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

[devphp]

...the community of disinterested domain experts...

Is there such a thing as unbiased experts in crypto currencies? Names? Most have vested interest in their own crypto of choice, with Bitcoin having the largest share of such experts on its side. It's like mainstream economists, the economy is falling apart, but they've been trained in this system and they don't know or don't want to know anything else, and are in defense of the broken ship, and want to keep the status quo.

[Anon136]

A POS system that is comparable to a POW system in other ways, all things being equal

No one has demonstrated that in a way that has convinced the community of disinterested domain experts that their scheme is sound.

I agree "it would be nice" if you could do something that was distributed, trustless and highly energy efficient, but right now that is unicorn cryptography.

It can be done. The nxt devs developed the tech that makes it possible. No one cares enough to do the research to understand it. Not even the smart guys. If they did they would know it had been solved and they would be crapping themselves with excitement, but they are so dismissive that they wont even attempt to understand it.

Of course the way that the creator of nxt released the initial stake is not well distributed. But the tech could easily be copied with better distribution.

[smooth]

Is there such a thing as unbiased experts in crypto currencies?

Probably not, everyone has biases.

But math is math, and if you show actual mathematical proofs, the experts will fall in line (and even build on top of your work).

For example, much of the cryptonote cryptography gets good reviews from people who are clearly biased toward bitcoin (gmaxwell being one well known example). They also come up with some very valid criticisms and suggestions for improvement (which we considering).

[devphp]

Is there such a thing as unbiased experts in crypto currencies?

Probably not, everyone has biases.

But math is math, and if you show actual mathematical proofs, the experts will fall in line (and even build on top of your work).

For example, much of the cryptonote cryptography gets good reviews from people who are clearly biased toward bitcoin (gmaxwell being one well known example). They also come up with some very valid criticisms and suggestions for improvement (which we considering).

There could be two reasons why Bitcoin biased experts actually attempt to review cryptonote.
Because: a) they don't feel that their Bitcoin investments are threatened by CN cryptos; b) because cryptonote is also PoW, which falls in line with Bitcoin and reinforces faith in PoW scheme, both for themselves and newbies who only start looking into cryptos.

PoS is a totally different animal, and getting someone who has been a strong believer in PoW to review PoS objectively is a problem because in case they find out PoS is safe and better, they can't back out of this, because then math would prove it, which means the status quo of their PoW investments would be shaken. So for now the approach is to stick the head into the sand hoping PoS would just go away by itself

[smooth]

No one cares enough to do the research to understand it. Not even the smart guys. If they did they would know it had been solved and they would be crapping themselves with excitement, but they are so dismissive that they wont even attempt to understand it.

This is incorrect. Vitalik (of Ethereum) is one of the smart guys. He is well aware of Nxt. He tried to develop a PoS algorithm for Ethereum (Slasher) and decided to abandon it after a lot of work because it wasn't secure and he couldn't fix it. He describes PoS as one of the "hard problems in cryptocurrency" here: http://vitalik.ca/files/problems.pdf

This is most certainly not a solved problem. It is promising, but that's all. The Nxt developers are aware of problems with their scheme as well, which is why they plan changes. They think they can fix it. Others are not so sure.

[smooth]

No one cares enough to do the research to understand it. Not even the smart guys. If they did they would know it had been solved and they would be crapping themselves with excitement, but they are so dismissive that they wont even attempt to understand it.

This is incorrect. Vitalik (of Ethereum) is one of the smart guys. He is well aware of Nxt. He tried to develop a PoS algorithm for Ethereum (Slasher) and decided to abandon it after a lot of work because it wasn't secure and he couldn't fix it. He describes PoS as one of the "hard problems in cryptocurrency" here: http://vitalik.ca/files/problems.pdf

This is most certainly not a solved problem. It is promising, but that's all. The Nxt developers are aware of problems with their scheme as well, which is why they plan changes. They think they can fix it. Others are not so sure.

More recent comments. https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/05/stake/

If anything Vitalik is biased in favor of PoS. He really wants to find a way to make it sound, and I think their plan may include a combination PoW/PoS for Ethereum, but they haven't quite solved that yet, much less pure PoS.

[tacotime]

PoS is a totally different animal, and getting someone who has been a strong believer in PoW to review PoS objectively is a problem because in case they find out PoS is safe and better, they can't back out of this, because then math would prove it, which means the status quo of their PoW investments would be shaken. So for now the approach is to stick the head into the sand hoping PoS would just go away by itself

As a Proof-of-Stake systems developer for the past year and a half, my personal opinion is that all of the PoS systems are different levels of insecure (I have doubts that even the one I'm designing is secure, but I'd like to see what happens).

