❢❢❢ The value proposition of each coin: BTC, DOGE, LTC, DRK, PPC, XRP, NXT, etc.

[Joe200]

OK guys, just updated the list. Darkcoin, Nxt, Monero, Bitshares. Let me know what you think.

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[0nlyBTC]

OK guys, just updated the list. Darkcoin, Nxt, Monero, Bitshares. Let me know what you think.

Is bitshares a coin? I don't think so buddy. As far as I heard Darkcoin masternode anonymity wasn't fully developed and has issue for True Anonymity. Darkcoin is really valuable because speculators and its name. Monero has already implemented ring signatures and therefore already has established true anonymity rather than a theoretical anonymity(Darkcoin). As far as trusting which coin for true anonymous transactions, I rather go with Monero.  

NXT is very well developed but my issue is the POS bag holders situation. Everyone wants to stake large amounts of NXT, yet there is little incentive to spend NXT. The alternative to NXT IMO is NEM, built from the ground up like NXT, but with PoI (Proof of Importance) algorithm oppose to Proof of Stake. NEM incentives users to regularly trade NEMs rather than hoarding and staking. Real economies are only productive if there is a circulation of money. In a NXT economy, people are incentive to hoard not spend and likely to fail as real economy. In NEM economy, users are encouraged to actively received and send NEMS to other accounts to raise the Importance to harvest more NEM, therefore has a better chance as a real economy.      

Bitshares: BitShares is a family of DACs that implement the business model of a bank and exchange. BitShares X offers a bank account where funds can be transferred in seconds anywhere in the world with more privacy and security than a Swiss bank account and the account can never be frozen, funds cannot be seized, and the bank can never face collapse. Unlike existing banks, account balance can be denominated in gold, silver, oil, or other commodities in addition to national currencies. *Its not a coin, its a platform for commodities.

Just my 2 cents.

[StanLarimer]

Not sure where you got your volume figures for BitShares.  
From coinmarketcap.com we see that most of the time volume is over $200,000 with occasional peaks above $500,000.

Volume so far today is
BTS 103,000 vs
NXT   21,000

I'm on the BTC38 website now. The 24 hour volume for BTS/BTC is 6.107 BTC / 134,659 BTS, which is tiny. For BTS/CNY, the volume is 6,746,522 BTS, which a lot more.

In my original volume analysis, I only looked at the volume of Alt/BTC and converted it to USD. Should I have also considered the Alt/Fiat volume?

Why is the BTS/CNY volume so much more than BTS/BTC? I would trade BTS for BTC or maybe for USD. Is trading it for CNY make sense? How do you get the CNY off the exchange (if you are not Chinese)? Why is the CNY volume so high? What's going on? I'd like to understand this more.

They have implemented wonderful 1:1 direct conversion between CNY and BitCNY so it draws a lot of market depth to this pair.  Market depth breeds market depth and tightens the peg. Recommend your volume comparisons either use at least the biggest market or a sum of all markets. 

I often go BTS to CNY then CNY to BTC just to enjoy the deeper markets.  Eventually the more direct markets will catch up.

But the point is, that BTS should definitely be on your list. 

[Joe200]

How does Bitshares compare with Monero? I know that Bitshares has lots of extra "2.0" features. Besides these, how do they compare? How does anonymity compare?

[StanLarimer]

OK guys, just updated the list. Darkcoin, Nxt, Monero, Bitshares. Let me know what you think.

Is bitshares a coin? I don't think so buddy. ...

Bitshares: BitShares is a family of DACs that implement the business model of a bank and exchange. BitShares X offers a bank account where funds can be transferred in seconds anywhere in the world with more privacy and security than a Swiss bank account and the account can never be frozen, funds cannot be seized, and the bank can never face collapse. Unlike existing banks, account balance can be denominated in gold, silver, oil, or other commodities in addition to national currencies. *Its not a coin, its a platform for commodities.

Actually, you can think of BitShares as a coin backed by the value of a business.  

Some view it as a coin that contains a decentralized exchange business that produces stabilized currencies (BitUSD, BitSilver...BitBTC) as it's products.

So it's a "smart coin" you can configure to implement your own basket of currencies that spread your risk out over a mix of fiat and commodities.

But only the technically inclined need to know all that.

You can trade BTS right next to BTC and LTC as a volatile cryptocurrency at #4 on coinmarketcap.
Or you can trade BitUSD as a stabilized second-generation cryptocurrency at #32 on coinmarketcap.

So, your would be more correct to say:  "BitShares is a coin that contains a company which produces a variety of independently tradable stabilized coins as its financial product."

And its built-in exchange lets you move between all of these: (BTS, BitBTC, BitUSD, BitCNY, BitGold, BitSilver, and BitEUR) in ten seconds at pennies per transaction.

