He asked for advantages, which one has the advantage? Having the anonymity in the chain trusting the math won't be broken / is not buggy vs taking that risk out by not putting the mixing in the chain in the first place.
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-tor-anonymity-can-busted-2500-month/Granted the nodes aren't TOR. But it's impossible for me to believe there aren't exploitable holes in a node based mixing service.
Math gives me more confidence for a variety of reasons. Namely that the method can be more transparently succinctly independently verified rather than thousands of moving parts.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up the blockchain size. It's probably my biggest problem with ring signatures - the cost of storing the blockchain on thousands of machines as well as the bandwidth is much more expensive per transaction.
Oh, did you miss the lunch? Without fast distribution drk wouldn't have 1200+ masternodes running and enabling services like anonymization and instant transactions. Sometimes good things can follow from a mishappening in the beginning.
Yeah ... dumping tons & tons of coins on "accident" at the beginning to early developers / adopters on purpose might be a net plus for you. For me it's a negative. Mostly because those early adopters can rain fire and brimstone on the head of later adopters & profit while doing so.
Profit for targeted incompetence at the expense of current adopters.
I don't have a problem with the rich dumping - but when the rich have ill gotten gains it just doesn't sit so well with me. Maybe I'm alone in this - time will tell. But I seriously doubt it. For all Monero's distribution woes - it looks angelic compared to darkcoin.
The other is instantly brandable, everyone will at least have a hunch of what it's doing.
A currency needs to be branded as a currency. Not a darknet fanboys wetdream. What I mean by this is that the majority driving force of the coin needs to happen because it's a currency - not just because it's anonymous.
Wanna know why the darknet still primarily uses bitcoin instead of an anon coin? Because they like the currency aspect of bitcoin that no anon alt has.
People need to use it because it's money, it's easy to use, it's got a stable infrastructure, it's got long term value. Being anonymous should just be one aspect of the proper currency. Darkcoin sounds like something pimplefaced 17 year olds gather and exchange for random sex acts in black hoodies to feel badass. Monero ... not so much.
The broader audience where anonymity is one aspect of the currency is where the marketing strength lies (in my opinion).
Can't wait. How long will that be btw?
Haha - a long long time. Darkcoin has pretty much saturated it's core audience. Monero has lost (based on pricing) some of it's audience. I'm betting long on the thin wallet, the branding and cryptonote in general (without a stupid name & a dedicated development team) and a PoW coin that isn't/wasn't a scam.
Congrats to Darkcoin on the instant transactions - I just think with your name, your branding, and your initial instamine you saturated your market long ago.
It's one of the markets I forsee being weak enough to be sucked into a future coin that has less baggage. But obviously the price doesn't agree with me right now - so it's all an opinion.