you still have to trust that particular group. In addition, you have to trust the program they run to create the Genesis block (the masterkey could be in there)....

Thanks a ton DeBruyne! I've been doing too much skimming and really had no interest in it until just now. AND the bolded is all I need to know to stay FAR FAR away.

[dEBRUYNE]

...

[2] If I recall correctly, the creator of the genesis block holds some kind of masterkey. As a result, you have to trust this person. Even if this key was held by a group, you still have to trust that particular group. In addition, you have to trust the program they run to create the Genesis block (the masterkey could be in there)....

Thanks a ton DeBruyne! I've been doing too much skimming and really had no interest in it until just now. AND the bolded is all I need to know to stay FAR FAR away.

I think it is the latter now though. The trusted setup works such that you only have to trust that one person is honest. In other words, all participants of the initial setup have to collaborate with eachother. However, since this "masterkey" can create an unlimited amount of coins and there is no way to see if any additional coins were created in Zerocash, they got an incentive to do so.

What stops them from collaborating and creating additional coins for their own benefit?

No one would notice if they did so, but it would certainly dupe all other investors.

[Arux]

@Arux, great job! Did you know the code for restoring a MyMonero seed was already up on Github? (not merged however)

Perhaps you could take a look at it and merge it with your code such that it becomes bugfree.

The code to add support for MyMonero derivation to simplewallet was already written a year ago: https://github.com/warptangent/bitmonero/commit/35b1500536a98e02ea459ca6ccb42e8248de43a8

to be clear, it's the code that i tested. i didn't write a single line of code, only copy/paste warptangent's work.
it was a test (positive despite some bugs), i can't honestly merge a code written by somebody else.

[pönde]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

At mymonero.com internet connection can be disconnected and then the mnemonic seed can be created.

So lets change the site the way that it shows also the address and the view key of the just created mnemonic seed. And we have a offline monero paper wallet generator.

[smooth]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

[pönde]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

Well that is i great site. How long has it been alive? There is more words in mnemonic seed than mymonero.com creates. Is this a new feature of monero or the site?

[smooth]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

Well that is i great site. How long has it been alive? There is more words in mnemonic seed than mymonero.com creates. Is this a new feature of monero or the site?

I'm not sure how long the site has been around.

The 25 word format is the standard used by simplewallet and can also be used with MyMonero. The shorter format can only be used with MyMonero (or with simplewallet using a non-standard and apparently-slightly-flaky code mod).

[dEBRUYNE]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

Well that is i great site. How long has it been alive? There is more words in mnemonic seed than mymonero.com creates. Is this a new feature of monero or the site?

It has been online for quite some time now, I think 6-8 months. Simplewallet and Moneroaddress both use 25 words mnemonic seeds, whereas MyMonero uses 13 words mnemonic seeds. You can read a bit more about it here -> http://xmrtests.llcoins.net/addresstests.html

See "How Cryptonote Addresses Are Created".

[birr]

Looks like 25 words is the way to go. 
I have a 13 word mymonero wallet.  I would like to use a 25 word wallet, but I'm not inclined to do a kludge-y conversion from 13 to 25 words.

[dEBRUYNE]

New 32bit binaries for v0.9.1

Latest Unofficial builds on commitId ddfeb0018fa268bf2038ada8ae14730855933a20 from https://github.com/LMDB/bitmonero/tree/win32fix

• http://highlandsun.com/hyc/monero.linux.armv6.v0-9-1-1.tar.bz2 sha1sum 4276137a05dc74b61c4d5bb5d7e7942c0dc614eb
• http://highlandsun.com/hyc/monero.linux.x86.v0-9-1-1.tar.bz2 sha1sum 26ebff85ecf60e9570395426ae3fbd5ac825b076
• http://highlandsun.com/hyc/monero.linux.armv6.v0-9-1-1.tar.bz2 sha1sum 4276137a05dc74b61c4d5bb5d7e7942c0dc614eb

Fixed a couple Win32 crashes in bitmonerod, and a crash in blockchain_import.

Thanks to hyc!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/433w2u/new_32bit_binaries_for_v091/

[pönde]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

Well that is i great site. How long has it been alive? There is more words in mnemonic seed than mymonero.com creates. Is this a new feature of monero or the site?

I'm not sure how long the site has been around.

The 25 word format is the standard used by simplewallet and can also be used with MyMonero. The shorter format can only be used with MyMonero (or with simplewallet using a non-standard and apparently-slightly-flaky code mod).

I am using MyMonero.com with 13 word seed. So if MyMonero.com goes off-line I can reach my coins only by non-standard flaky version of simplewallet? If so, looks like I has to move my coins to a wallet created by moneroaddress.org.

[phishead]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

I know I should know how too... but how do I use moneroaddress.org offline.  Is there someway to download it onto a USB and stick it onto a computer that's offline?

