[SDC] ShadowCash | Welcome to the UMBRA

[Coolstoryteller]

The primary factor in a financial or private commerce ecosystem is secure communication between parties.

Jamming chat, etc., in a wallet is a poor attempt to conflate different types of information exchange. In a true trustless and anonymous transaction protocol, the information is a shared secret between sender and receiver that allows the receiver to prove a transfer of ownership.

You may think to yourself that chat solves this problem. Namely, sender and receiver set up an encrypted channel and exchange the secret. That can work great, but you don't need zk proofs in this situation. zk proofs solve the problem of ever exchanging the secret in the first place. So you don't need chat. I.e. it's cryptographically irrelevant.

Chat also has the problem that the sender and receiver need direct communication to exchange the secret. That's horribly limiting: "Hey Ted, we need to exchange some money, when are you available to do that?" At some point, the conversation has to be initiated on the private channel. So sender and recipient have to meet and exchange a secret to meet up on the channel. It defers the problem and so you still haven't solved it. Again. Chat, etc. become irrelevant because of this need to establish the private channel.

Also, zk proofs are good to solve the problem of exchanging a secret because it eliminates the need of the exchange. But stealth addresses already do that. So why implement zk proofs to solve a problem already solved by the coin that you cloned from (vertcoin)?

Right now, for crypto, zk proofs have been promised for zerocoin (zk=zero knowledge). But zerocoin is being worked on by people (1) smart enough to conceive of it, (2) smart enough to provide a public blue print giving enough information for one to determine where the proof fits, and (3) smart enough to know that even with this blueprint, they are still going to beat anyone who tries to implement their idea.

Hence, my conclusion (for which I can find no contradictory evidence) is that the shadowcoin dev borrowed "zk-SNARK" from the zerocoin whitepaper in the hopes that they make a release and he can clone the technology into shadowcoin.

I have no doubt that the SDC dev can pull this off. My doubt lies completely in with the zerocoin team in that they have conceived of an idea that is impractical to implement and therefore impossible to clone because it will never exist.

A)
Vertcoin's stealth addresses are closed source.. Shadow authored ShadowSend's stealth code, it's own dual-key implementation not cloned from any coin. Unlinkable and untraceable are two separate things. Stealth Addresses help with unlinkablity (creation of addresses not linked to their main public key).

B)
Shadow isn't implementing zerocoin or zerocash, and I would hope that they(ZC devs) would be able to beat anyone trying to implement their idea (ZC). The underlying technology in zerocash is zk-SNARKs, this doesn't mean that Shadows devs are borrowing or cloning any of their code. Also, the current Zerocash blueprint isn't a final representation of their model, it dates back to May and Dec respectfully. zk-SNARKs was not invented by zerocash and has yet to be implemented into a cryptocurrency. Shadow's SNARKs implementation is it's own protocol. I initially thought coming into this project that it was a ZC implementation until Ryno corrected me in IRC and explained the differences in their method. That's when I got excited and started focusing this as my long-term crypto investment.

As for the reasoning behind zk-snarks and stealth addresses it is part of the ShadowSend protocol and you would need to speak with Ryno for a more detailed explanation of how they will be tied together.

C)
"Chat also has the problem that the sender and receiver need direct communication to exchange the secret. That's horribly limiting: "Hey Ted, we need to exchange some money, when are you available to do that?" At some point, the conversation has to be initiated on the private channel. So sender and recipient have to meet and exchange a secret to meet up on the channel. It defers the problem and so you still haven't solved it. Again. Chat, etc. become irrelevant because of this need to establish the private channel."

