Blowing the lid off the CryptoNote/Bytecoin scam (with the exception of Monero)

[rethink-your-strategy]

Maybe you should add the "[CryptoNote] A complete forking guide to create your own CryptoNote currency" thread as part of the "scam".

Monero had gained a lot of attention but because the mysterious devs didn't manage to financially gain from Monero's rise, they attempted to do a "scorched earth" approach to create a bunch of useless coins to dilute the CryptoNote "brand", trying to eliminate the network effect of Monero. But that didn't exactly go as planned either. They thought that if they couldn't have fame and fortune then no other CN coins should too.

Excellent point, adding that shit in right now.

[1714511915]

1714511915

[1714511915]

1714511915

[rethink-your-strategy]

thanks for your hard work - I was following the cryptonotes from the beginning here.

I think you are right regarding bytecoin and probably some of the merged coins.

What is and was hard for me to understand from the very beginning is the role of the cryptonote team. I have the feeling that there is a loose connection to bytecoin, but they are really interested in the development of their protocol. I was in their forum and it was full of high quality posts as well as serious discussions. Maybe you have better information but I do not think they are scammers, it is more likely that they are academics who are interested in developing the technology.

I initially thought this too. The straw that breaks the camel's back of this argument are the fake fates on PDFs. If there was only a loose connection to Bytecoin, why not: release the whitepaper in March, don't version it, sign it as March 2014, let Bytecoin make any claims they want, refuse to comment on them, and don't pretend you've been around for 2 years by creating a bullshit Tor site? They doubled down on the Bytecoin claim, and that means that anything they say loses credibility, even if it has some validity.

[smooth]

I had a discussion with an exchange owner in which we were marveling at the crude mechanism of the mining algorithm. This person asserted that some small changes could be made to make to the client to make it advantageous for a gpu. I mean, some of it was over my head but its probably blatantly obvious for anyone who knows their stuff.

There are already GPU miners (though they don' t have a huge advantage), so I'm not sure what he is talking about, but if you can find out more I'd certainly like to hear it.

[smooth]

What is and was hard for me to understand from the very beginning is the role of the cryptonote team. I have the feeling that there is a loose connection to bytecoin

It is pretty clear at this point that they are either one and the same or closely related.

I originally bought into the whole "separate organizations" story but when cryptonote started backing up the sham story about bytecoin being two years old in the deep web, they outed themselves.

I don't know why they have set things up this way with two apparent faces, but they are not independent.

[smooth]

Not a single fucking quote to back your bullshit claims up, typical of the Bytecoin sockpuppets.

It's not really typical from what I've seen. Most of the shills/sockpuppets just post one or two lines and can't avoid making obvious grammatical errors even then. This Rias guy seems to be somewhat different. I have no idea what his connection to bytecoin/cryptonote might be if any but he's not a run-of-the-mill shill.

I will say that a while back Rias asked me if I was part of bytecoin, which is a bit of a laugh, but you would think if he were part of bytecoin he would know whether or not I was. Of course, one can imagine all sorts of spy-vs-spy theories like that he asked me just to make me think that he wasn't part of bytecoin, etc. But I actually don't think he's one of them, probably just someone who was intrigued early on and got involved. I do agree the line up of dates, etc. between Rias and DStrange is odd, but I'm not totally convinced by this part of the story.

[rethink-your-strategy]

What can we say of this "smooth" charachter. The postings of this account were dead for an extended period of time then suddenly it begins posting again. I'm thinking its possibly a purchased account

I don't know the inner workings of the Monero people. One thing that surprised me and sets them apart from most of the other shitcoins here is this YouTube video they did a week or two ago. Three of the developers were on there and it was relatively technical, which made a difference to the way I view it. But hey, I don't want this to turn into a Monero debate, this is about the Bytecoin/CryptoNote scam.

I had a discussion with an exchange owner in which we were marveling at the crude mechanism of the mining algorithm. This person asserted that some small changes could be made to make to the client to make it advantageous for a gpu. I mean, some of it was over my head but its probably blatantly obvious for anyone who knows their stuff.

This is likely true for Boolberry. My understanding of the CryptoNight algorithm isn't strong, fucking with algorithms just makes me irritated. But it looks like dga and enough other people have played with it and I can't see any appreciable evidence that the GPU implementation is that bad. Here are two posts I found during my research where dga has a fun debate with Anonymint about the CryptoNight algorithm, and then another one where dga elaborates and clarifies the max CryptoNight performance gap from CPUs to GPUs is 2x-3x, and from GPUs to ASIcs in the ~5x range. Worth a read if you're interested in that sort of thing.

[rethink-your-strategy]

Not a single fucking quote to back your bullshit claims up, typical of the Bytecoin sockpuppets.

It's not really typical from what I've seen. Most of the shills/sockpuppets just post one or two lines and can't avoid making obvious grammatical errors even then. This Rias guy seems to be somewhat different. I have no idea what his connection to bytecoin/cryptonote might be if any but he's not a run-of-the-mill shill.