While you are on this decentralized exchange, there is no counterparty risk.  So you can mix your exposure to a whole lot of asset types and adjust that mix every 10 seconds no matter what the centralized exchanges of the world may be forced to do to you.  When the time comes to cash out, you exit through whichever centralized exchange seems most trustworthy to you at that moment - reducing your fiat world exposure to minutes.

[0nlyBTC]

How does Bitshares compare with Monero? I know that Bitshares has lots of extra "2.0" features. Besides these, how do they compare? How does anonymity compare?

Like I said before, Bitshares is a platform not currency. Monero is designed to be a anonymous currency as e-cash using ring signatures.

[StanLarimer]

How does Bitshares compare with Monero? I know that Bitshares has lots of extra "2.0" features. Besides these, how do they compare? How does anonymity compare?

Like I said before, Bitshares is a platform not currency. Monero is designed to be a anonymous currency as e-cash using ring signatures.

Like I said before, Bitshares is a platform AND a currency AND a family of useful smart currencies that track the value of other things.

The key word is "AND". 

[Joe200]

Like I said before, Bitshares is a platform not currency. Monero is designed to be a anonymous currency as e-cash using ring signatures.

Originally, Bitshares was the name of the platform and Bitshares X was the name of one particular implementation of that platform, which was a currency. IIUC, for marketing reason, they renamed "Bitshares X" to just plain "Bitshares".

This actually caused me some headaches when pulling coin data from exchanges. The symbol changed too from BTSX to BTS. But it's the same coin.

[0nlyBTC]

How does Bitshares compare with Monero? I know that Bitshares has lots of extra "2.0" features. Besides these, how do they compare? How does anonymity compare?

Like I said before, Bitshares is a platform not currency. Monero is designed to be a anonymous currency as e-cash using ring signatures.

Like I said before, Bitshares is a platform AND a currency AND a family of useful smart currencies that track the value of other things.

The key word is "AND".  

Relatively true, but I can't see "BitShares" being traded as a currency by the mainstream.  

[toknormal]

Finding flaws in the actual code is largely irrelevant when the architecture is fundamentally flawed. And if any masternode operator thinks they're somehow impervious, need I point to yesterday's GHOST bug.......and I mean that without being disrespectful to the work that has gone in to Darkcoin.

The problem with this analysis is that it is too myopic and loaded to be instructive about how either of these technologies (DRK / Cryptonote) will play out ultimately.

There are loads of modern day services that the NSA can theoretically "snoop" which don't detract from their practical or market value. The best you can say is that there is unlikely to be any anonymous technology which is guaranteed 100% to be "unstoppable" - neither the cryptonote approach or the 2-tier one.

But that's not the point anyway. Most people are not terrorists on the run from the NSA. The NSA are unlikely to be spending zillions of dollars on capturing masternode logs (because they'd need EVERY last one - ALL of them to have a remote chance) and then another few million plus several weeks pouring over them attempting to trace a solitary few transactions.

Even if that were theoretically possible (which I don't accept it is) it's well beyond a practical level of financial privacy which is what the goal is here.

In fact, I picked DRK *because* of its 2-tier approach, not in spite of it. Once you accept that both technologies work "within a reasonable level of practical anonymity" then practical considerations have far more impact on value than the thinking up of hypothetical vulnerabilities.

This is where DRK scores many more points than Monero and is the reason why it's maintained and grown its 5x marketcap lead.

Firstly, redundancy. Whatever disparities exist between the quality of the 2 anonymity algos, these are blown away by the fact that Darkcoin supports a pre-emptive, multiple redundancy approach to anonymisation. Cryptonote has 1 shot at it and has to work EVERY TIME. That means that you've no way of mitigating the effect of statistics as time goes on. The Darkcoin methodology is consistent with, say, painting a room where you use 16 thin coats rather than 1 thick one that leaves blank patches. This is both a huge security advantage and a practical advantage because at the point of use, Darkcoin can work like any other currency and doesn't need any exceptions to regular APIs which support it.

Secondly, the 2-tier approach leads to a far more productive and secure development cycle because the legacy API layer that's compatible with the Bitcoin retail interface can be supported independently of changes to the anonymisation algos. We've already seen this where Darkcoin went from realtime anonymisation at the point of use (like Monero) to pre-emptive - a huge revision to the philosophy - with no disruption at all to the retail interface.

Thirdly - Darkcoin is fully compatible with Bitcoin. It basically IS bitcoin and can be deployed with most bitcoin infrastructure. This was a design priority right from the start and has been maintained ever since. Again, this is only possible due to the 2-tier architecture.

Fourthly - the flexibility that Darkcoin's architecture brings in terms of design options is immense compared to a coin who's transmission and anonymising properties are so inflexibly coupled into a single lump of code.

So I don't remotely agree with you that this represents a "Broken Architecture". That's the kind of antagonistic, emotive language that people use when they have an axe to grind and want to appeal to an audience who don't have the technical depth to make a proper appraisal of the criticism. If you really want to have it taken seriously then put your point to the Darkcoin development team and have them post an appropriate response.