There has to be some medium of negotiations or communication outside of the actual transaction. Otherwise there would just be something like a smart contract binding both parties to the deal without there being a convo before hand or in the case of a crypto exchange where communication is irrelevant between buyer and sell.  The underlying concept of the ShadowChat is still the same: two addresses exchanging information. In a perfect world there wouldn't need to be a line of communication between parties, but unfortunately this isn't a perfect world and there is still an element of interaction in business relations i.e. shipping, transaction details, item questions, pseudo-invoicing, graphic design changes, etc. Negotiating a deal in a private room and exchanging information between two anonymous parties (ShadowChat) then using zk/sa to send funds(ShadowSend) leaves no trace of the transaction to outside parties, except the two involved. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "irrelevant" because without a secure line of communication you rely solely on traditional means of communication: e-mail, chat, phone, forum posts.

This is the exact same concept that is applied on Craigslist, arguably the biggest grey (new and used items) and black market (stolen items, drugs, prostitution through code words which is a form of cryptography) on the net (also monitored the most), but in a more primitive manner. I have product A listed, you want to buy "A" from me. I list a method of contact: phone, e-mail, text. You use one of those lines of the communication to arrange the deal: time, price, date and location. The actual transaction is done with cash leaving no trace of the deal outside of the initial lines of communication or if the deal was under surveillance by the 3rd party.

In this sense you can look at ShadowChat is a method to replace those contact methods further reducing a potential man-in-the-middle attack. Leaving the actual transaction traceless (ShadowSend).

ShadowChat = Negotiations, Planning, Communication
ShadowSend = Exchange

D)

As far as "borrowing" the idea from ZC, almost all technology is borrowed from an originating source and credited. ZC (Ian Miers, Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Aviel D. Rubin) borrowed SNARKs from the original authors of the concept (http://www.iacr.org/cryptodb/archive/2011/CRYPTO/video/rump/1d53ee327ee49f4afdbac8ed3b013657.pdf). Shadow looked at ZC's proposal and thought of a better proposal completely different from ZC. It wouldn't be the first time that technology has been improved on by an outside source.

Feel free to hop on IRC devs are online pretty much 24/7 #shadowcoin

[UNO_owner]

As SDC holder, I'd appreciate it if the peanut gallery could act like adults and stop responding to tk42 with idiotic statements when he is presenting an argument I am interested in hearing.  CST, not talking about you.  Appreciate your knowledge as well.

[Coolstoryteller]

As SDC holder, I'd appreciate it if the peanut gallery could act like adults and stop responding to tk42 with idiotic statements when he is presenting an argument I am interested in hearing.  CST, not talking about you.  Appreciate your knowledge as well.

Np, constructive criticism should always be welcomed in the Shadow project or any other project for that matter. Sometimes its hard to tell the difference between a FUD attempt or a genuine concern. Educated and informed investors are the best kind. In our case, we have a solid dev team that's delivered on every promise so far. Proof of development is a wonderful thing xD

[UNO_owner]

I try to learn as much as I can, but continually realize the more I know, the more there is to know.

[LongAndShort]

Sadly the altcoin section of bitcointalk has not improved at all or strived one bit to match the Bitcoin section. So sadly most of the intelligent and productive conversations happen elsewhere like irc and specific forums and of course, people in their own cells..

Which is why we only tend to see...what we see in this altcoin section of Bitcointalk and it wont change for quite some time.

Everyone is welcome to come to #shadowcoin on irc or the HANGOUT and REDDIT.

We have said it before and will say it again.
Please come there and ask all you like if you truly are concerned about your investment, everyone elses or the undelying tech advancements released and yet to be released .
There is much more going on behind this thread and you may find you might just get what you were looking for if it was genuine to begin with.

[dadon]

The only unintelligent conversation was coming from  the guy saying that his coin had TOR so it was better and free encrypted voice,video and IM in a lite wallet for mobiles was irrelevant and just a gimmick...unbelievable..

[LongAndShort]

The only unintelligent conversation was coming from  the guy saying that his coin had TOR so it was better and free encrypted voice,video and IM in a lite wallet for mobiles was irrelevant and just a gimmick...unbelievable..

