Uuugh can't sleep :/ Hey IMZ, fair enough, good point
OK, 4:41am discussion time:
Do we really need / want to implement anonymity in CBX?
Anonymity is (and has been) a buzzword for a while in the cryptosphere, many coins / communities seem to have developed this pressing requirement for it as it supposedly hugely increases their coins utility. As result there has been a mad rush to implement anonimity through a number of quite convoluted systems of coin tumbling / chain mangling / transaction grouping to achieve it, perverting what WAS a very eloquent system for maintaining a distrobuted ledger.
Now, I do agree that it is good to have the option for anonymous transaction system when dealing with a currency, however does this really fit with what we want to achieve with CBX?
Would our development efforts not be better focused on hardening our vault to ensure that our investment is always secure - we are going for a ‘store of wealth’ here remember not a day to day currency for Jake down the road to buy his weed with.
CBX is currently leading the way in terms of decentralised security, with my investors hat on I would like to see more additions to our network / client that improve security, examples might include:
+ Enhanced fork protection
+ Wallet bakup / auto restore if corrupt
+ Hard wallet encryption
+ Signed certificate authentication
+ Code signing
+ 2fA wallet unlocking
+ Pen testing reports on new software versions
etc...
Basically locking down the wallet in case of compromise and provideing a higher level of confidence that my money is safe; staking away in my 24/7 internet connected wallet.
We do not (should not) need to follow the masses down the anonymity rabbit hole, entering the anonimity game will put us back in competition with the zillions of other coins out there and soak up massive amounts of dev time better spent on makeing CBX as good / secure as it can be.
We NEED to push legitimising CBX to attract investment and participation in our network security model, investment needs trust - and the more open and transparent we are the better we look as a long term investment opportunity for the big players out there
FR
I concur with this. The main focus for CBX should remain firmly on
security, over privacy and
anonymity features.
PoS coins (arguably) offer much less transaction anonymity when compared with PoW coins anyhow. The actual process of staking in fact continually relinquishes a wallets (users) anonymity to the blockchain, coupled with the fact that most people will acquire their coins though exchange purchases, which is far from ideal in terms of
true anonymity to begin with.
All of the crypto-currency obfuscation systems in existence, to date, still cannot fully prevent the two main factors that can be used by a strong
adversary to identify or to track an individual. These factors remain (1) acquisition (i.e. the trail of where your coins came from or how you originally acquired them) and (2) storage (i.e. your actual balance on a specific address and how it changed over time with regards to transactions, regardless of any obfuscation efforts). At best, users might gain only some plausible deniability.
As satoshi stated, Bitcoin can provide reasonable anonymity and privacy if it's used correctly i.e. you might mine PoW coins to a fresh wallet address, over Tor, at a .onion enabled pool (such as eligius or mmpool, for example), only ever connecting the wallet via Tor, making transactions that don't identify you personally (which is practically impossible in reality, being the you are most likely the recipient of any goods or services etc.,) and then abandoning said wallet / address entirely.
It could also be argued that using 3rd party mixing services is actually bad for your anonymity!
In regards to CBX, privacy and pseudo-anonymity can help to provide some users with added security or just simply increased accessibility. Being able to run your PoSP (PoS) wallet over Tor to known (trusted) addnode=.onion addresses can be of benefit to some users. Quite simply in just getting better connectivity.
Dual stack nodes are the way to go, with around 8 to 10 known (published) addnode=.onion addresses for CBX nodes being made available. This would allow CLIENTS to only utilize addnode=.onion connectivity over Tor for best anonymity / privacy / network connectivity.
So, SOCKS5 proxy=127.0.0.1:9050 (port 9150 for TBB) , onion=127.0.0.1:9050 (again, port 9150 for TBB) and/or onlynet=onion compatibility features being included in a future CBX wallet release.
Reference:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Running_Bitcoin
-onion=<ip:port> Use separate SOCKS5 proxy to reach peers via Tor hidden services (default: -proxy)
-onlynet=<net> Only connect to nodes in network <net> (ipv4, ipv6 or onion)
-port=<port> Listen for connections on <port>
It is also important to consider correct Port connectivity settings over Tor, which often requires both client and server correctly forwarding addnode=.onion connectivity to a Tor friendly port:
Reference:
https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/doc/ReducedExitPolicyNodes don't need to be run as Tor Relays or Exit Nodes, they just need to correctly transition traffic to Tor friendly .exit ports from other Tor Exits Nodes.
I have in fact already started a Linux Tor guide for Bitcoin here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1374919.0 - in regards to the new functionality in Bitcoin Core 0.12.0 .
I would be able to set up dual stack addnode=.onion's dedicated to CBX, and provide a guide for others to follow, although it is unlikely to be something I would undertake without community / developer support (both financial and/or free as in beer), as it effectively requires maintaining and running more than 4 dedicated CBX nodes on cloud servers. The other nodes need to be run by community members, anonymous or otherwise, as one individual running all nodes is certainly not a decentralized approach!
Cheers!
Poll