As for your Prisoner's Dilemma, that again is another piece of highly selective theorising. In fact the evidence in no way, shape or form supports your contention that it applies in this case. As you probably already know, there are few cases in any crypto-community of such high levels of constructive co-operation amongst peers. Masternode holders are not in "competition" with each other - they all share equally in a portion of the mining supply. Yes - their share goes up as the masternode population reduces, but it doesn't automatically follow that they'll start carrying out suicidal attacks on their own cryptocurrency network just to garner some hundredth of a percentage more yield. The loss in terms of market value from such behaviour would infinitely offset any marginal gain in coin share.

So the phrase "architecturally broken" is unjustified and I hereby request that the OP remove it from the citation at the start of the thread. Some of your points may be fair in the context of "vulnerabilities" but all advanced technologies have those. It's not a question of possessing or not posessing vulnerabilities, it's a question of what has the optimal balance of vulnerabilities against practical advantages.

Here's one for Monero which I won't do it the injustice of calling it "broken", simply a "vulnerability"....

.....if Darkcoin's algo ever gets "hacked", i.e. if a successful trace back to a sender of an anonymised transaction occurs, then only that one transaction is affected. The rest of the entire blockchain history is still safe.

On the other hand, if a solution is ever found for cryptonote encryption algorithm then the ENTIRE BLOCKCHAIN can be sprung with that one can opener. Cryptonote is therefore a timebomb. Your transaction might be anonymous today but not in 5 years time.

Be careful what you refer to as "architecturally broken".

[Zer0Sum]

OK guys, just updated the list. Darkcoin, Nxt, Monero, Bitshares. Let me know what you think.

NXT is very well developed but my issue is the POS bag holders situation. Everyone wants to stake large amounts of NXT,
yet there is little incentive to spend NXT.

The alternative to NXT IMO is NEM, built from the ground up like NXT, but with PoI (Proof of Importance) algorithm oppose to Proof of Stake.
NEM incentives users to regularly trade NEMs rather than hoarding and staking. Real economies are only productive if there is a circulation
of money. In a NXT economy, people are incentive to hoard not spend and likely to fail as real economy. In NEM economy, users are encouraged
to actively received and send NEMS to other accounts to raise the Importance to harvest more NEM, therefore has a better chance as a real economy.      

Staking NXT is not as profitable as people imagine it to be. There is just as much incentive to spend
NXT as any other crypto-currency, in fact, million NXT deals take place every day privately and
on the NXT Asset Exchange.

The Top 40 assets on the DECENTRALIZED Nxt AE trade 50-100 BTC/day...
Only one order of magnitude below the mid-tier exchanges like Cryptsy, Bittrex and Polo.

Such an amazing thing exists...
Only because NXT founders had the foresight to follow the Pareto 80-20 principle or "law of the vital few"...
Where 80% of virtually any successful economic system is owned by 20% of the investors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Pareto calculated that in 19th century Italy... 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the people...
And, not surprisingly, 200 years later 80% of the world's GDP is controlled by 20% of the population.

Over the past year that's changed dramatically... the Top 50 accounts own only about 6% on NXT.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As for NEM, after one year those guys are running an alpha that does not even do transactions...
And their Roadmap has not been updated in months (it looks like a China-based operation)...
And this alpha seems horribly overpriced at about $3,000,000... WHICH GOES TO THE HOLIER-THAN-THOUGH FOUNDERS.

It's hard to see how the Nxt forks are a serious threat at this point...
Though I love the fact that NEM is gonna FOCUS on XEM the currency....
And throw a lot of resources and the PoI algo to make XEM a strong, liquid cuurreny.

This is in contrast to the NXT Pooh-Bahs...
Who all seem to be closeted, bearded Marxist-Leninists that think NXT and money and profit = dirty...
And can't be bothered with a Windows installer = massive security risks for newbies...
And know far more about coding/Star Trek/Star Wars than finance or promotion.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The one thing I like about BitShares is they ONLY care about making money...
They will say anything... and do anything... and make anything... whether it's brilliant or nonsense...
To make piles of MOOLAH for themselves and their investors... NO FUCKING APOLOGIES, baby...
At least they know what their job is... and I can respect that.

[Come-In-Behind]

Finding flaws in the actual code is largely irrelevant when the architecture is fundamentally flawed. And if any masternode operator thinks they're somehow impervious, need I point to yesterday's GHOST bug.......and I mean that without being disrespectful to the work that has gone in to Darkcoin.

The problem with this analysis is that it is too myopic and loaded to be instructive about how either of these technologies (DRK / Cryptonote) will play out ultimately.

There are loads of modern day services that the NSA can theoretically "snoop" which don't detract from their practical or market value. The best you can say is that there is unlikely to be any anonymous technology which is guaranteed 100% to be "unstoppable" - neither the cryptonote approach or the 2-tier one.

