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

[dEBRUYNE]

binaryFate made this excellent post on reddit a few days ago to explain how ring signatures in Monero work (and a comparison against Bitcoin):

Here is a short recap, first how Bitcoin works and then the difference when you have ring signatures.

• "Classic" signing as in Bitcoin: Whenever you want to spend an input (required when you build a transaction), you reference that input and produce a signature with the private key that corresponds to the address to which that input was sent.
• Ring signing as in Monero: Whenever you want to spend an input, you reference that input PLUS some others with the same amount. Those additional inputs can be anywhere in the blockchain, recent or old. They can belong to dead people or their corresponding private key can be lost (just to underline they are not going to do anything active with you). Once you have this list of inputs (yours + the additionals), you create a ring signature using a private key. To any observer, this signature could have been created by any of the keys corresponding to the inputs. They have no way to know who the signer is, and therefore which input is actually spent in the list and which ones are "the additionals".

To insist that the process is entirely passive for others: they don't need to do anything, they can't even choose who will use their inputs as part of a ring or not. You can be the only user of Monero for an entire week and still create ring signatures as usual. You can also create ring signatures and therefore transactions on an airgap computer without any internet connection. (That should make it clear to you nobody else is involved in the process).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/44sz7q/propose_to_change_the_phrase_mixin_to_ring_size/cztbx9a

[dEBRUYNE]

In case anyone missed it here, Shen Noether delivering proof of the Shadowcash deanonymization:

https://github.com/ShenNoether/Deanon

De-anonymization of the whole chain:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ShenNoether/Deanon/master/sdcDeAnon.txt

Initial blog with edits:

https://shnoe.wordpress.com/2016/02/11/de-anonymizing-shadowcash-and-oz-coin

This does not apply to Monero!

[birr]

Maybe people are starting to look at "altcoins" such as Monero because Bitcoin is showing its age.  
Fine with me!

[Bagatell]

Maybe people are starting to look at "altcoins" such as Monero because Bitcoin is showing its age.  
Fine with me!

I bought Litecoin with profits from Bitcoin. I bought Monero with the profits from Litecoin. Not sure what I'll do once we pass 0.002600

[pönde]

I have synched with blockchain. I am trying to create a watch only wallet to simlplewallet by this command.

--generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet

It is like

--generate-from-view-key address:viewkey:filename

But only this happens.

[wallet 4AT4qA]: --generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet
unknown command: --generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet
[wallet 4AT4qA]:

What should be done?

$ simplewallet --generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet

Ok. I put that command to linux command line inside the folder where simplewallet is. Not to inside running simplewallet software. I gues you ment that. Looks like you are almost right. You just missed dot and slash at the beginning of the command. It should be this way.

$ ./simplewallet --generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet
Creating the logger system
Monero 'Hydrogen Helix' (v0.9.1.0-release)
Logging at log level 0 to /home./simplewallet.log
password: *****
Error: --generate-from-view-key needs a address:viewkey:filename triple
$

But till there is some problem. What that triple means at end of the error message?

[dEBRUYNE]

Maybe people are starting to look at "altcoins" such as Monero because Bitcoin is showing its age.  
Fine with me!

I bought Litecoin with profits from Bitcoin. I bought Monero with the profits from Litecoin. Not sure what I'll do once we pass 0.002600

Hodl like a true mustang of course!

[bitebits]

Bitco.in forum has also just started a new sub. Monero just made the cut at 17 out of 18 cyrptos deemed worthy of attention.

https://bitco.in/forum/threads/alternative-cryptocurrency-discussion.882/

Eagerly clicked your link, but apparently is is just somebody's list with a biased view on reality. And thank you smooth for your post as well.

[Bagatell]

@bitebits

The list was copied from another thread and is meant as a starting point for discussion. Your input would be welcome.

My post was a heads up for the more evangelistic amongst our happy band of crytpocrats.

[hyc]

My blockchain got corrupted when the electricity stopped. I resynced from scratch and it took about 24 hours. Previously I resynced from scratch a few times on the same machine on the same USB3 external hdd and on the same internet connection for 1-3 hours (it was on bitmonerod 0.9.0 tagged and before tagged, not 0.9.1). What could be the issue with the slow sync this time?

I'm not sure I'm understanding. Are you using the same version as before?

What CPU do you have?