Yeah haha unbelievable and hey i wasn't referring to you btw but altcointalk on a whole. There hasnt been much decent discussion since back in the days of solidcoin tbh
 but "maybe I'm just an old, cynical curmudgeon" (refrence to Gavin A)

[dadon]

I know you weren't talking about me didn't think you were, just amazes me because he was obviously smart, but he can't see how these features are a big deal..anyways..one way we could make the conversation here more constructive and interesting would be to test out the features amongst ourselves here like shadow chat or run a competition anyone who can link sender to receiver on a shadow send transaction wins something? just a suggestion I know we have IRC but activity here is just as important.

[Coolstoryteller]

The only unintelligent conversation was coming from  the guy saying that his coin had TOR so it was better and free encrypted voice,video and IM in a lite wallet for mobiles was irrelevant and just a gimmick...unbelievable..

xD

I try to learn as much as I can, but continually realize the more I know, the more there is to know.

Man the best thing you can do as an investor is soak up as much information on this stuff as possible. Unfortunately, you won't learn as much in the altcoin as you would from the Bitcoin side.

There's a course if you're interested: https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto. It's free and starts on Monday.

[UNO_owner]

Hey, thanks a ton for that link.  I'd heard about the Stanford courses before, but never checked them out.  I signed up, interested in seeing how much I actually know vs how much I just think I know.     I did some asymmetric key pairing code for a quickie project a while back, but Google wrote that bit of the code - I just plugged it in without bothering to truly understand the underlying principles.

[00Smurf]

The primary factor in a financial or private commerce ecosystem is secure communication between parties.

Jamming chat, etc., in a wallet is a poor attempt to conflate different types of information exchange. In a true trustless and anonymous transaction protocol, the information is a shared secret between sender and receiver that allows the receiver to prove a transfer of ownership.

You may think to yourself that chat solves this problem. Namely, sender and receiver set up an encrypted channel and exchange the secret. That can work great, but you don't need zk proofs in this situation. zk proofs solve the problem of ever exchanging the secret in the first place. So you don't need chat. I.e. it's cryptographically irrelevant.

Chat also has the problem that the sender and receiver need direct communication to exchange the secret. That's horribly limiting: "Hey Ted, we need to exchange some money, when are you available to do that?" At some point, the conversation has to be initiated on the private channel. So sender and recipient have to meet and exchange a secret to meet up on the channel. It defers the problem and so you still haven't solved it. Again. Chat, etc. become irrelevant because of this need to establish the private channel.

Also, zk proofs are good to solve the problem of exchanging a secret because it eliminates the need of the exchange. But stealth addresses already do that. So why implement zk proofs to solve a problem already solved by the coin that you cloned from (vertcoin)?

Right now, for crypto, zk proofs have been promised for zerocoin (zk=zero knowledge). But zerocoin is being worked on by people (1) smart enough to conceive of it, (2) smart enough to provide a public blue print giving enough information for one to determine where the proof fits, and (3) smart enough to know that even with this blueprint, they are still going to beat anyone who tries to implement their idea.

Hence, my conclusion (for which I can find no contradictory evidence) is that the shadowcoin dev borrowed "zk-SNARK" from the zerocoin whitepaper in the hopes that they make a release and he can clone the technology into shadowcoin.

I have no doubt that the SDC dev can pull this off. My doubt lies completely in with the zerocoin team in that they have conceived of an idea that is impractical to implement and therefore impossible to clone because it will never exist.

A)
Vertcoin's stealth addresses are closed source.. Shadow authored ShadowSend's stealth code, it's own dual-key implementation not cloned from any coin. Unlinkable and untraceable are two separate things. Stealth Addresses help with unlinkablity (creation of addresses not linked to their main public key).