I will say that a while back Rias asked me if I was part of bytecoin, which is a bit of a laugh, but you would think if he were part of bytecoin he would know whether or not I was. Of course, one can imagine all sorts of spy-vs-spy theories like that he asked me just to make me think that he wasn't part of bytecoin, etc. But I actually don't think he's one of them, probably just someone who was intrigued early on and got involved. I do agree the line up of dates, etc. between Rias and DStrange is odd, but I'm not totally convinced by this part of the story.

Given what you've just said, which I'm taking at face value, it's entirely possible that it's a whole separate player in this game. Alain, is that you?

Rias yo, if I've gone 1+1=5 I'm real fucking sorry, but the clustering on your account and the DStrange account is fucking weird man. Either way, this is in the "Now for Some Conjecture" section, so if I'm wrong then disregard it as me being overzealous.

[TTM]

So is this "investigation" included CryptoNote team or just Bytecoin team only ? The title will probably do some negative effect on Monero and other legit CN coins, many people will misunderstand that all CN coins are scam.

P.S: Bytecoin is already dead without this thread. Actually it doesn't matter if that 80% is premine or ninjamine, people will just ignore a coin with 80% mined until it got exposed to public.

[rethink-your-strategy]

So is this "investigation" included CryptoNote team or just Bytecoin team only ? The title will probably do some negative effect on Monero and other legit CN coins, many people will misunderstand that all CN coins are scam.

It's all CN coins. Monero is the exception only because the community took it over, otherwise it would be in the same steaming pile of shit. BBR and XDN I'm firmly in the camp that they're spawned from the same gates of hell, and regardless of what their current standing is there are still no long-time community members in that camp. If this exposé causes headaches for XMR, BBR, and XDN...well fuck it, I'm sorry, but shit happens. They'll either stop, drop, and roll...or they'll burn in the fire of bullshit CryptoNote created.

P.S: Bytecoin is already dead without this thread. Actually it doesn't matter if that 80% is premine or ninjamine, people will just ignore a coin with 80% mined until it got exposed to public.

Pity they don't seem to get this, hopefully this knocks some sense into their fucking thick skulls.

On consideration I changed the thread title to show that I don't think Monero is fucked.

[gmaxwell]

Yep, I'd raised concerns about these claims before myself.  Funny, I also checked the references, but I didn't realize the whitepaper was supposed to be that old (I'd missed that the document was backdated).

It's more than just the history that is fishy, though.  The proof of work algorithm appears to be a pretty nice bit of insurance against people forking the system, since it was clearly purposefully deoptimized— and contrary to the design claims provably reasonably GPU friendly (and, likely, very friendly with larger 28nm FPGAs— a suspicion supported by the hashrates of the systems based on this pow, including monero).

Might not want to overstate the amount of cryptographic review the approach has had. I've spent some time on it but haven't personally worked through any proofs of its properties. It takes a long time to gain confidence in a cryptosystem.  (Though sure, I do think the ring signature system is very interesting— that rest? well). Oh well, honestly, I think that this sort of stuff is more ethical than the altcoin presales (Esp the ones that don't ever deliver anything).


:-/

[rethink-your-strategy]

Might not want to overstate the amount of cryptographic review the approach has had. I've spent some time on it but haven't personally worked through any proofs of its properties. It takes a long time to gain confidence in a cryptosystem.  (Though sure, I do think the ring signature system is very interesting— that rest? well). Oh well, honestly, I think that this sort of stuff is more ethical than the altcoin presales (Esp the ones that don't ever deliver anything).

Yeah, didn't mean to imply that you personally have blessed the code with your holy grail of code review, but just that the underlying crypto isn't made up of completely nonsensical claims. If anyone's going to vet the code more thoroughly it'll have to be the people Monero has hired.

I don't disagree with you on the presale thing. I just don't understand why they felt the need to do it, they could have just been up-front and open and everyone would have lavished them with praise.

[smooth]

Yep, I'd raised concerns about these claims before myself.  Funny, I also checked the references, but I didn't realize the whitepaper was supposed to be that old (I'd missed that the document was backdated).

You probably checked version 2, which appeared first and had a date consistent with the references, but which called into question the claimed two-year history.

Version 1 showed up later, a quick and carelessly backdated edit of version 2, apparently to support the bogus "two years in the deep web" story.

[gmaxwell]

I don't disagree with you on the presale thing. I just don't understand why they felt the need to do it, they could have just been up-front and open and everyone would have lavished them with praise.

Not clear to me. A lot of technical work doesn't get invested in. I mean— sure you could get a few thousand dollars or something. Getting millions would be much more dicy, especially if you're thinking like I do and thinking that any serious altcoin competition with bitcoin could potentially be very bad for all cryptocurrencies (damaging network effect), plus competing with bitcoin is a long uphill battle. Perhaps it's arguably more profitable to do some splash where you've got effectively infinite supply, and feed a huge incoming speculative demand ripple/stellar style.