[devphp]

More recent comments. https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/05/stake/

If anything Vitalik is biased in favor of PoS. He really wants to find a way to make it sound, and I think their plan may include a combination PoW/PoS for Ethereum, but they haven't quite solved that yet, much less pure PoS.

Vitalik actually signed up an nxtforum.org after that blog article and asked some questions and got a somewhat satisfying reply. Of course NXT is still developing, but there is no obvious attack that could be staged against it at this point, at least no easier practically than attack against Bitcoin, perhaps two orders of magnitude more expensive (buying coins vs buying hardware).

[smooth]

More recent comments. https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/05/stake/

If anything Vitalik is biased in favor of PoS. He really wants to find a way to make it sound, and I think their plan may include a combination PoW/PoS for Ethereum, but they haven't quite solved that yet, much less pure PoS.

Vitalik actually signed up an nxtforum.org after that blog article and asked some questions and got a somewhat satisfying reply.

That post exactly makes my point:

I eagerly await a full whitepaper description and open source code of your complete protocol so both myself and more formal academics can properly whack at the specifics.

As I said, "show your work." Write down all the assumptions and every step in the derivation of your security results, along with the implementation, and then let other people look at it.

In any case, this is pretty much far off topic for Monero. Let's continue this discussion elsewhere.

[devphp]

As a Proof-of-Stake systems developer for the past year and a half, my personal opinion is that all of the PoS systems are different levels of insecure (I have doubts that even the one I'm designing is secure, but I'd like to see what happens).

You could outline flaws in NXT as you see them, if you are up to it, because, as you understand, without proof any claims are just that, claims. Different levels of insecure is interesting, a particular implementation of PoS only needs to be more secure than the strongest PoW implementation and network to have the argument of insecurity burried for a long time. It could still allow some theoretical attacks, but theory and practise are far from each other.

[devphp]

That post exactly makes my point:

I eagerly await a full whitepaper description and open source code of your complete protocol so both myself and more formal academics can properly whack at the specifics.

As I said, "show your work." Write down all the assumptions and every step in the derivation of your security results, along with the implementation, and then let other people look at it.

In any case, this is pretty much far off topic for Monero. Let's continue this discussion elsewhere.

There is a whitepaper, but probably not a detailed one for someone's tastes (someone is still working on it as NXT evolves). Other than that it's the source code only. That's where the true mathematical proof is. It can be argued that "showing your work" is best achieved by running a crypto without it being successfully attacked, but there has been reviews also, although perhaps not by PoW experts for the reasons I stated above.

Ok, let's go back to Monero.

[rpietila]

PoS is a totally different animal, and getting someone who has been a strong believer in PoW to review PoS objectively is a problem because in case they find out PoS is safe and better, they can't back out of this, because then math would prove it, which means the status quo of their PoW investments would be shaken. So for now the approach is to stick the head into the sand hoping PoS would just go away by itself

But that is just ridiculous.

Let's assume I have a large investment in PoW coins. Of course I spend adequate resources to review the possible competition from PoS, to assess if the technology is valid and if I should - for my own sake - diversify or change the train. By doing this quicker than the others, I salvage the full value of the previous coin AND participate in the appreciation of the future coin. (This is what I am doing with Monero.)

I feel that PoS is grasping straws because almost all big names have evaluated it and rejected it, and there is little hope for increase in value in these conditions...

[devphp]

But that is just ridiculous.

Let's assume I have a large investment in PoW coins. Of course I spend adequate resources to review the possible competition from PoS, to assess if the technology is valid and if I should - for my own sake - diversify or change the train. By doing this quicker than the others, I salvage the full value of the previous coin AND participate in the appreciation of the future coin. (This is what I am doing with Monero.)

I feel that PoS is grasping straws because almost all big names have evaluated it and rejected it, and there is little hope for increase in value in these conditions...

Then you might be one of the few that don't have emotional attachment and other kind of attachment to their investments, if you really do what you just said you do.

Which big names evaluated and rejected it, if some of them even say they can't properly assess it without a whitepaper? (Keep in mind that different PoS implementations are... , different. Peercoin PoS is not the same as NXT PoS implementation and what some experts say about Peercoin PoS can't be applied to NXT PoS).

[rpietila]

Then you might be one of the few that don't have emotional attachment and other kind of attachment to their investments, if you really do what you just said you do.

