rpietila Altcoin Observer

[synechist]

I understand where you guys come from but not sure what you expect of a coin that is work in progress. The code will eventually be all open source, as of now the code of the previous implementation is open source. So we could pretend the coin is at REV1 at there is the mixer open source. Any thoughts on it?

http://pastebin.com/G4mH4AxR

"Closed source can be everything and nothing." - you are free to make a transaction and find a link between sender and receiver in the blockchain. I think a bounty is still in effect for this.

I can't use the code if it is not open source.  It is a coin stealer, presumptively, and a key logger.

When the source is open and the coin is usable, then peer review will be effective.  Until then, it is a joke.

If you have an unreversible mixer, congratulations.  Bitcoin will almost certainly want to adopt it.  However,  it won't fix fungibility.

Of course. You're under no pressure to use XC until all the code is open source. That's quite understandable.

But it's still a solid project and an attractive investment, regardless. There's no incentive to wait until it's an established product before investing.

[Este Nuno]

If you have an unreversible mixer, congratulations.  Bitcoin will almost certainly want to adopt it.  However,  it won't fix fungibility.

When you say that, are you referring to Bitcoin 3rd party development like Dark Wallet? Or the core dev team? I don't think the core dev team would ever implement that tech in to Bitcoin even if it was perfect.

[slapper]

If I am not mistaken, XC PoW phase (and hence total PoW coins) were cut short because the network witnessed multi tera hashes. I think it was well over 3 TH and attributed to X11 ASICs.

[dreamspark]

If you have an unreversible mixer, congratulations.  Bitcoin will almost certainly want to adopt it.  However,  it won't fix fungibility.

When you say that, are you referring to Bitcoin 3rd party development like Dark Wallet? Or the core dev team? I don't think the core dev team would ever implement that tech in to Bitcoin even if it was perfect.

Why would they not want to adopt it? We're talking about Bitcoin as in the open source beta phase project.

[Este Nuno]

If you have an unreversible mixer, congratulations.  Bitcoin will almost certainly want to adopt it.  However,  it won't fix fungibility.

When you say that, are you referring to Bitcoin 3rd party development like Dark Wallet? Or the core dev team? I don't think the core dev team would ever implement that tech in to Bitcoin even if it was perfect.

Why would they not want to adopt it? We're talking about Bitcoin as in the open source beta phase project.

I would put the line at 100-1 that the current Bitcoin development team with it's current political situation would ever add such a thing to Bitcoin.

If it's possible for 3rd parties to add it then people will be all over that at light speed. But Gavin et al? I highly doubt that. But maybe I'm wrong. I wonder what everyone else thinks.

[dreamspark]

If you have an unreversible mixer, congratulations.  Bitcoin will almost certainly want to adopt it.  However,  it won't fix fungibility.

When you say that, are you referring to Bitcoin 3rd party development like Dark Wallet? Or the core dev team? I don't think the core dev team would ever implement that tech in to Bitcoin even if it was perfect.

Why would they not want to adopt it? We're talking about Bitcoin as in the open source beta phase project.

I would put the line at 100-1 that the current Bitcoin development team with it's current political situation would ever add such a thing to Bitcoin.

If it's possible for 3rd parties to add it then people will be all over that at light speed. But Gavin et al? I highly doubt that. But maybe I'm wrong. I wonder what everyone else thinks.

And this just highlights one of the most serious issues with Bitcoin as a project. Someone needs control over it but also the vote of the majority should certainly count. This is where Mike Hearns light house project may come into its own, not just funding the devs but breaking them away from the Bitcoin Foundation and also allowing people to show their support for features they would like to see.

[SushiChef]

If you have an unreversible mixer, congratulations.  Bitcoin will almost certainly want to adopt it.  However,  it won't fix fungibility.

When you say that, are you referring to Bitcoin 3rd party development like Dark Wallet? Or the core dev team? I don't think the core dev team would ever implement that tech in to Bitcoin even if it was perfect.

Why would they not want to adopt it? We're talking about Bitcoin as in the open source beta phase project.

I would put the line at 100-1 that the current Bitcoin development team with it's current political situation would ever add such a thing to Bitcoin.

If it's possible for 3rd parties to add it then people will be all over that at light speed. But Gavin et al? I highly doubt that. But maybe I'm wrong. I wonder what everyone else thinks.

And this just highlights one of the most serious issues with Bitcoin as a project. Someone needs control over it but also the vote of the majority should certainly count. This is where Mike Hearns light house project may come into its own, not just funding the devs but breaking them away from the Bitcoin Foundation and also allowing people to show their support for features they would like to see.

You nailed it! And I can tell you The dedicated dev's and team of XC implemented and did what The Community asked. Big time

[Este Nuno]

If you have an unreversible mixer, congratulations.  Bitcoin will almost certainly want to adopt it.  However,  it won't fix fungibility.

