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

[RentaMouse]

Those posts earlier. I have heard the argument that a sufficiently empowered entity could inject sufficient txes into the system to greatly reduce the anonymity effect of ring signatures (if I am in fact Alice, Bob and Carol, then David isnt as anonymous as he thought he was). In fact the XMR community was doing quite a good job of this by itself by telling each other to use mixin value of zero for txes, so one of the future dev plans is to hard code a minimum  mixin into the client.

Ok, that still wouldnt stop the entity with sufficient resources from trying, but if all "legitimate" txes are already using a mixin count of 5+ then the number fake txes they have to be injecting must be exponentially higher to be effective. Not saying it wouldnt work in theory, but in practice the network would either grind to a halt or people would notice that something peculiar was happening and take action to circumvent or avoid it (pools sending themselves high mixin dust txes in order to generate additional fees from the tx injection?)

[AnonyMint]

The socialism doesn't need to be omniscient. Fact is we can study history and see what happens every time. The masses ride the socialism all the way down until it comes after them too. Then war and chaos. Then reset.

Implementation is critical (damn don't I know that!), for without it then all the theory and talk is useless. And it is true that the coin with the best implementation will be able to cherry pick the best features from other coins, but only if some aspect of its inertia prevents it. I think without a holistic design early on, there is a risk for Monero either to fall into the inertia trap that Bitcoin fell into, or not reach critical mass. I will not try to quantify that risk, as I don't want to take a political position. I shared some technical analysis. I do desire the NSA-blinded coin (don't you?).

Design parameters can be important if they impact exponential differences in adoption rate, as that impacts the prior paragraph.

Integrating I2P or Tor with a coin isn't a bad thing, it can supplement any other anonymity added.

Good luck. We all are going to need it. The multi-headed monster called socialism is headed towards a 309 year confluence event. These are usually quite turbulent and bloody. Also we are shifting into a 309 year public wave cycle (alternates between public and private every 309 years), so the 15th century and the Hundred Years War, the 9th Century, the 3rd Century, or the widespread war leading into the formation of the Athenian Empire would be a better reference point.

Btw, just saw this Original NSA Whistle Blower: Goal is 'Total Population Control'.

wolf0, mixers are honeypots.

[adhitthana]

but Bitcoin is, in fact, anonymous, because there is no identifying information associated with it.

But if you pay me , then I know your address (or one of them), so doesn't that mean you are not anonymous to me?

and if that information gets leaked, from one single person you interact with, than all of your transaction history becomes discoverable. sure there is always an element of plausible deniablity, but tyrants dont give a crap about plausible deniability.

Nope and nope. I use a mixer, and then you end up using your fancy blockchain analysis to find out what some dude across the world is doing with his coins.

Ok, well you could have saved us some time by saying Bitcoin plus a mixer is "anonymous".

[adhitthana]

The socialism doesn't need to be omniscient.

It does if you want the certainty you want.

Fact is we can study history and see what happens every time. The masses ride the socialism all the way down until it comes after them too. Then war and chaos. Then reset.

Well as one wit said "history doesn't repeat but it does rhyme".
But I'm still trying to understand what you are saying. Are you saying this happens to the entire world or just to the USA or just to some places?

If you are saying the entire world then you have a very difficult case to make if you are using history as your guide and if it's just the USA then...m'eh.

If the US empire collapses that is hardly the end for the rest of the world, and may even be good for America.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fall-Empire-Development-Environment/dp/8230004927

THE FALL OF THE US EMPIRE - AND THEN WHAT? Successors, Regionalization or Globalization? US Fascism or US Blossoming? This book explores a global phenomenon now taking place for the eyes of the world: The Fall of the US Empire. Nothing extraordinary about that, all empires so far have had life cycles, and the US Empire is no exception. In no way should that be confused with any fall of the USA; just to the contrary, the fall of the US Empire may lead to the blossoming of the US Republic.

[AnonyMint]

Global sovereign debt collapse (which means global wealth confiscation, war, chaos, and descending into the economic abyss). Go read my linked posts more thoroughly, I am not going to repeat all that I already wrote else where. See the major upheaval leading into every 618 year cycle (2 x 309 year alternating cycles) public wave, i.e. 15th, 9th, 3rd centuries and the formation of the Athenian Empire 400 B.C..