Most of the successful investors are keen on listening to the facts. I have invested in stocks, gold, silver, bitcoin and monero, in this order, over 18 years, always changing the weighting after finding out that the latter is more secure than the former.

[kbm]

Here's an interesting article, apparently Moolah will be taking over operations at MintPal:

http://www.coindesk.com/moolah-acquires-troubled-altcoin-exchange-mintpal/

It's going to be interesting to see what comes out of this. MintPal's recent hack has scared away a lot of their volume, and Moolah has been recently under fire from the Dogecoin community for various political reasons.

Can these two groups, now both with something to prove, make the best of their situations?

Poloniex was hacked, and is continuing to come back to life very clearly with Monero being a major driver in that (they did mention it as being one of the main reasons they were able to pay people back after the hack here). Does anyone think Monero can do the same for Mintpal also? Or will we be stuck on one exchange for the most part .. forever?

I know Poloniex is a fantastic exchange, and they offer things that MintPal does not currently offer like graph tools, a better graph overall, full market depths, and total coins for sale/total BTC for buy .. but it's not much of a leap to say that some of these tools were added in just the last month or two. With the release of this article, it seems like MintPal is still trying to make things better for people, so I'm going to move some funds over there, not much .. but enough to play with. I hope I won't be alone.

With Darkcoin lowering in price slightly every day, and Cloakcoin moving to take its place on Mintpal volume .. I think it would be incredible to see this coin help bring not one, but two major altcoin exchanges back to life.

[Dogeshop_eu]

Fortunately, miners are only 0.00001% of the population. The rest have to buy coins, and they don't have a concern if it's PoW or PoS as long as it does what they need it to.

How can you be so sure about that?

[dreamspark]

Fortunately, miners are only 0.00001% of the population. The rest have to buy coins, and they don't have a concern if it's PoW or PoS as long as it does what they need it to.

How can you be so sure about that?

While the number is exagerated the general view is true, think about anyone now wanting to get 1000XMR, are they going to buy it or are they going to spend x amount of time mining it and hoping the difficulty doesn't increase etc. Yes lots of people mine a few coins here and there but for the majoirty of people the larger parts of their holdings are bought.

[Dogeshop_eu]

It's better to buy the coin now as the diff has risen significantly

[smooth]

Fortunately, miners are only 0.00001% of the population. The rest have to buy coins, and they don't have a concern if it's PoW or PoS as long as it does what they need it to.

How can you be so sure about that?

While the number is exagerated the general view is true, think about anyone now wanting to get 1000XMR, are they going to buy it or are they going to spend x amount of time mining it and hoping the difficulty doesn't increase etc. Yes lots of people mine a few coins here and there but for the majoirty of people the larger parts of their holdings are bought.

The more questionable part of the statement was the assertion that buyers don't care about PoW or PoS. They might not care about the inner workings, but they damn well care in so far as it affects the security (incl perceived security) and value (incl perceived value) of their investment. To some extent this may be arbitrary or unfair (or perhaps a better word is undeserved). PoS might just has a bad reputation for whatever reasons not based in actual security (and being associated hundreds of PoS scam coins might well be part of the reason), which affects its perceived value and therefore is value. In that case it is still a bad investment (unless you want to make a bet on this changing in the future).

[devphp]

How can you be so sure about that?

Reality check! It's only profitable to mine if you have access to free electricity (most people don't), or you're a botnet operator (most people aren't) or invested and keep investing hundreds of thousands of $$$ into Bitcoin ASICs (most people don't, they invest thousands $$$ at best which is not enough to make mining profitable).

The more questionable part of the statement was the assertion that buyers don't care about PoW or PoS. They might not care about the inner workings, but they damn well care in so far as it affects the security (incl perceived security) and value (incl perceived value) of their investment. To some extent this may be arbitrary or unfair (or perhaps a better word is undeserved). Perhaps PoS just has a bad reputation for whatever reason not based in actual security (and being associated hundreds of PoS scam coins might well be part of the reason), which affects its perceived value and therefore is value. In that case it is still a bad investment (unless you want to make a bet on this changing in the future).

The thing is different PoS implementions are different. NXT's PoS implementation is not the same as Peercoin's PoS implementation, which in PoW world would be equivalent to hashrate of the network, hence security of different PoS coins is also different, same as security of Bitcoin's network is different from security of Dogecoin's network. There has been no serious and full assessments of NXT PoS implementation by PoW experts yet. The most they did in regards to PoS was look at Peercoin's PoS and claim that any PoS is insecure, which is irrelevant and not true, because it doesn't say anything about NXT's particular implementation.