I'm using 0.9.1 now. Previous times I was using 0.9.0 tagged and previous version (0.9.0 before tagged). Windows 7 64x. Mobile Core I7 (4 cores, 8 logical cores, 6 MB cash, with AES-NI).

Thank you for clarifying. We are looking into it.

I ran 0.9.1 again and it got to block 135000 in 43 minutes and block 270000 in 2 hours and 25 minutes. Then i checked my .bat file and the "--db-sync-mode fastest:async:10000" option was missing (fastest:async:1000 is the default and I'm using 10000, but it seems I deleted it by mistake). Then I started it again with the option added and it got to 135000 in 17 minutes and to 646069 in 2 hours and 25 minutes. That was the speed I experienced with 0.9 beta2. I hope I didn't alerted all the dev team. Great missive and great dev team. Congratulations to the new members. Keep the good work going.

Thank you for the follow up. We're going to take a look at whether there is a better default for the parameter, although higher numbers increase memory usage, so it may not be best for everyone to increase it.

That's what I expected too, but trying with 1000, 10000, 25000 and 100000 I can't see overall difference in RAM usage on my 16GB RAM system. It's using about 1 GB RAM on my system during sync with each option and most of it is shareable. After sync it's using 500 MB. The private working set (not shareable) is just 36-50 MB on my system. Also on my system there is a good speed improvement between 1000 and 10000, but going to 25000 and 100000 doesn't improve the speed more and it stays the same.

Your observations are exactly what is expected; smooth misspoke about increased memory usage. Increasing the sync interval just controls how much unwritten data is allowed to accumulate in the FS cache, but that doesn't affect program RAM usage. (He was probably thinking about batch size, which *does* increase memory usage.)
And yes, there's a practical threshold above which there's no longer any performance difference, because when the cache flush hits, there's enough unwritten data in cache to keep the storage device 100% busy until the sync/flush finishes. (It's also possible that your system's default settings have automatically started flushing the cache before your specified interval hits.)

[GingerAle]

Maybe people are starting to look at "altcoins" such as Monero because Bitcoin is showing its age.  
Fine with me!

I bought Litecoin with profits from Bitcoin. I bought Monero with the profits from Litecoin. Not sure what I'll do once we pass 0.002600

find a way to support the network with your monero! (buy mining equipment, buy a home node, pay some developers, etc).

[equipoise]

My blockchain got corrupted when the electricity stopped. I resynced from scratch and it took about 24 hours. Previously I resynced from scratch a few times on the same machine on the same USB3 external hdd and on the same internet connection for 1-3 hours (it was on bitmonerod 0.9.0 tagged and before tagged, not 0.9.1). What could be the issue with the slow sync this time?

I'm not sure I'm understanding. Are you using the same version as before?

What CPU do you have?

I'm using 0.9.1 now. Previous times I was using 0.9.0 tagged and previous version (0.9.0 before tagged). Windows 7 64x. Mobile Core I7 (4 cores, 8 logical cores, 6 MB cash, with AES-NI).

Thank you for clarifying. We are looking into it.

I ran 0.9.1 again and it got to block 135000 in 43 minutes and block 270000 in 2 hours and 25 minutes. Then i checked my .bat file and the "--db-sync-mode fastest:async:10000" option was missing (fastest:async:1000 is the default and I'm using 10000, but it seems I deleted it by mistake). Then I started it again with the option added and it got to 135000 in 17 minutes and to 646069 in 2 hours and 25 minutes. That was the speed I experienced with 0.9 beta2. I hope I didn't alerted all the dev team. Great missive and great dev team. Congratulations to the new members. Keep the good work going.

Thank you for the follow up. We're going to take a look at whether there is a better default for the parameter, although higher numbers increase memory usage, so it may not be best for everyone to increase it.

That's what I expected too, but trying with 1000, 10000, 25000 and 100000 I can't see overall difference in RAM usage on my 16GB RAM system. It's using about 1 GB RAM on my system during sync with each option and most of it is shareable. After sync it's using 500 MB. The private working set (not shareable) is just 36-50 MB on my system. Also on my system there is a good speed improvement between 1000 and 10000, but going to 25000 and 100000 doesn't improve the speed more and it stays the same.

