Cryptonote coin analysis

[johncitizen]

This report will provide factual links and enable users to access the database of information in order to form viewpoints.

"With the current resources available to educate yourself, if you do not understand what is being discussed, your opinion is irrelevant." ~Bytecoin
Before commenting or posting, be sure to have made use of the current information. Constructive discussion is welcome.

As far as we are aware, bytecoin has been the first implementation of cryptonote technology. Fantomcoin, Monero and Quasar are derivatives.

My view on non Cnote 'anon' coins is pessimistic. There has been a string of wild claims and promised features. The developers have fantastic marketing campaigns but have failed to deliver any of the technology. The networks thrive on hype and are yet to perform to promise.

In comparison to cryptonote, we have state of the art technology that performs to specifications. There has been no marketing thus far and we are in the preliminary stages of development.

At this current moment, Cryptonote coins must focus on developing the software for general users. It is here adoption will take hold. The current rate of growth is an expression of market demand for such technologies. 

The coins of focus are those accepted by cryptonote as listed on https://cryptonote.org/coins.php

Links
Bytecoin- https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=512747
Fantomcoin- https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=172, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=598823.0
Monero- https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=162, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=563821, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.0
Quazar- https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=181, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=615732, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=600658.0

Cryptonote F.A.Q - https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewforum.php?f=2
Who are you? (2 pages) https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=21

There is a trail of breadcrumbs... more than enough to gain a clear perspective.

Summary

Bytecoin- With origins claiming a release date as far back as 2 years. Appearing as the first succsessful implementation of cryptonote technology, it has proven the software a success to date. Regardless of the claim to foundations, the coins emission curve is unattractive to todays community. Evidently, an approximate %80 of coins are in circulation.

Fantomcoin- An interesting concept that introduces merged mining to the equation. The emission curve represents a fair distribution, smoother than bitcoin. Besides MM, the coin seems to have relations with Quasar. It will be interesting to see the impact merged mining will have on the coin.

Monero- This coin has a close relationship with byte coin (~80% mined within 4 years instead of 2 years with BCN). It is unclear why the developers opted for such a steep emission curve. There is much activity on forums and developers seem to task.

Quazar- Launched through community discussion to combat instamine. The coin seems to have respectable emissions, tighter than bitcoin itself. The goal is usability optimisation.


From the information accessible, all of these coins possess the claimed 'anonymous' features. The technology is in the early development and will continue to progress. Bytecoin has paved the way and stood as tested. From the evidence, no one coin has a GUI. It can be expected once a single dev team implement the GUI, all others will follow suite. Each coin is a marketing dream and the potential to enter the top market caps has been observed. Currently, the coins can be difficult to use- this provides barriers to new users. There is a need of rapid development to instil confidence and dominate the "anon" sector. 

Regardless of community thoughts, there is strong evidence these coins have already surfaced in darknet markets. 

It may be wise to participate in cryptonote coins through community involvement, mining and investing. The coins have received limited exposure and remain in the markets niche. With an entirely different code base to bitcoin and its derivatives, exchange listings are not so simple- a higher level of skill is required. There is still much confusion and it is possible that only a fraction of the community have investigated the coins. I expect with further exposure that all crypronote coins will benefit.



-Significant positions taken in all Cryptonote coins. These coins remain offline for the foreseeable future.

[giveBTCpls]

Monero has the most legit developers and a good launch.
Fantomcoin is also nice.

[uvt9]

Bytecoin- With origins claiming a release date as far back as 2 years

This is a lie. CryptoNote whitepaper was published on late 2013. So there is no way Bytecoin can be launched 2 years ago. Bytecoin is premined 80% and the dev pretend that it was "fairly" launched 2 years ago. Monero is released to fix BCN problem, a fair launch.

[giveBTCpls]

Bytecoin- With origins claiming a release date as far back as 2 years

This is a lie. CryptoNote whitepaper was published on late 2013. So there is no way Bytecoin can be launched 2 years ago. Bytecoin is premined 80% and the dev pretend that it was "fairly" launched 2 years ago. Monero is released to fix BCN problem, a fair launch.

Blockchain was probably faked to look 2 years old to boot.

[Cohle]

Bytecoin- With origins claiming a release date as far back as 2 years

This is a lie. CryptoNote whitepaper was published on late 2013. So there is no way Bytecoin can be launched 2 years ago. Bytecoin is premined 80% and the dev pretend that it was "fairly" launched 2 years ago. Monero is released to fix BCN problem, a fair launch.

If Bytecoin's maturity is a lie, why then do the Cryptonote devs refer to its existence in terms of years?

https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10

Re: Cryptonote's scalability
Postby Maurice.P » Tue Apr 01, 2014 7:07 pm

I can add that we're pretty sure that the complexity level won't grow exponentially, so the coin should keep going even when the number of users is high. Once again, Bytecoin has been doing pretty good for the last years. I don't know the current figures, but I'd say several tens of thousands of active users with continuously ongoing transactions.

[r0ach]

I'm personally still trying to find information on cryptonote bloat and scalability.  Most people claim it's an unscalable solution.