B)
Shadow isn't implementing zerocoin or zerocash, and I would hope that they(ZC devs) would be able to beat anyone trying to implement their idea (ZC). The underlying technology in zerocash is zk-SNARKs, this doesn't mean that Shadows devs are borrowing or cloning any of their code. Also, the current Zerocash blueprint isn't a final representation of their model, it dates back to May and Dec respectfully. zk-SNARKs was not invented by zerocash and has yet to be implemented into a cryptocurrency. Shadow's SNARKs implementation is it's own protocol. I initially thought coming into this project that it was a ZC implementation until Ryno corrected me in IRC and explained the differences in their method. That's when I got excited and started focusing this as my long-term crypto investment.

As for the reasoning behind zk-snarks and stealth addresses it is part of the ShadowSend protocol and you would need to speak with Ryno for a more detailed explanation of how they will be tied together.

C)
"Chat also has the problem that the sender and receiver need direct communication to exchange the secret. That's horribly limiting: "Hey Ted, we need to exchange some money, when are you available to do that?" At some point, the conversation has to be initiated on the private channel. So sender and recipient have to meet and exchange a secret to meet up on the channel. It defers the problem and so you still haven't solved it. Again. Chat, etc. become irrelevant because of this need to establish the private channel."

There has to be some medium of negotiations or communication outside of the actual transaction. Otherwise there would just be something like a smart contract binding both parties to the deal without there being a convo before hand or in the case of a crypto exchange where communication is irrelevant between buyer and sell.  The underlying concept of the ShadowChat is still the same: two addresses exchanging information. In a perfect world there wouldn't need to be a line of communication between parties, but unfortunately this isn't a perfect world and there is still an element of interaction in business relations i.e. shipping, transaction details, item questions, pseudo-invoicing, graphic design changes, etc. Negotiating a deal in a private room and exchanging information between two anonymous parties (ShadowChat) then using zk/sa to send funds(ShadowSend) leaves no trace of the transaction to outside parties, except the two involved. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "irrelevant" because without a secure line of communication you rely solely on traditional means of communication: e-mail, chat, phone, forum posts.

This is the exact same concept that is applied on Craigslist, arguably the biggest grey (new and used items) and black market (stolen items, drugs, prostitution through code words which is a form of cryptography) on the net (also monitored the most), but in a more primitive manner. I have product A listed, you want to buy "A" from me. I list a method of contact: phone, e-mail, text. You use one of those lines of the communication to arrange the deal: time, price, date and location. The actual transaction is done with cash leaving no trace of the deal outside of the initial lines of communication or if the deal was under surveillance by the 3rd party.

In this sense you can look at ShadowChat is a method to replace those contact methods further reducing a potential man-in-the-middle attack. Leaving the actual transaction traceless (ShadowSend).

ShadowChat = Negotiations, Planning, Communication
ShadowSend = Exchange

D)

As far as "borrowing" the idea from ZC, almost all technology is borrowed from an originating source and credited. ZC (Ian Miers, Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Aviel D. Rubin) borrowed SNARKs from the original authors of the concept (http://www.iacr.org/cryptodb/archive/2011/CRYPTO/video/rump/1d53ee327ee49f4afdbac8ed3b013657.pdf). Shadow looked at ZC's proposal and thought of a better proposal completely different from ZC. It wouldn't be the first time that technology has been improved on by an outside source.

Feel free to hop on IRC devs are online pretty much 24/7 #shadowcoin

Well put, well put.

[ItsNotMe]

The primary factor in a financial or private commerce ecosystem is secure communication between parties.

Jamming chat, etc., in a wallet is a poor attempt to conflate different types of information exchange. In a true trustless and anonymous transaction protocol, the information is a shared secret between sender and receiver that allows the receiver to prove a transfer of ownership.

You may think to yourself that chat solves this problem. Namely, sender and receiver set up an encrypted channel and exchange the secret. That can work great, but you don't need zk proofs in this situation. zk proofs solve the problem of ever exchanging the secret in the first place. So you don't need chat. I.e. it's cryptographically irrelevant.