But that's not the point anyway. Most people are not terrorists on the run from the NSA. The NSA are unlikely to be spending zillions of dollars on capturing masternode logs (because they'd need EVERY last one - ALL of them to have a remote chance) and then another few million plus several weeks pouring over them attempting to trace a solitary few transactions.

Even if that were theoretically possible (which I don't accept it is) it's well beyond a practical level of financial privacy which is what the goal is here.

In fact, I picked DRK *because* of its 2-tier approach, not in spite of it. Once you accept that both technologies work "within a reasonable level of practical anonymity" then practical considerations have far more impact on value than the thinking up of hypothetical vulnerabilities.

This is where DRK scores many more points than Monero and is the reason why it's maintained and grown its 5x marketcap lead.

Firstly, redundancy. Whatever disparities exist between the quality of the 2 anonymity algos, these are blown away by the fact that Darkcoin supports a pre-emptive, multiple redundancy approach to anonymisation. Cryptonote has 1 shot at it and has to work EVERY TIME. That means that you've no way of mitigating the effect of statistics as time goes on. The Darkcoin methodology is consistent with, say, painting a room where you use 16 thin coats rather than 1 thick one that leaves blank patches. This is both a huge security advantage and a practical advantage because at the point of use, Darkcoin can work like any other currency and doesn't need any exceptions to regular APIs which support it.

Secondly, the 2-tier approach leads to a far more productive and secure development cycle because the legacy API layer that's compatible with the Bitcoin retail interface can be supported independently of changes to the anonymisation algos. We've already seen this where Darkcoin went from realtime anonymisation at the point of use (like Monero) to pre-emptive - a huge revision to the philosophy - with no disruption at all to the retail interface.

Thirdly - Darkcoin is fully compatible with Bitcoin. It basically IS bitcoin and can be deployed with most bitcoin infrastructure. This was a design priority right from the start and has been maintained ever since. Again, this is only possible due to the 2-tier architecture.

Fourthly - the flexibility that Darkcoin's architecture brings in terms of design options is immense compared to a coin who's transmission and anonymising properties are so inflexibly coupled into a single lump of code.

So I don't remotely agree with you that this represents a "Broken Architecture". That's the kind of antagonistic, emotive language that people use when they have an axe to grind and want to appeal to an audience who don't have the technical depth to make a proper appraisal of the criticism. If you really want to have it taken seriously then put your point to the Darkcoin development team and have them post an appropriate response.

As for your Prisoner's Dilemma, that again is another piece of highly selective theorising. In fact the evidence in no way, shape or form supports your contention that it applies in this case. As you probably already know, there are few cases in any crypto-community of such high levels of constructive co-operation amongst peers. Masternode holders are not in "competition" with each other - they all share equally in a portion of the mining supply. Yes - their share goes up as the masternode population reduces, but it doesn't automatically follow that they'll start carrying out suicidal attacks on their own cryptocurrency network just to garner some hundredth of a percentage more yield. The loss in terms of market value from such behaviour would infinitely offset any marginal gain in coin share.

So the phrase "architecturally broken" is unjustified and I hereby request that the OP remove it from the citation at the start of the thread. Some of your points may be fair in the context of "vulnerabilities" but all advanced technologies have those. It's not a question of possessing or not posessing vulnerabilities, it's a question of what has the optimal balance of vulnerabilities against practical advantages.

Here's one for Monero which I won't do it the injustice of calling it "broken", simply a "vulnerability"....

.....if Darkcoin's algo ever gets "hacked", i.e. if a successful trace back to a sender of an anonymised transaction occurs, then only that one transaction is affected. The rest of the entire blockchain history is still safe.

On the other hand, if a solution is ever found for cryptonote encryption algorithm then the ENTIRE BLOCKCHAIN can be sprung with that one can opener. Cryptonote is therefore a timebomb. Your transaction might be anonymous today but not in 5 years time.

Be careful what you refer to as "architecturally broken".

Interesting, because almost right after Darkcoin was open sourced, a bug was found that allowed you to see past Darkcoin's supposed Anonymity. There isn't much of a point in dwelling on this further, as anyone who even can use logic would know that Darkcoin's masternodes are it's biggest weakness.

Masternodes must be hosted by an external source, take that down and Darkcoin's anonymity goes down. I believe the majority of nodes are hosted on Amazon, of all places, so I wouldn't take Darkcoin's anonymity seriously... Relying on an external source like masternodes to provide anonymity is futile, I'm sorry but it is.

[fluffypony]

The problem with this analysis is that it is too myopic and loaded to be instructive about how either of these technologies (DRK / Cryptonote) will play out ultimately.

There are loads of modern day services that the NSA can theoretically "snoop" which don't detract from their practical or market value. The best you can say is that there is unlikely to be any anonymous technology which is guaranteed 100% to be "unstoppable" - neither the cryptonote approach or the 2-tier one.