Your observations are exactly what is expected; smooth misspoke about increased memory usage. Increasing the sync interval just controls how much unwritten data is allowed to accumulate in the FS cache, but that doesn't affect program RAM usage. (He was probably thinking about batch size, which *does* increase memory usage.)
And yes, there's a practical threshold above which there's no longer any performance difference, because when the cache flush hits, there's enough unwritten data in cache to keep the storage device 100% busy until the sync/flush finishes. (It's also possible that your system's default settings have automatically started flushing the cache before your specified interval hits.)

Thank you for the clarification. I'll test if increasing the --batch-size helps the sync speed on my system - there's plenty of free RAM I'm not using most of the time.

[jahl]

kudo's to the dev that was able to deanonymize SDC, just read about it 

[smooth]

I have synched with blockchain. I am trying to create a watch only wallet to simlplewallet by this command.

--generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet

It is like

--generate-from-view-key address:viewkey:filename

But only this happens.

[wallet 4AT4qA]: --generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet
unknown command: --generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet
[wallet 4AT4qA]:

What should be done?

$ simplewallet --generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet

Ok. I put that command to linux command line inside the folder where simplewallet is. Not to inside running simplewallet software. I gues you ment that. Looks like you are almost right. You just missed dot and slash at the beginning of the command. It should be this way.

$ ./simplewallet --generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5Ps JQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet
Creating the logger system
Monero 'Hydrogen Helix' (v0.9.1.0-release)
Logging at log level 0 to /home./simplewallet.log
password: *****
Error: --generate-from-view-key needs a address:viewkey:filename triple
$

But till there is some problem. What that triple means at end of the error message?

Are you entering the command all on one line with no extra spaces in between. If you have a line break after AbtF5Ps as shown above or any extra spaces it would not work

So like this:

Code:

$ ./simplewallet --generate-from-view-key 49bPEMu2NiJCDPAvzDDTJCfcRKcdSmB5P3XFbMbw7m1rJt7cotJeFJEZVhTFguYeQ4TNEvPwAbtF5PsJQ9iEKz8mH2WmQo3:794d99ba442931954d00de76218f62a85692fbffd544590a0f5d913149fed0a:lookwallet

[iCEBREAKER]

kudo's to the dev that was able to deanonymize SDC, just read about it 

Improve Monero?  Destroy ShadowTrash?

Why not both?   

[birr]

I keep my xmr in a mymonero.com wallet.  Last time I logged in, it gave me a message that I have to pay 10 xmr to import my transactions.  What happened?
My old address is gone, and the wallet won't show my balance.

Edit:  when that happened, I was using a Japanese VPN.  I switched to a U.S. vpn, logged in again and my wallet works normally.  Can somebody explain?

[smooth]

I keep my xmr in a mymonero.com wallet.  Last time I logged in, it gave me a message that I have to pay 10 xmr to import my transactions.  What happened?
My old address is gone, and the wallet won't show my balance.

Edit:  when that happened, I was using a Japanese VPN.  I switched to a U.S. vpn, logged in again and my wallet works normally.  Can somebody explain?

Sounds strange to me, but fluffypony would know better. He might be asleep right now so check back later.

[aminorex]

crytpocrats.

I prefer to think of myself as a cryptocat.  You hep, daddy-o?  Don't wanna rule over nobody but me.

[fluffypony]

I keep my xmr in a mymonero.com wallet.  Last time I logged in, it gave me a message that I have to pay 10 xmr to import my transactions.  What happened?
My old address is gone, and the wallet won't show my balance.

Edit:  when that happened, I was using a Japanese VPN.  I switched to a U.S. vpn, logged in again and my wallet works normally.  Can somebody explain?

You definitely used the same login key each time, right? If so, then it sounds like the VPN is doing something funny. The only time it would show you a different address is if your seed / keys were modified by poisoned Javascript. I'd be VERY nervous using that VPN.

[jahl]

kudo's to the dev that was able to deanonymize SDC, just read about it 

Improve Monero?  Destroy ShadowTrash?

Why not both?   

you remind me of child_harold of SDC, or whats he called.
always bashing other coins/projects :p

[dEBRUYNE]

Second dev meeting in approximately 1 hour (17:00 UTC). Dev meeting will be held on #monero-dev at freenode. If you don't have a client, use webchat.freenode.net

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converted.html?iso=20160214T17&p1=0&p2=56&p3=37&p4=102&p5=240&p6=136&p7=179&p8=137&p9=70