Chat also has the problem that the sender and receiver need direct communication to exchange the secret. That's horribly limiting: "Hey Ted, we need to exchange some money, when are you available to do that?" At some point, the conversation has to be initiated on the private channel. So sender and recipient have to meet and exchange a secret to meet up on the channel. It defers the problem and so you still haven't solved it. Again. Chat, etc. become irrelevant because of this need to establish the private channel.

Also, zk proofs are good to solve the problem of exchanging a secret because it eliminates the need of the exchange. But stealth addresses already do that. So why implement zk proofs to solve a problem already solved by the coin that you cloned from (vertcoin)?

Right now, for crypto, zk proofs have been promised for zerocoin (zk=zero knowledge). But zerocoin is being worked on by people (1) smart enough to conceive of it, (2) smart enough to provide a public blue print giving enough information for one to determine where the proof fits, and (3) smart enough to know that even with this blueprint, they are still going to beat anyone who tries to implement their idea.

Hence, my conclusion (for which I can find no contradictory evidence) is that the shadowcoin dev borrowed "zk-SNARK" from the zerocoin whitepaper in the hopes that they make a release and he can clone the technology into shadowcoin.

I have no doubt that the SDC dev can pull this off. My doubt lies completely in with the zerocoin team in that they have conceived of an idea that is impractical to implement and therefore impossible to clone because it will never exist.

A)
Vertcoin's stealth addresses are closed source.. Shadow authored ShadowSend's stealth code, it's own dual-key implementation not cloned from any coin. Unlinkable and untraceable are two separate things. Stealth Addresses help with unlinkablity (creation of addresses not linked to their main public key).

B)
Shadow isn't implementing zerocoin or zerocash, and I would hope that they(ZC devs) would be able to beat anyone trying to implement their idea (ZC). The underlying technology in zerocash is zk-SNARKs, this doesn't mean that Shadows devs are borrowing or cloning any of their code. Also, the current Zerocash blueprint isn't a final representation of their model, it dates back to May and Dec respectfully. zk-SNARKs was not invented by zerocash and has yet to be implemented into a cryptocurrency. Shadow's SNARKs implementation is it's own protocol. I initially thought coming into this project that it was a ZC implementation until Ryno corrected me in IRC and explained the differences in their method. That's when I got excited and started focusing this as my long-term crypto investment.

As for the reasoning behind zk-snarks and stealth addresses it is part of the ShadowSend protocol and you would need to speak with Ryno for a more detailed explanation of how they will be tied together.

C)
"Chat also has the problem that the sender and receiver need direct communication to exchange the secret. That's horribly limiting: "Hey Ted, we need to exchange some money, when are you available to do that?" At some point, the conversation has to be initiated on the private channel. So sender and recipient have to meet and exchange a secret to meet up on the channel. It defers the problem and so you still haven't solved it. Again. Chat, etc. become irrelevant because of this need to establish the private channel."

There has to be some medium of negotiations or communication outside of the actual transaction. Otherwise there would just be something like a smart contract binding both parties to the deal without there being a convo before hand or in the case of a crypto exchange where communication is irrelevant between buyer and sell.  The underlying concept of the ShadowChat is still the same: two addresses exchanging information. In a perfect world there wouldn't need to be a line of communication between parties, but unfortunately this isn't a perfect world and there is still an element of interaction in business relations i.e. shipping, transaction details, item questions, pseudo-invoicing, graphic design changes, etc. Negotiating a deal in a private room and exchanging information between two anonymous parties (ShadowChat) then using zk/sa to send funds(ShadowSend) leaves no trace of the transaction to outside parties, except the two involved. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's "irrelevant" because without a secure line of communication you rely solely on traditional means of communication: e-mail, chat, phone, forum posts.

This is the exact same concept that is applied on Craigslist, arguably the biggest grey (new and used items) and black market (stolen items, drugs, prostitution through code words which is a form of cryptography) on the net (also monitored the most), but in a more primitive manner. I have product A listed, you want to buy "A" from me. I list a method of contact: phone, e-mail, text. You use one of those lines of the communication to arrange the deal: time, price, date and location. The actual transaction is done with cash leaving no trace of the deal outside of the initial lines of communication or if the deal was under surveillance by the 3rd party.