But that's not the point anyway. Most people are not terrorists on the run from the NSA. The NSA are unlikely to be spending zillions of dollars on capturing masternode logs (because they'd need EVERY last one - ALL of them to have a remote chance) and then another few million plus several weeks pouring over them attempting to trace a solitary few transactions.

Even if that were theoretically possible (which I don't accept it is) it's well beyond a practical level of financial privacy which is what the goal is here.

You seem to entirely miss my point.

1. Gaming masternodes is, in fact, within the reach of an ordinary script kiddy or an MNC. Besides the obvious risk of masternodes being taken offline by a DDoS, there is absolutely no chance that even the bulk of the operators are getting security right.

2. You don't need to be a terrorist or have the NSA after you. Agencies like the FBI, Europol, Scotland Yard, or Interpol will have no problem gaining access to masternodes completely surreptitiously.

Operational security and netsec are laborious and ongoing procedures. It requires an incredible amount of effort just to keep a small infrastructure set secure. My maintenance window to patch all glibc-bug affected components on 3 servers yesterday was ~12 hours - how many masternode operators do you know that took their servers offline for hours yesterday to make sure there were no glibc-statically-compiled nigglies lying around?

In fact, I picked DRK *because* of its 2-tier approach, not in spite of it. Once you accept that both technologies work "within a reasonable level of practical anonymity" then practical considerations have far more impact on value than the thinking up of hypothetical vulnerabilities.

This is where DRK scores many more points than Monero and is the reason why it's maintained and grown its 5x marketcap lead.

Monero offers actual privacy, with completely optional per-transaction or per-account transparency. Darkcoin offers obfuscation. Those are two different things.

Firstly, redundancy. Whatever disparities exist between the quality of the 2 anonymity algos, these are blown away by the fact that Darkcoin supports a pre-emptive, multiple redundancy approach to anonymisation. Cryptonote has 1 shot at it and has to work EVERY TIME. That means that you've no way of mitigating the effect of statistics as time goes on. The Darkcoin methodology is consistent with, say, painting a room where you use 16 thin coats rather than 1 thick one that leaves blank patches. This is both a huge security advantage and a practical advantage because at the point of use, Darkcoin can work like any other currency and doesn't need any exceptions to regular APIs which support it.

There is so much wrong with this I don't even know where to begin. First off: CryptoNote does have redundancy. If all our current knowledge of cryptography is somehow broken and there is a way to crack stealth addresses...well that's ok, you still have ring signatures to protect you. Secondly: layering complexity has never proven to be an effective approach to cryptographic security. To use your paint analogy:all that someone needs to do is strip away the base coat, and the other 15 are pointless. When you have interdependence (as you do with Darkcoin's various "methods") you're not creating redundancy, you're creating failure points.

Secondly, the 2-tier approach leads to a far more productive and secure development cycle because the legacy API layer that's compatible with the Bitcoin retail interface can be supported independently of changes to the anonymisation algos. We've already seen this where Darkcoin went from realtime anonymisation at the point of use (like Monero) to pre-emptive - a huge revision to the philosophy - with no disruption at all to the retail interface.

I fail to see how Monero couldn't change or improve its underlying privacy without touching the API? The JSON RPC API has nothing to do with the DH key exchange or ring signatures or anything. Also, Monero's "realtime anonymisation" uses the entire blockchain as a source to mix with. Every previous transaction is a candidate!

Thirdly - Darkcoin is fully compatible with Bitcoin. It basically IS bitcoin and can be deployed with most bitcoin infrastructure. This was a design priority right from the start and has been maintained ever since. Again, this is only possible due to the 2-tier architecture.

Oh good, then you recognise that it has exactly the same block size scalability issues as Bitcoin. Monero's dynamic block sizing, on the other hand, does not have that problem.

Fourthly - the flexibility that Darkcoin's architecture brings in terms of design options is immense compared to a coin who's transmission and anonymising properties are so inflexibly coupled into a single lump of code.

Ah I see what this conversation is. You're talking about the extended object-oriented instruction set of the optimised non-volatile adapter. We should consider synergies between the fully-configurable discrete structure and the assimilated dedicated hardware of the right-sized eco-centric framework. That way we can bring about managed neutral artificial intelligence all while streamlining customer loyalty in a reactive coherent installation. I do agree we need a paradigm-shift for an object-based reciprocal approach to work in the context of a persistent national data-warehouse, but should our focus not be on creating automated modular installation systems that interoperate with fully-configurable intangible projections? Ultimately this comes down to a discussion of which multi-tiered scalable open architecture has a better decentralised heuristic portal, and that, really, is all about their respective ameliorated background flexibility.

So I don't remotely agree with you that this represents a "Broken Architecture". That's the kind of antagonistic, emotive language that people use when they have an axe to grind and want to appeal to an audience who don't have the technical depth to make a proper appraisal of the criticism. If you really want to have it taken seriously then put your point to the Darkcoin development team and have them post an appropriate response.