[Zer0Sum]

I'm personally still trying to find information on cryptonote bloat and scalability.  Most people claim it's an unscalable solution.

Ya man, dudes are talking down the price so they can invest, baby.

Why would it not be linear?
In which case, it's just another blockchain... with the usual blockchain issues/solutions.

And can we just put BCN to rest, RIP BCN...
The market has spoken it's 0.00000001 on Polo with tiny volume.

[johncitizen]

In comparison to Zerocash, darkcoin etc (take bytecoin ref as Cryptonote in general) = https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18

[Zer0Sum]

In comparison to Zerocash, darkcoin etc (take bytecoin ref as Cryptonote in general) = https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18

Yeah, virtually all serious discussion comes from Maurice.P
And he just says "larger" transactions... same size regardless of blockchain size.

exponential = FUD.

[aminorex]

Why would it not be linear?

Question is impossible, because it is linear.

[collagen1888]

I read the cryptonote white paper

I pretty much have all the same information as you OP

[johncitizen]

How can I help Cryptonte?

https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=27

[johncitizen]

The botnet discussion,

https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9

Clearly not an issue.

[superresistant]

Boolberry.

[devphp]

Which of the cryptonote coins has the most hash rate at the moment?

[surfer43]

Boolberry.

Yes, instalaunched QuazarCloneCoin should be removed and Boolberry should be added. Boolberry has a new, more ASIC-resistant hashing algorithm. Boolberry will become inefficient to mine with GPUs in a few years.

Which of the cryptonote coins has the most hash rate at the moment?

CryptoNight CryptoNote coins
Monero
Wild Keccak CryptoNote coins
Boolberry

[devphp]

CryptoNight CryptoNote coins
Monero
Wild Keccak CryptoNote coins
Boolberry

what's the difference between CryptoNight and Wild Keccak algos in layman's terms?

[superresistant]

CryptoNight CryptoNote coins
Monero
Wild Keccak CryptoNote coins
Boolberry

what's the difference between CryptoNight and Wild Keccak algos in layman's terms?

It cannot be explained simply.

Boolberry's devs did not wanted to just do a copy coin. They wanted a better algo.

The discussion can be found here : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=588421.0

Here is how it begin :

Let's open hash-function discussion friends.
Just want to uncover our approach and show differences with CryptoNote that we use in our project announced here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.0

First of all I want to say that CryptoNote hash function (so called cn_slow_hash) is actually a very strong protected from ASIC's with different CPU instructions set as well as memory consuming algo. cn_slow_hash works hard on 2MB scratchpad and most of this scratchpad are fits in CPU cache.

For now it is difficult imagine that will be possible to make some specific hardware which will be more effective than CPU and will coast less than CPU. But world changes so fast, nobody knows what will happen in near future. We've all seen how rapid technological breakthroughs capable of performing the computer industry. 

Since cn_slow_hash created 2MB scratchpad, it's have to cover all this data, that's why they use 2²⁰ iterations, and side-effect from this pretty slow work (about 500ms on normal laptop, twice faster on normal pc with suitable cpu cache). It may slow down synchronisation process at downloading blockchain (that is not a big problem) and theoretically it may be possible to attack network - connect and send a random block to make peer calculate slow_hash for useless fake block.

So, putting all together, we want to have:
1. Wide CPU instruction set
2. Memory-oriented algo
3. Small work time.

Realizing it, we've  tried to take a step to the side.

Idea of using blockchain data as scratchpad resulted in this hash function:



Actually this is a keccak hybrid, which use external scratchpad. After each keccack round, psudo-randomly addressed[state vector used as addresses] data is taken from scratchpad and xored with state.
Calculating each block PoW usualy hits about 1100 randomly addressed reading of blocks by 32 bytes.

I used "performance_tests" with different scratchpad size to find out memory hardness:

Warm up: 2161 ms
test_wild_keccak<400> - OK:
  loop count:    100000
  elapsed:       3020 ms
  time per call: 0 ms/call

Warm up: 2158 ms
test_wild_keccak<40000> - OK:
  loop count:    100000
  elapsed:       3060 ms
  time per call: 0 ms/call

Warm up: 2168 ms
test_wild_keccak<4000000> - OK:
  loop count:    100000
  elapsed:       3484 ms
  time per call: 0 ms/call

Warm up: 2156 ms
test_wild_keccak<40000000> - OK:
  loop count:    100000
  elapsed:       8119 ms
  time per call: 0 ms/call

Warm up: 2150 ms
test_wild_keccak<100000000> - OK:
  loop count:    100000
  elapsed:       8574 ms
  time per call: 0 ms/call

As you can see, working on small amount of memory 100000 hash operations takes 3020 ms, meanwhile work on 100Mb scratchpad with the same operations count takes 8574 ms.
Such difference(caused by the cache memory overflow) points to real memory hardness we guess.

Wellcome to comment.

[devphp]

It cannot be explained simply.

huh, thanx, I almost wanted to type the doge tip to you, but forgot we aren't on the reddit

[johncitizen]

Is this prime buying across cryptonote coins? There seems to be little volume at  these lows.