Those of you who myopically believe this is only about the USA, have been drinking too much KoolAid. You are due for a rude awakening 2016 - 2020. Europe is in a much worse condition than the USA due to its ridiculously high levels of socialism (although Obama is doing his damn best to bring us up to the European socialism level, e.g. universal healthcare) and the adoption of the Euro meant all the banks and other institutions such as pensions in the EU had to buy the bad bonds of the PIIGS. "One for all and all for One" (Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno) Europe from North to South will fall into the abyss together. The true extent of the bankruptcy in the northern European economies is hidden, but will soon erupt.

[superresistant]

mixers are honeypots.

Yes. Mixing is never the solution for anonymity.

Anonymous coins with mixer are total scam.

[fluffypony]

The boogeyman is not likely to kill us any time soon.

Maybe sooner than you think. We would do well to act quickly. I may disagree with anonymint on some points, but i think we would agree on this one.

I do agree that there are fundamental improvements we can make over a (relatively) short time frame. It is important to note that I am in South Africa, and much of the core team are in Europe and some in Canada - and that's just the core team, all others heavily involved notwithstanding. We're not completely out of reach of an adversary with global reach, but it is unlikely that they can touch all of us at the same time at this early juncture, which means there is *some* time to play with when solving this extremely hard to solve (and practically unlikely) threat.

[fluffypony]

The socialism doesn't need to be omniscient. Fact is we can study history and see what happens every time. The masses ride the socialism all the way down until it comes after them too. Then war and chaos. Then reset.

Implementation is critical (damn don't I know that!), for without it then all the theory and talk is useless. And it is true that the coin with the best implementation will be able to cherry pick the best features from other coins, but only if some aspect of its inertia prevents it. I think without a holistic design early on, there is a risk for Monero either to fall into the inertia trap that Bitcoin fell into, or not reach critical mass. I will not try to quantify that risk, as I don't want to take a political position. I shared some technical analysis. I do desire the NSA-blinded coin (don't you?).

Design parameters can be important if they impact exponential differences in adoption rate, as that impacts the prior paragraph.

Integrating I2P or Tor with a coin isn't a bad thing, it can supplement any other anonymity added.

The design goal of I2P integration isn't to solve the "perfect anonymity" problem. It is purely to obfuscate a single node's traffic so that an attacker with complete control over that node's Internet router has no clue whether Monero is running or not. To that end, using something like I2P is advantageous (over using our own obfuscation such as RC4 (like Skype) or DNS tunnelling) as it means an attacker is at best able to determine that I2P is running, not what I2P is doing.

Of course, someone like the NSA may have methods of remotely accessing RAM of a running system, which means they can access unencrypted data in-RAM. They could also have all sorts of arcane tools and exotic hardware for breaking various encryption algorithms. No amount of cleverness from our side is going to fix that.

[adhitthana]

Global sovereign debt collapse (which means global wealth confiscation, war, chaos, and descending into the economic abyss).\

So ...are you really saying this will ruin every corner of the globe? if not then what portions are you talking about?
It's just that you keep mentioning Europe and America...but that's all you mention but you keep calling it "global".

So...is it global or is it just Europe and the USA?

[Anon136]

The boogeyman is not likely to kill us any time soon.

Maybe sooner than you think. We would do well to act quickly. I may disagree with anonymint on some points, but i think we would agree on this one.

I do agree that there are fundamental improvements we can make over a (relatively) short time frame. It is important to note that I am in South Africa, and much of the core team are in Europe and some in Canada - and that's just the core team, all others heavily involved notwithstanding. We're not completely out of reach of an adversary with global reach, but it is unlikely that they can touch all of us at the same time at this early juncture, which means there is *some* time to play with when solving this extremely hard to solve (and practically unlikely) threat.

With rare exception, every state on the planet grows larger, more tyranical, more confiscatory, and more dangerous with each passing year. I get that they aren’t a huge threat to people like yourselves right now. The point is just that if this trend continues, and there is no clear reason to expect that it wont, than they will become a threat to everyone at some point in the future. Whether something changes this trend or how far away this is i don’t know. What i do know is that if this trend doesn’t reverse, than everyone will be in danger at some point in the future and i dont think it behoves us to operate under the assumption that this threat is far off in the future.

[AnonyMint]

The design goal of I2P integration isn't to solve the "perfect anonymity" problem. It is purely to obfuscate a single node's traffic so that an attacker with complete control over that node's Internet router has no clue whether Monero is running or not. To that end, using something like I2P is advantageous (over using our own obfuscation such as RC4 (like Skype) or DNS tunnelling) as it means an attacker is at best able to determine that I2P is running, not what I2P is doing.