Your flowery words don't change the fact that Darkcoin is a laughing stock among serious cryptographers. You're conflating me calling-a-spade-a-spade with some sort of personal vendetta. I don't care if Darkcoin succeeds or fails - if it succeeds it will only serve to validate Monero's use-case, and if it fails it won't be because of a lack of desire for transactional privacy. I do find it unconscionable that the fundamentally flawed architecture hasn't been abandoned, but I guess that's what you get when developers with no clue about cryptography try and invent a cryptographically sound system.

As for your Prisoner's Dilemma, that again is another piece of highly selective theorising. In fact the evidence in no way, shape or form supports your contention that it applies in this case. As you probably already know, there are few cases in any crypto-community of such high levels of constructive co-operation amongst peers. Masternode holders are not in "competition" with each other - they all share equally in a portion of the mining supply. Yes - their share goes up as the masternode population reduces, but it doesn't automatically follow that they'll start carrying out suicidal attacks on their own cryptocurrency network just to garner some hundredth of a percentage more yield. The loss in terms of market value from such behaviour would infinitely offset any marginal gain in coin share.

The "loss in terms of market value" is precisely why its a Prisoner's Dilemma. I suggest you study game theory if you want to get into that discussion.

Nonetheless, I linked to two papers that show how Bitcoin mining pools attack each other for the same reason. Have we not already seen the major damage done to Bitcoin when a mining pool approached the 50% mark? It is absolutely against the collective good for mining pools to be combative, and yet that is precisely what we are seeing.

Your argument that they are currently "constructively cooperating" is also laughable - it's just like with every major scam, there's always that person that gets interviewed that says: "but he was such a nice guy, I can't believe he would just steal from us!" Cooperating when the spoils are relatively worthless is inconsequential, true nature only reveals itself much later on.

But I guess, again, this is the difference between a fundamentally flawed architecture created by a developer and something created by an actual cryptographer. Do you know what the Longest Chain Rule is and why it was such an important creation of Satoshi's? Basically, in Bitcoin (as in Monero) there is not "one true chain", there are many chains. A node has to choose which one it deems to be the main one, and it does this by following the longest chain, all while still keeping the alternate chains. In the event an alternate chain develops that is longer (ie. more work, hence Proof of Work) then a blockchain reorganisation occurs, leading to that alternate chain being swapped in as the main one. Eventually dead alternate chains are orphaned and can be abandoned.

The reason this is critical, cryptographically speaking, is that it allows a Bitcoin node to assume that nearly all the nodes it is connected to are bad. Bitcoin and Monero start with the assumption that 99% of the actors in the system are trying to lie and cheat, and systems are developed accordingly. The only time a Bitcoin or Monero node will be unable to find the only true peer (and subsequently blacklist all the other false peers) is if it is completely segregated and isolated (in which case you're screwed no matter what you use). There's no need for "constructive cooperation" in a trustless consensus system. Ask yourself: can Darkcoin's anonymity function if 99% of the masternodes are bad actors?

So the phrase "architecturally broken" is unjustified and I hereby request that the OP remove it from the citation at the start of the thread. Some of your points may be fair in the context of "vulnerabilities" but all advanced technologies have those. It's not a question of possessing or not posessing vulnerabilities, it's a question of what has the optimal balance of vulnerabilities against practical advantages.

Read the #bitcoin-wizards comments I linked to. This is not the opinion of one person, it's a common view among those who have enough knowledge to have an opinion.

Here's one for Monero which I won't do it the injustice of calling it "broken", simply a "vulnerability"....

.....if Darkcoin's algo ever gets "hacked", i.e. if a successful trace back to a sender of an anonymised transaction occurs, then only that one transaction is affected. The rest of the entire blockchain history is still safe.

On the other hand, if a solution is ever found for cryptonote encryption algorithm then the ENTIRE BLOCKCHAIN can be sprung with that one can opener. Cryptonote is therefore a timebomb. Your transaction might be anonymous today but not in 5 years time.

Be careful what you refer to as "architecturally broken".

If the cryptography behind ring signatures are cracked then everything using Schnorr signatures or EdDSA is in trouble. The same cryptography that protects Monero (Ed25519) is used by: OpenSSH, I2P, GnuPG, Google End-To-End, Core Secret for iOS, and mcrypt.

So yes, if Ed25519 is broken then Monero would have to rely on stealth addresses for protection. But hey, in that event all the masternodes could be accessed, as OpenSSH would be broken too:)

[illodin]

Here's one for Monero which I won't do it the injustice of calling it "broken", simply a "vulnerability"....

.....if Darkcoin's algo ever gets "hacked", i.e. if a successful trace back to a sender of an anonymised transaction occurs, then only that one transaction is affected. The rest of the entire blockchain history is still safe.

