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

[mmmaybe]

Thanks, any further comments from core team members would be great.  I don't see why every Bitcoin user must be forced to use a privacy protocol for every transaction to provide a sufficient anonymity set.  Even a small percentage of Bitcoin users may be a larger absolute number than the entire user base of a privacy coin.  Also, isn't the primary issue the absolute number of people one is mixing with in a transaction (e.g., 50), rather than the total number of users of a privacy protocol or privacy coin?  It seems the total user base only needs to be above some reasonable absolute number to provide sufficient privacy.  The number of total users of a coin seems most important because of network effects that can determine whether a coin will survive against competitors, rather than its effect on privacy.

The anonymity set is more reduced than that. Let me give you an example: say you want to transfer 123.456 Bitcoin. No matter what method you use, if someone can observe you sent 123.456 Bitcoin from your address and 123.456 Bitcoin appeared in another address within an hour or two they can make certain conclusions. These inferences can be cryptographically proven, and this is called "reducing the anonymity set". Eventually the anonymity set can be reduced to the point where you can ascertain undoubtedly prove a certain address sent a transaction regardless of the intermingling and intermixing that occurred.

Now in order to make this really difficult, you have to start with a VERY large anonymity set. In other words, there need to be to very many people potentially involved in a transaction that any reduction is practically meaningless. Mixing typically requires point-in-time availability of people or nodes, and the higher the mix the longer it takes (since you have to go through "rounds" of mixing). Darkcoin gets around this, I believe, by "premixing" your coins. The downside to their approach (and to most of the other approaches I've seen) is that you have massive address churn in your wallet, and any practical use will require you to back your wallet.dat up constantly. Secure and anonymous cold storage is thus observable to anyone with a blockchain explorer (when it really shouldn't be).

One of the solutions Monero and other mixing systems employ to blind amount correlation is it splits inputs (and outputs) by powers of 10, so the earlier example would mean inputs of 100, 20, 3, 0.4, 0.05, and 0.006. Now because of the way Monero works (ring signatures!) you specify you want to mix with, say, 50 other people. So it takes that first input (100) and goes and finds all the unspent transaction outputs (ie. those not spent with a mixin of 0) that have ever occurred in the past and have a value of 100. As you can imagine, this is a pretty huge set, and is growing every day. It can then pick 50 of those at random, add your signature to the ring, and voila. Now it does the same for the other 5 inputs. This means that the total anonymity set here is massive - 51 * 6 = 306 people that could have possibly been involved in the transaction. Most importantly, because all of these are stealthed transactions (Monero uses stealth addresses permanently) some of those outputs you mix with could even have been created by you previously! Thus the potential anonymity set grows and grows even if the userbase stays stagnant - a feature that is not shared by any of the Bitcoin-derived anonymity solutions.

Finally, because Monero uses stealth addresses, you never need to backup anything more than a 300 byte password-encrypted keys file (or just write down the 24 word mnemonic seed you get when you first create a wallet). That 300 byte file will never change no matter how many transactions you do. You back it up once and you are safe from data loss forever.

Great explanation, I'll for sure continue to mine xmr for the future Arguments like this should be on the webpage.

[cAPSLOCK]

May sound repetitious, but I really feel that Monero is the Bitcoin of 2010.

I'll buy you a nice box of cigars if you're right.   Maybe some Siglo VI?  To your taste?

[rpietila]

May sound repetitious, but I really feel that Monero is the Bitcoin of 2010.

I'll buy you a nice box of cigars if you're right.   Maybe some Siglo VI?  To your taste?

Siglo VI come in box of 25, so I think that is the best value I can hope for!

I'd say we need 1 XMR = $1,000, ok?

[Aliyah]

So many FUDs around XMR but i will buy more.more FUDs = more people want to buy.

[Globb0]

Missive timeline overview

An overview of the missives so far.

...


Cheers,
Phil

Beautiful! Thank you for doing this. It would be nice, if you could continue updating the list. Maybe every month make a new post with all the older posts included + all new missives, though it is just an idea

I'll happily maintain it, as long as it doesn't annoy the actual Monero team. I started it with a view to building the knowns into a bit of a roadmap and maybe some graphical flow for the overall reported progress. But as you see there is a super huge amount of information there so its hard to get it all into another more visual format.

[fluffypony]

I'll happily maintain it, as long as it doesn't annoy the actual Monero team. I started it with a view to building the knowns into a bit of a roadmap and maybe some graphical flow for the overall reported progress. But as you see there is a super huge amount of information there so its hard to get it all into another more visual format.

Not annoyed at all:) I was wondering if it wouldn't make sense to put it on a timeline using this: http://timeline.knightlab.com - thoughts? The Time magazine "Nelson Mandela" timeline is an example how things brief notes can be expanded to show the exact line from the Missive or something. You can even shove it up on github and give a couple of people collab status so that you don't have to worry about maintaining it all by yourself.

[Ultros]

Could it be possible to reopen the XMR speculation thread or make a new one? I really miss the forecasts there. (I could create one myself you may say but I rather let some known member of this forum, with a good trust level, moderate it).

[smooth]

Could it be possible to reopen the XMR speculation thread or make a new one? I really miss the forecasts there. (I could do it myself you may say but I rather let some known member of this forum, with a good trust level, moderate it).

I'm curious why it was closed.