When you say that, are you referring to Bitcoin 3rd party development like Dark Wallet? Or the core dev team? I don't think the core dev team would ever implement that tech in to Bitcoin even if it was perfect.

Why would they not want to adopt it? We're talking about Bitcoin as in the open source beta phase project.

I would put the line at 100-1 that the current Bitcoin development team with it's current political situation would ever add such a thing to Bitcoin.

If it's possible for 3rd parties to add it then people will be all over that at light speed. But Gavin et al? I highly doubt that. But maybe I'm wrong. I wonder what everyone else thinks.

And this just highlights one of the most serious issues with Bitcoin as a project. Someone needs control over it but also the vote of the majority should certainly count. This is where Mike Hearns light house project may come into its own, not just funding the devs but breaking them away from the Bitcoin Foundation and also allowing people to show their support for features they would like to see.

If Lighthouse ends up working that way then it could be interesting to see what direction Bitcoin takes. But even then we already have the vested interests of the Bitcoin Foundation and it would take some sort of political upheaval within the Bitcoin dev community to really change the status quo.

I think it was a Mike Hearn interview where he said that Wladimir doesn't even touch the core protocol due to political issues. And he's a PHD who's apparently supposed to be Gavin's successor as lead dev! (edit: I can't find the quote yet though all I've been able to find is that he said Gavin is pretty much the only one who does touch the core protocol. I might have misremembered, not sure. edit2: found the quote, pasted at the bottom)

To be honest though I don't really mind that whole mess since it bodes quite well for our respective 'alternative' choices of curenncy.

“The only people doing any kind of heavy lifting on the protocol today are people paid by the Bitcoin Foundation. When I say ‘people,’ what I actually mean is Gavin [Andresen]. There are only three people paid by the Foundation to work on bitcoin, code-wise. And of those, Wladimir [van der Laan] and Cory [Fields] refuse to work on the protocol, partly because of the social issues that have come up.”

[SushiChef]

Those "other choices of currency" don't have to worry About legall stuff. This will help getting crypto to a whole new audience much quicker. They will be trader for btc until "new paradigm" so it will benefit everyone in The longrun I think. Collaboration is much more effective then divide and conquer!

Edit: I have The tendancy of updating my Posts when I'm at home. Currently on my Phone but like The discussion

[Este Nuno]

Those "other choices of currency" don't have to worry About legall stuff. This will help getting crypto to a whole new audience much quicker. They will be trader for btc until "new paradigm" so it will benefit everyone in The longrun I think. Collaboration is much more effective then divide and conquer!

Edit: I have The tendancy of updating my Posts when I'm at home. Currently on my Phone but like The discussion

For now we don't. But the proposed BitLicence regulations out of New York State do target alts unfortunately.

[SimonJones]

What about Cloak Coin? Don't see any discussion on that. They were recently featured here http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/07/17/cloakcoin-promises-holy-grail-cryptocurrency-anonymity/

[yAmAdA]

http://pastebin.com/G4mH4AxR

That is better than nothing, but having only such a short part of the whole thing makes it hard to reason about with the bigger picture in mind. If there was the usual diff header, it would be a bit easier. Considering that it is also outdated already, I do not feel like investing time into figuring how it works. I hope you understand.

"Closed source can be everything and nothing." - you are free to make a transaction and find a link between sender and receiver in the blockchain. I think a bounty is still in effect for this.

Please see: Kerckhoffs's principle

Cryptographic contests and bounties where the systems inner working are not published, are generally not accepted among cryptographers.

While Kerckhoffs's principle mainly applies to cryptographic systems, following Shannon's maxim, I believe it should be applied analogously to anonymity systems. If the way the system works is opaque, you cannot reason well about its security.

   - it's not coinjoin, because it’s not centralised or semi-centralised. There's nothing akin to masternodes in XC either.

This is a very strange claim. CoinJoin was originally designed to be decentralized and trustless. To me, it sounds more like you have implemented CoinJoin the way it was originally supposed to be built.

- we'd avoid causing clones, which reduce the trustworthiness of the altcoin phenomenon

Whatever the other merits of your approach, this one is silly. There are hundreds of altcoin clones, with countless more released every single day. Whether or not your particular pet coin gets cloned or not makes no difference at all to the overall phenomenon.

Let us hope for their sake that nobody hex edits name and certain other things in the binary to launch a clone coin. :-)

[policymaker]

http://pastebin.com/G4mH4AxR

That is better than nothing, but having only such a short part of the whole thing makes it hard to reason about with the bigger picture in mind. If there was the usual diff header, it would be a bit easier. Considering that it is also outdated already, I do not feel like investing time into figuring how it works. I hope you understand.