On the other hand, if a solution is ever found for cryptonote encryption algorithm then the ENTIRE BLOCKCHAIN can be sprung with that one can opener. Cryptonote is therefore a timebomb. Your transaction might be anonymous today but not in 5 years time.

Be careful what you refer to as "architecturally broken".

If the cryptography behind ring signatures are cracked then everything using Schnorr signatures or EdDSA is in trouble. The same cryptography that protects Monero (Ed25519) is used by: OpenSSH, I2P, GnuPG, Google End-To-End, Core Secret for iOS, and mcrypt.

So yes, if Ed25519 is broken then Monero would have to rely on stealth addresses for protection. But hey, in that event all the masternodes could be accessed, as OpenSSH would be broken too:)

Except that everything you thought was anonymous in Monero up until that point all of a sudden is not anymore.

And if you anonymized your coins with Darkcoin before "all the masternodes are accessed", you're still safe transacting anonymously. And all your previous transactions are still private as well.

[toknormal]

Ah I see what this conversation is. You're talking about the extended object-oriented instruction set of the optimised non-volatile adapter. We should consider synergies between the fully-configurable discrete structure and the assimilated dedicated hardware of the right-sized eco-centric framework.

I think I'll let you answer you own point on that one....

Your flowery words don't change the fact that Darkcoin is a laughing stock among serious cryptographers.

First of all, a "cryptographer" is an academic who invents cryptographic algorithms and publishes papers such as this guy on who's work Darkoin is based, not a cryptocurrency linux geek fanboy of one coin or another. As far as "laughing stocks" go I suspect your referring to the latter.

Secondly, someday the market may buy some of these hypothetical vulnerabilities that you've posed. But it's looking less likely by the month because, luckily for it, the market is in a position to "have its cake and eat it" and as such basically regards Monero as a backup policy for DRK. There just isn't enough mileage in any of your criticisms to justify a huge disinvestment and recapitalisation in another crypto currency asset.

In particular most of your case (as you yourself point out) rests on the competing approaches of anonymity vs cryptography.

For me, tossing a sand grain into the desert and shaking the entire desert up a few times is far more preferable to putting the sand grain in a box and locking it with a key. Yes, the sand grain is potentially still visible, the difference is it's never recognisable again. In other words, if we talk in terms of the monetary properties needed to make a currency work, Darkcoin makes *fungibility* the priority over detectability. That's the right way around from a monetary perspective which is why IMO it has most of the cap.

Also, in this regard, Darkcoin's mixing redundancy very much IS an advantage and the painting analogy very much DOES apply. The more times you tumble the desert sand the more anonymous it becomes and fungibility, not "running from the NSA", is the whole reason we're in this game.

Your other remarks revolve around geeky point scoring over the relative merits of masternodes and security. We'll see how that pans out because once again, the two tier architecture creates so many options for future proofing that I would not like to bet against it with my money. A cryptonote coin is basically no more than a cryptographic algo. That's it. There's no diversity or dimensionality to the concept that can support feature growth, performance enhancements, security enhancements, compatibility evolution or nurture community involvement the way the 2-tier approach does.

In that context, describing the architecture as "broken" is a bit desperate.

[illodin]

There are different ways of accomplishing the same thing, financial privacy. Whether being "NSA proof" is even possible, is another matter - they could probably simply just take over your personal computer and anything you try to do after that is irrelevant.

[valarmg]

NXT is very well developed but my issue is the POS bag holders situation. Everyone wants to stake large amounts of NXT, yet there is little incentive to spend NXT. The alternative to NXT IMO is NEM, built from the ground up like NXT, but with PoI (Proof of Importance) algorithm oppose to Proof of Stake. NEM incentives users to regularly trade NEMs rather than hoarding and staking. Real economies are only productive if there is a circulation of money. In a NXT economy, people are incentive to hoard not spend and likely to fail as real economy. In NEM economy, users are encouraged to actively received and send NEMS to other accounts to raise the Importance to harvest more NEM, therefore has a better chance as a real economy.      

Just to talk about this. There is little incentive to hoard Nxt, forging fees are very small. It's actually very hard to hold onto Nxt, because of all the assets that are traded in the Nxt asset exchange, tempting holders to invest their Nxt. Most people who follow Nxt closely have invested in various assets. These assets issuers spend the Nxt, and hopefully create a product or service that generates money, then they return the profit to assetholders in the form of Nxt dividends. This Nxt economy is going strong with the assets on the Nxt exchange having a higher market cap that Nxt itself (similar to fiat stock exchanges). In this early stage, there is much more Nxt invested in assets than returning via dividends, which is why the Nxt market cap isn't increasing despite the big community and continuous development, but when some of the projects on the Nxt asset exchange succeed, then that will change. But Nxt is one of the only alts with a flourishing fiatless economy building around it.

[toknormal]

How does Bitshares compare with Monero? I know that Bitshares has lots of extra "2.0" features. Besides these, how do they compare? How does anonymity compare?