[dEBRUYNE]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

I know I should know how too... but how do I use moneroaddress.org offline.  Is there someway to download it onto a USB and stick it onto a computer that's offline?

Download the .zip file from -> https://github.com/moneromooo-monero/monero-wallet-generator/ (moneroaddress.org is simply a port of that).

It contains a .html file (with a similiar UI as moneroaddress.org) that you can use offline to generate a wallet.

[dEBRUYNE]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

Well that is i great site. How long has it been alive? There is more words in mnemonic seed than mymonero.com creates. Is this a new feature of monero or the site?

I'm not sure how long the site has been around.

The 25 word format is the standard used by simplewallet and can also be used with MyMonero. The shorter format can only be used with MyMonero (or with simplewallet using a non-standard and apparently-slightly-flaky code mod).

I am using MyMonero.com with 13 word seed. So if MyMonero.com goes off-line I can reach my coins only by non-standard flaky version of simplewallet? If so, looks like I has to move my coins to a wallet created by moneroaddress.org.

I am quite sure if MyMonero goes offline and fluffypony disappears that someone will have the properly working code online within the day. However, a wallet created by moneroaddress.org is both compatible with simplewallet and MyMonero. Thus, if you feel safer with such a wallet, I suggest doing that.

[pönde]

I know I should know how too... but how do I use moneroaddress.org offline.  Is there someway to download it onto a USB and stick it onto a computer that's offline?

Well I think the easiest way would be just to go to moneroaddress.org, to unplug the internet connection and to be sure that computer does not connect by itself to any other wifi, to click the create wallet button, to print the page with mnemonic seed, public address, spend key, view key and such, delete browser history and data, close the browser and restart the whole computer.

I am quite paranoid, so I boot my machine from Ubuntu DVD which cannot contain any malware, hopefully, and do the rest like described above. I also use a very simple printer which has no wifi and has just a very little memory to store any data. So I use very cheap printer. Which is great.

I am quite sure if MyMonero goes offline and fluffypony disappears that someone will have the properly working code online within the day. However, a wallet created by moneroaddress.org is both compatible with simplewallet and MyMonero. Thus, if you feel safer with such a wallet, I suggest doing that.

Thats relieving. I think I really anyway will create the wallet by moneroaddress.org.

[pönde]

I want to remind everyone that please do create many paper wallets. Not jus one. If something happens. Also, take at least two copies of each paper wallet, and store them in two physically different locations that a fire or a flood cannot destroy both of them.

[smooth]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

Well that is i great site. How long has it been alive? There is more words in mnemonic seed than mymonero.com creates. Is this a new feature of monero or the site?

I'm not sure how long the site has been around.

The 25 word format is the standard used by simplewallet and can also be used with MyMonero. The shorter format can only be used with MyMonero (or with simplewallet using a non-standard and apparently-slightly-flaky code mod).

I am using MyMonero.com with 13 word seed. So if MyMonero.com goes off-line I can reach my coins only by non-standard flaky version of simplewallet? If so, looks like I has to move my coins to a wallet created by moneroaddress.org.

I am quite sure if MyMonero goes offline and fluffypony disappears that someone will have the properly working code online within the day. However, a wallet created by moneroaddress.org is both compatible with simplewallet and MyMonero. Thus, if you feel safer with such a wallet, I suggest doing that.

This.

Alternately, if you create a wallet with simplewallet instead of creating it via MyMonero you get the same thing -- a 24-word wallet that can easily be used with both.

[smooth]

I know I should know how too... but how do I use moneroaddress.org offline.  Is there someway to download it onto a USB and stick it onto a computer that's offline?

Well I think the easiest way would be just to go to moneroaddress.org, to unplug the internet connection and to be sure that computer does not connect by itself to any other wifi, to click the create wallet button, to print the page with mnemonic seed, public address, spend key, view key and such, delete browser history and data, close the browser and restart the whole computer.

I am quite paranoid, so I boot my machine from Ubuntu DVD which cannot contain any malware, hopefully, and do the rest like described above. I also use a very simple printer which has no wifi and has just a very little memory to store any data. So I use very cheap printer. Which is great.

Good method. Slightly better would be a custom DVD with just a trusted OS and the moneroaddress page. You would not need to connect to the internet at all.

[smooth]

There is not yet a site for monero paper wallet generator. But we can have such a site by slightly modifying mymonero.com.

Try this site: https://moneroaddress.org/

You can save that page and use offline.

I know I should know how too... but how do I use moneroaddress.org offline.  Is there someway to download it onto a USB and stick it onto a computer that's offline?

Download the .zip file from -> https://github.com/moneromooo-monero/monero-wallet-generator/ (moneroaddress.org is simply a port of that).

It contains a .html file (with a similiar UI as moneroaddress.org) that you can use offline to generate a wallet.

That, or you should be able to use your browser save function.