Of course, someone like the NSA may have methods of remotely accessing RAM of a running system, which means they can access unencrypted data in-RAM. They could also have all sorts of arcane tools and exotic hardware for breaking various encryption algorithms. No amount of cleverness from our side is going to fix that.

I assume you failed to read the what I posted, for you seem to be unaware that (both I2P and Tor admit on their websites that) timing attacks only require the adversary to control the router at the entry and exit nodes in order to de-obfuscate the IP address of the user (or possibly for several users in the mix depending on the statistics of the low-latency and other factors), there is no need to invade the user's computer with exotic methods you mentioned.

Even hackers can (sometimes) do that.

With rare exception, every state on the planet grows larger, more tyranical, more confiscatory, and more dangerous with each passing year. I get that they aren’t a huge threat to people like yourselves right now. The point is just that if this trend continues, and there is no clear reason to expect that it wont, than they will become a threat to everyone at some point in the future. Whether something changes this trend or how far away this is i don’t know. What i do know is that if this trend doesn’t reverse, than everyone will be in danger at some point in the future and i dont think it behoves us to operate under the assumption that this threat is far off in the future.

It accelerates radically 2016 - 2020.

[trampk]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/69109727/7.png

welcome to our pool - http://xmr.prohash.net

stable payments

Dedicated server in the Netherlands

The low percentage - 0.5%

minerd -a cryptonight -o stratum+tcp://xmr.prohash.net/:7777 -u YOUR_ADDRESS -p x

[superresistant]

http://xmr.prohash.nethttps://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/69109727/7.png
http://xmr.prohash.net

Why don't you just put it in your signature and participate in the discussion ?
Spamming is not effective for pool promotion.

[fluffypony]

I assume you failed to read the what I posted, for you seem to be unaware that (both I2P and Tor admit on their websites that) timing attacks only require the adversary to control the router at the entry and exit nodes in order to de-obfuscate the IP address of the user (or possibly for several users in the mix depending on the statistics of the low-latency and other factors), there is no need to invade the user's computer with exotic methods you mentioned.

Even hackers can (sometimes) do that.

I understand perfectly well what you've written, you seem to have misunderstood what I have written.

First, stop talking about Tor, we've never mentioned Tor and have already rejected it due to the problems inherent in their use of exit nodes.

Now: we are not aiming to prevent a global adversary who has control of all bordergates at all ISPs on the planet from making assertions and observations. We are aiming to prevent them from knowing whether Monero is running or not. They can know I2P is running, that we don't care about, but they should not be able to determine whether the person is harmlessly browsing the web or using Monero without completely decrypting the traffic.

Why? Because a wannabe "global police state" (without resorting to the exotic methods I described) cannot possibly go after millions or billions of people around the world under the control of regimes and governments of all sorts merely for using a communications system.

I understand that you're a terribly clever and opinionated chap, but don't assume that we are ignorant or that we have made decisions for no good reason. I2P integration is for a specific purpose and is fully expected to be a stopgap if its shortcomings are not solved over time.

[adhitthana]

With rare exception, every state on the planet grows larger, more tyranical, more confiscatory, and more dangerous with each passing year.

Except known history does not bear this out. Pretty much all ancient societies were socialist as Igor Shafaravich's research  bears out in his book The Socialist Phenomenon..
More recently we have seen various experiments against this trend

[Anon136]

With rare exception, every state on the planet grows larger, more tyranical, more confiscatory, and more dangerous with each passing year.

Except known history does not bear this out. Pretty much all ancient societies were socialist as Igor Shafaravich's research  bears out in his book The Socialist Phenomenon..
More recently we have seen various experiments against this trend

Yea you know i may be unfairly looking at the world through the lens of my own perspective. My government (that is to say the government that rules over me not the government that i own ) started out small and has grown out of control over the last 200 years. However most other governments were much more tyrannical 200 years ago than they are today.

[openyourmind]

 I heard there are very few people who really do mine Monero and the developers use botnet to maximize the demand for this coin. Is it true?

[griffinriz]

I heard there are very few people who really do mine Monero and the developers use botnet to maximize the demand for this coin. Is it true?

Not true at all, i am curious where you heard that 

[digicoin]

I heard there are very few people who really do mine Monero and the developers use botnet to maximize the demand for this coin. Is it true?

botnet is exaggerated by DRK liars. XMR miming is dominated by GPU miners and CPU cloud miners

[digitalninja81]

I heard there are very few people who really do mine Monero and the developers use botnet to maximize the demand for this coin. Is it true?

Yep, the Monero team is just a bunch of hackers. In fact, the way they do things, the prospects are dark for this coin.