It's apples and pears. Monero is a pure cryptocurrency that's concerned with cryptographic based privacy.

Bitshares is a market liquidity machine which is capable of responding dynamically to the needs of various different asset sectors. It does this in very elegant way by hosting a market for 2 mutually exclusive (but complimentary) types of investor:

[1] - risk investors who wish to hold and gain returns on their blockchain-based asset

[2] - currency investors who need a liquidity source with a stable exchange rate (e.g. the retail world)

i.e. bring together two types of people: those who want the value of their holding to go UP and those who seek a stable currency who's value stays exactly where it is.

The model allows the stable currency (e.g. BitUSD which tracks the value of the US dollar) to be borrowed into existence backed by collateral (BTS) which is locked in place by the blockchain.

The beauty of this system is that:

a) - the more liquidity demand / adoption there is (e.g. the more BitUSD is supplied into the economy) the more the underlying collateral accrues in value, thereby satisfying the requirements of both parties, the risk investor and the stable liquidity consumer

b) - it is a full reserve system as opposed to the "fractional reserve" approach of the fiat banking system. (In fact it's 2 x reserve). It is also self balancing and stable because the blockchain enforces reserve requirements by automatically selling the collateral and distributing it to holders of the backed asset (in this case BitUSD) it falls below reserve requirements

To me, Bitshares is one of the most promising ideas in crypto. It has a natural balance of offerings and a clearly targeted function in the cryptocurrency economy which / will be in in high demand. It more than merits its position in the top 5 marketcaps IMO.

NxT

NxT is not like Monero, DRK or Bitshares and does something else again. It has basically grown into a host for secondary asset trading and is garnering adoption as such very successfully. They have yet a different approach to "adoption" which is that you need to pay for your asset hosting and trading in NxT, thereby giving it value as a currency. To me, NXT is also one of the most promising 2.0 projects out there because it has a huge and very active community which is actually delivering powerful new features all the time.

So in summary: DRK, NXT, BTS are all worth investing in IMO because they each occupy very different market sectors. Although I was defending DRK against XMR above, I still wouldn't exclude XMR from the list (I have some) although it's a secondary holding for me in the anon stakes. Having said that, people should invest according to their own preference because we can't tell the future.

Of the list at the start of this thread, the ones I wouldn't invest in are:

LTC.....bitcoin does everything LTC does and has more adoption. If confirmation time is an issue, but DRK. It's about to confirm in a few seconds)
DOGE...anyone can buy loads of DOGE anytime. It's just pure liquidity.
PPC.....one of the all time greats. I have a couple of hundred of these "just in case"
XRP.....it's a private company and defies everything crypto is about. Not a monetary base.
NMC....nice in its day but old. Domain names. It's on BTCe, thats about it.

[fluffypony]

Except that everything you thought was anonymous in Monero up until that point all of a sudden is not anymore.

And if you anonymized your coins with Darkcoin before "all the masternodes are accessed", you're still safe transacting anonymously. And all your previous transactions are still private as well.

Sure, but let's be honest, secp256k1 (which is what Darkcoin uses) is considered unsafe by Bernstein & Lange, whereas 25519 is not. In other words, if we're talking about compromising the cryptography on that level Darkcoin is at a greater risk than Monero.

I don't think it's possible to compare the two attacks (compromised masternodes vs. compromised 25519 cryptography), they're too dissimilar. Although one thing to bear in mind: if a TLA had to compromise either of those fully we wouldn't know about it until it's too late. Chances are we'd find out years later.

[fluffypony]

First of all, a "cryptographer" is an academic who invents cryptographic algorithms and publishes papers such as this guy on who's work Darkoin is based, not a cryptocurrency linux geek fanboy of one coin or another. As far as "laughing stocks" go I suspect your referring to the latter.

The -wizards crowd are Bitcoin core developers (all of them, including Gavin Andresen, Wladimir van der Laan, and Gregory Maxwell) and cryptocurrency academia (researchers, professors, etc.)

If you want to know how cryptographers really feel then a good starting point is the first answer on this StackExchange post, which was originally on crypto.stackexchange.com and then eventually migrated to bitcoin.stackexchange.com. There's enough cryptographic research meat in there to justify the read.

Secondly, someday the market may buy some of these hypothetical vulnerabilities that you've posed. But it's looking less likely by the month because, luckily for it, the market is in a position to "have its cake and eat it" and as such basically regards Monero as a backup policy for DRK. There just isn't enough mileage in any of your criticisms to justify a huge disinvestment and recapitalisation in another crypto currency asset.

I'm not suggesting anyone invest in Monero unless they are absolutely fine with holding for quite a while, maybe even several years, and they understand that it is an experiment, one with no guarantee of success. If there is a huge recapitalisation from Darkcoin to Monero it certainly won't be because I wrote an eloquent post on Bitcointalk:-P