In this sense you can look at ShadowChat is a method to replace those contact methods further reducing a potential man-in-the-middle attack. Leaving the actual transaction traceless (ShadowSend).

ShadowChat = Negotiations, Planning, Communication
ShadowSend = Exchange

D)

As far as "borrowing" the idea from ZC, almost all technology is borrowed from an originating source and credited. ZC (Ian Miers, Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Aviel D. Rubin) borrowed SNARKs from the original authors of the concept (http://www.iacr.org/cryptodb/archive/2011/CRYPTO/video/rump/1d53ee327ee49f4afdbac8ed3b013657.pdf). Shadow looked at ZC's proposal and thought of a better proposal completely different from ZC. It wouldn't be the first time that technology has been improved on by an outside source.

Feel free to hop on IRC devs are online pretty much 24/7 #shadowcoin

tx42 - check github before u start trolling. SDC stealth >>>  https://github.com/SDCDev/shadowcoin/blob/master/src/stealth.cpp

Highlights from coolstoryteller:

As far as "borrowing" the idea from ZC, almost all technology is borrowed from an originating source and credited. ZC (Ian Miers, Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Aviel D. Rubin) borrowed SNARKs from the original authors of the concept (http://www.iacr.org/cryptodb/archive/2011/CRYPTO/video/rump/1d53ee327ee49f4afdbac8ed3b013657.pdf). Shadow looked at ZC's proposal and thought of a better proposal completely different from ZC.


There has to be some medium of negotiations or communication outside of the actual transaction. Otherwise there would just be something like a smart contract binding both parties to the deal without there being a convo before hand...

[Coolstoryteller]

Hey, thanks a ton for that link.  I'd heard about the Stanford courses before, but never checked them out.  I signed up, interested in seeing how much I actually know vs how much I just think I know.     I did some asymmetric key pairing code for a quickie project a while back, but Google wrote that bit of the code - I just plugged it in without bothering to truly understand the underlying principles.

No worries my man. There's also a second course, Crypto II, that starts in a few weeks. It's also worth checking out, it covers advanced Cryptography like zero knowledge. https://www.coursera.org/course/crypto2

[00Smurf]

Dont forget our irc #shadowcoin on freenode, and http://shadowhangout.com for our forum. Most of the action takes place on there. and reddit http://reddit.com/r/shadowcash

[Soepkip]

Dont forget our irc #shadowcoin on freenode, and http://shadowhangout.com for our forum. Most of the action takes place on there. and reddit http://reddit.com/r/shadowcash

Also don't forget about our brand new reddit !

http://www.reddit.com/r/shadowcash

[dadon]

I noticed in the SDC Reddit it says ShadowCash not ShadowCoin..nice idea if your going to change it to this it sounds a lot better!

[LongAndShort]

Ok who has contacts to translate pages Chinese and Indo would be good for starters and Spanish and maybe Polish i guess

[dadon]

Ok who has contacts to translate pages Chinese and Indo would be good for starters and Spanish and maybe Polish i guess

Nice idea! I have a Filipino friend i might be able to get her do a Tagalog translation if someone can supply me with what needs to be translated? No promises but I'm sure she will do for me, can try to get a Thai translation as well but might be no point BTC is illegal there.

[LongAndShort]

Ok who has contacts to translate pages Chinese and Indo would be good for starters and Spanish and maybe Polish i guess

Nice idea! I have a Filipino friend i might be able to get her do a Tagalog translation if someone can supply me with what needs to be translated? No promises but I'm sure she will do for me, can try to get a Thai translation as well but might be no point BTC is illegal there.

I guess the first post here, also the content on the WEBSITE

[jw_industry]

how is the video chat test going?