[Ultros]

Could it be possible to reopen the XMR speculation thread or make a new one? I really miss the forecasts there. (I could do it myself you may say but I rather let some known member of this forum, with a good trust level, moderate it).

I'm curious why it was closed.

I believe it was due to some critical level of trolling. The thread wasn't self-moderated.

[smooth]

Could it be possible to reopen the XMR speculation thread or make a new one? I really miss the forecasts there. (I could do it myself you may say but I rather let some known member of this forum, with a good trust level, moderate it).

I'm curious why it was closed.

I believe it was due to some critical level of trolling. The thread wasn't self-moderated.

Ah okay. If we decide on a clear charter to be enforced I will be happy to open a moderated one.

[samaricanin]

Could it be possible to reopen the XMR speculation thread or make a new one? I really miss the forecasts there. (I could do it myself you may say but I rather let some known member of this forum, with a good trust level, moderate it).

I'm curious why it was closed.

I believe it was due to some critical level of trolling. The thread wasn't self-moderated.

Ah okay. If we decide on a clear charter to be enforced I will be happy to open a moderated one.

You can open one here

https://moneroforum.org/

[dEBRUYNE]

Could it be possible to reopen the XMR speculation thread or make a new one? I really miss the forecasts there. (I could do it myself you may say but I rather let some known member of this forum, with a good trust level, moderate it).

I'm curious why it was closed.

I believe it was due to some critical level of trolling. The thread wasn't self-moderated.

Ah okay. If we decide on a clear charter to be enforced I will be happy to open a moderated one.

Also would be happy if you open a self-moderated new one.

[smooth]

Could it be possible to reopen the XMR speculation thread or make a new one? I really miss the forecasts there. (I could do it myself you may say but I rather let some known member of this forum, with a good trust level, moderate it).

I'm curious why it was closed.

I believe it was due to some critical level of trolling. The thread wasn't self-moderated.

Ah okay. If we decide on a clear charter to be enforced I will be happy to open a moderated one.

You can open one here

https://moneroforum.org/

I prefer to reach the wider audience here. We can retain that advantage while removing off-topic posts.

[smooth]

New self-moderated speculation thread

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=753252

[Ultros]

Thanks you. 

[GreekBitcoin]

Monero Status Android Widget

A friend of mine made an android widget and app.

Updates
•NOTICE: Widgets may stop working, please add again
•Added many fiat currencies, to a total of 21: AUD, BRL, CAD, CHF, CNY, EUR, GBP, HKD, IDR, ILS, MXN, NOK, NZD, PLN, RON, RUB, SEK, SGD, TRY, USD, ZAR
•Added 2x2 widget format, showing user coin value, and mining projection value
•Bug fixes

Previous Updates that i forgot to post here

•Added pinch in / pinch out gestures to market depth graph, to control viewed range of the total data
•Bug fixes (Bittrex, market depth graph force closing)

More things are coming in a few days


Download: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tr.monerostatus




If anyone feels like donating: 47g3CVqBdmPZgPEA8m2hjT4aosiNhmELD3jdQVbtbooVGuCjHfY7aBUQo5p2Qirk7629LiFZWH7ZWMZ nSAZ5n7paP7ePThK
Many thanks to the three donators!

P.S. Ask about more features and tell us about bugs![/list][/list]

[tomewok]

Got my 750Tis up to around 310H/s: https://ottrbutt.com/tmp/xmrwolf1750ti.png

Nice, where can we get your miner ? Do you have an adress for donation ?

[tacotime]

Monero currently appears to be undergoing a spamming attack.

Every 5 seconds or so, someone is submitting tx with mixins of 101 to the network:
https://minergate.com/blockchain/mro/transpool

See also recent blocks:
https://minergate.com/blockchain/mro/blocks

Currently I have limited connectivity to IRC. Please alert FluffyPony, Smooth, etc to this if they are not aware it is going on. We may issue temporary mining-level code that rejects tx with mixin >= 20 or some other reasonable number.

[smooth]

Monero currently appears to be undergoing a spamming attack.

Every 5 seconds or so, someone is submitting tx with mixins of 101 to the network:
https://minergate.com/blockchain/mro/transpool

See also recent blocks:
https://minergate.com/blockchain/mro/blocks

Currently I have limited connectivity to IRC. Please alert FluffyPony, Smooth, etc to this if they are not aware it is going on. We may issue temporary mining-level code that rejects tx with mixin >= 20 or some other reasonable number.

Being discussed on IRC

[statdude]

It's here guys! First XMR/Monero gambling site is FairProof. Looks pretty legit, I will be trying and reviewing it tonight.

Use my referral link and I'll donate all proceeds to Dev fund.

fairproof.com/qxc


Good luck!

(Also started a thread to discuss:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=746591.msg8438281#msg8438281)

Update:

It looks like my review thread was deleted?? So I'll just write it here before I put it in my main gambling thread:

Pros:
Site works, nice layout, received deposit and withdraw

Cons:
Affiliate program does not work
Zero response from customer support via forum PM and on-site ticket after several days
Fair Cards returns a server error, and Roulette does not appear to have XMR enabled at all
3% house edge is excessive, does not reduce for "favorite" bets like 99% chance to win...

Overall Rating:
C-, considering they were first I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. I would hold off considering I have inside info that another dice site will be opening for XMR soon.