I'm probably out of my depth— figuring out how to extract money from speculators isn't something I really have experience with... it's just not so surprising to me. Though next I'd be worrying that if someone did all these dishonest things, what backdoors do they have in the software? :-/ In my case I only ran any of these codebases sandboxed on separated machines. Presumably altcoin exchanges have similar setups?

[aminorex]

It is characteristic that overweening greed foiled the plan.  Were it not for the sheer overwhelming vastness of the premine, bytecoin would have flown.

[Jungian]

It is characteristic that overweening greed foiled the plan.  Were it not for the sheer overwhelming vastness of the premine, bytecoin would have flown.

Very true. Now they crumble in front on XMR. I also thought that the sheer number of coins they created was indicative of a scam. Because it's easier to uphold the value of the coin when you have billions and billions of it, and the least you can sell it for is 1 satoshi. That gives it artificial value

Anyway.. great write up, thank you for your contribution!

[dga]

- Instamining, with Monero fast miner available to a few lucky individuals benefiting from it for weeks

Prove it. There was a graph posted a few days ago somewhere that showed the network hash rate leading up to the crippled miner being released and that proves you wrong. But nice try, fuckface.

He's wrong/right on this one, but it wasn't a scam, and to the best of my knowledge, it wasn't coming from the original Bytecoin developers - though there's a possibility that TFT mined a lot of the blocks in the first week.  It wasn't an instamine by the technical definition of that - the difficulty adaptation algorithm worked properly.  But it is true that I and one other programmer independently, and privately, optimized the miners (the other person was earlier, mine was later but faster).    I maintain that's an important difference, and not only because I profited from it:  It wasn't a breach of trust on the part of the Monero developers.  The same applies with BBR - Christian GPU'ing was not Zoidberg cheating people.  And in both of these cases, the public miner speed caught up by the time perhaps 3-6% of the coins had been created.

FWIW, I concur completely with your assessment of the fake blockchain in Bytecoin - it's the most logical explanation for the very deliberately slowed down proof-of-work function.  (And for those watching, I came to that conclusion independently from looking at the code earlier - that conclusion was not influenced by rethink-your-strategy's claims.)  I haven't independently checked the PDF-related signature and timestamps that you noted, but it wouldn't surprise me at all.  Clever.  If they hadn't been quite so greedy (80%?  really?) it might have worked.

[cAPSLOCK]

OP - Thanks for doing this.

You've tied together a lot of thoughts I've been having bang around in my head but had not taken the time to piece together.  And a lot of it fits pretty well.

I had been suspicious and uncomfortable with some of the players in this whole scene for a while.  TFTs entire persona etc has never made sense to me.  And some or the shills share some very similar grammatical flags that would, frankly put them all in a fairly small geographical area.

Its fun to watch this unfold.

[Brilliantrocket]

The only thing Monero has going for is its name. I would not be surprised at all if it lost out to Boolberry in the long run. They've made some really impressive changes over Monero. It also seems like they are more committed to addressing bloat.

[fluffypony]

The only thing Monero has going for is its name. I would not be surprised at all if it lost out to Boolberry in the long run. They've made some really impressive changes over Monero. It also seems like they are more committed to addressing bloat.

I don't understand this obsession with bloat. We've discussed this - at length. A linear improvement doesn't solve the underlying problem, it only delays its effect by a very short period of time. BBR's changes do not prune the blockchain, they provide a (relatively) meaningless linear reduction. It won't help mobile phones run BBR clients, so from our perspective it is a change that we are not willing to make. That does not deflect from BBR's change, I have the greatest respect for the work they've done, it is just that the change they've made is like me trying to use a cup as a bilge pump on a capsizing boat - it's not a solution to bloat on any level, and is not only ineffectual but may put users at risk (supposition, don't take this as anything more than a hunch).

There are two types of devices when it comes to cryptocurrency: those that can run a full node (20gb, 120gb, makes no difference), and those that can't (mobile phones, tablets). There is no middle ground. It's pointless catering to the "I'm happy with 20gb, but woah buddy, 120gb is crazy" crowd, because there are only 100 of them in the world and they're all on this forum:) So we're ignoring blockchain bloat as a non-issue for full nodes (as it is with Bitcoin) and we're addressing the matter of extremely-lightweight-clients in a completely different manner. That we choose not to use some half-measure as an intermediary should not be indicative of anything except that we don't do half measures;)

[smooth]

The only thing Monero has going for is its name. I would not be surprised at all if it lost out to Boolberry in the long run. They've made some really impressive changes over Monero. It also seems like they are more committed to addressing bloat.

I don't understand this obsession with bloat. ...

Both comments seem pretty far off topic for this thread, which has some really important things to say about the extreme shadiness of this whole family of coins, and in a sense the altcoin scene generally (where scams like this can get as far as this one has). Let's not loose sight of that. There are plenty of other places this bloat thing has been covered (for and against).