Your point is fair,but keep in mind that there were people with legitimate claims like yours back then, asking for open source. The fact that this is delivered now, proves the team's dedication to open source and justifies their course of action. I strongly believe there will be shitcoins with this tech from now on

[SushiChef]

Those "other choices of currency" don't have to worry About legall stuff. This will help getting crypto to a whole new audience much quicker. They will be trader for btc until "new paradigm" so it will benefit everyone in The longrun I think. Collaboration is much more effective then divide and conquer!

Edit: I have The tendancy of updating my Posts when I'm at home. Currently on my Phone but like The discussion

For now we don't. But the proposed BitLicence regulations out of New York State do target alts unfortunately.

I dont see them stop me paying in crypto at some underground stripclub if The owner decided to accept it as payment

Or at any other service or internet business

Same thing as with prohabition.. Aint gonna work

[uvt9]

Now that this has been cleared up, here's how XC works:

......

From my understanding, does XC still need a number of masternodes (or supernodes or simply nodes or whatever you call them) to perform mixing ?

If the answer is yes, the coin will be less decentralized as long as amount of nodes smaller than amount of clients/users, is it true ?

An who will operate these nodes ? what is the benefit for operating one ?

Is there any potential leakage of user's anonymity in case one entity own a sizeable amount of nodes ?

[synechist]

Now that this has been cleared up, here's how XC works:

......

From my understanding, does XC still need a number of masternodes (or supernodes or simply nodes or whatever you call them) to perform mixing ?

If the answer is yes, the coin will be less decentralized as long as amount of nodes smaller than amount of clients/users, is it true ?

An who will operate these nodes ? what is the benefit for operating one ?

Is there any potential leakage of user's anonymity in case one entity own a sizeable amount of nodes ?

No, XC no longer has any degree of centralisation. Every node forwards/mixes transactions trustlessly.

There's also currently no minimum amount of coins required to run an Xnode. The app does it automatically.

The benefit of operating an xnode will be:

- you get tx fees, though these are still to be determined. Chances are they'll be very low.

- you get to use secure private messaging (currently working; update due shortly)

- you get to stake


The messaging thing is the strongest incentive to keep apps running.

If we need to provide more of an incentive we might increase tx fees. But we expect tx volume to make up for low fees in due course.

[synechist]

Cryptographic contests and bounties where the systems inner working are not published, are generally not accepted among cryptographers.

While Kerckhoffs's principle mainly applies to cryptographic systems, following Shannon's maxim, I believe it should be applied analogously to anonymity systems. If the way the system works is opaque, you cannot reason well about its security.

Yes we have plans for external testing of the XC app around the official public launch (Rev 3). They'll need access to the code.

However the last time we did this (Rev 1) a reviewer cloned XC, so we'll try to be strategic about it.

   - it's not coinjoin, because it’s not centralised or semi-centralised. There's nothing akin to masternodes in XC either.

This is a very strange claim. CoinJoin was originally designed to be decentralized and trustless. To me, it sounds more like you have implemented CoinJoin the way it was originally supposed to be built.

Apologies, I should've been clearer on this point; I was combining the Darksend coinjoin implementation with gmaxwell's general concept for it.

XC is not coinjoin, so say the devs.

Let us hope for their sake that nobody hex edits name and certain other things in the binary to launch a clone coin. :-)

Indeed!

[David Latapie]

Closed source can be everything and nothing.

When and if they open source I think maybe someone can peer review it and then we can discuss it further.

You should remember that open source is only as good as the time you spend at actually checking the code.
=> open source is good, audited open source is better

[aminorex]

I dont see them stop me paying in crypto at some underground stripclub if The owner decided to accept it as payment

Or at any other service or internet business

Same thing as with prohabition.. Aint gonna work

They do not intend to prevent you from doing this.  In fact, Lawsky positively encourages it.  There are things the regulations choose to regulated, and things which the regulations choose not to regulate.  Buying stuff with crypto and selling stuff with crypto is not in general an activity targeted by the regulations.  Exchange for liquidity instruments is an activity regulated by the proposed rules.

[SushiChef]

I dont see them stop me paying in crypto at some underground stripclub if The owner decided to accept it as payment

Or at any other service or internet business

Same thing as with prohabition.. Aint gonna work

They do not intend to prevent you from doing this.  In fact, Lawsky positively encourages it.  There are things the regulations choose to regulated, and things which the regulations choose not to regulate.  Buying stuff with crypto and selling stuff with crypto is not in general an activity targeted by the regulations.  Exchange for liquidity instruments is an activity regulated by the proposed rules.

Yes, I understand the fiat-gateway problem very good. And I agree with Bitcoin (related businesses) complying to this. Establish a trusted protocol and brand a #1 crypto is what they should do. Alt(s) should focus on widening the scoop of adoption by serving they're expertise to special niches (insert any niche you want). Adopters of Alt(s) will come to Bitcoin definitely by design (of the current exchanges).

If someone makes his money in a cryptocurrency and never goes back to fiat there will be no taxation. Eventually the hole business cycle will be in crypto. Good luck to regulators when that point comes