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[AizenSou]

Evil-Knievel is generally a genuine technical interrogator, and has made the odd useful insight (well, one at least) that's been accepted by devs, it's just that he also has a tendency to draw conclusions bordering on hysterical melodrama from benign philosophical observations.

According to his findings:



References:

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=345619.msg5663483#msg5663483

[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1wf5qb/possible_warning_btc_addresses_with_known_public/

[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2ukp87/researcher_discovers_major_dos_vulnerability_in/

[4] https://bitcointa.lk/threads/private-key-cracker-apparently-demonstrated.248285/page-2

The most funny part is that he claimed to bet 500 BTC for it. It's pure gold classic. Speechless.

[toknormal]

(especially when said dev demonstrates a key lack of understanding with respects......

If I tell you I added two numbers to get a result of 8, tell me how my "lack of cryptographic understanding" lets you determine which two it was ?

[xxxgoodgirls]

man if child_harold reads this thread...

[stonehedge]

man if child_harold reads this thread...

Oh he has I'm sure.  Thankfully I think that pillock has decided to promote his own coin and not try to break others.

[child_harold]

man if child_harold reads this thread...

Oh he has I'm sure.  Thankfully I think that pillock has decided to promote his own coin and not try to break others.

^what he said (minus the pillock)

Just watching this one… wow.

* child_harold runs off to make more popcorn

LOL hows holding my shadow cash bags? I dumped THOUSANDS at 40k 36k and 29k... you all will never see that again
Edit: BTW the guardian recommends our anonymity http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/06/tips-tricks-anonymous-privacy

You dumped a coin with a working non-interactive zero-knowledge proof implementation (a little like Monero) but on a BTC blockchain and with a gorgeous GUI wallet, for a coin which uses mixing? huh…

Article also recommends using TOR

[fluffypony]

(especially when said dev demonstrates a key lack of understanding with respects......

If I tell you I added two numbers to get a result of 8, tell me how my "lack of cryptographic understanding" lets you determine which two it was ?

You're oversimplifying. Good cryptography requires formal proofs, not hand-waving and conjecture. You're clearly not a stupid person, so I won't insult your intelligence by reverting to argumentum ad hominem, but then you should not insult my intelligence by deflecting and degrading the nature of cryptographic proofs.

[r4vani]

If you could achieve your aims simply be wishing for them, life would be very easy.

[qwizzie]

If you could achieve your aims simply be wishing for them, life would be very easy.

All those people wishing Darkcoin would just fade away .. while its actually doing the opposite.
Must be frustrating as hell for them.

edit : oh my, we reached 2349 masternodes, a new record i think. Masternodes running in 34 countries so far ...

[toknormal]

You're oversimplifying. Good cryptography requires formal proofs, not hand-waving and conjecture

And you (nor any of your Monero fudding cohorts) are not understanding the difference between academic research and practical implementation.

A "cryptographer" is not a coin developer (not even a Monero one) but someone who sits in a University lab for years developing cryptographic algorithms and writing research papers that get accepted by academic journals.

They may or may not be coders but you don't have to be a cryptographer to implement successful applications anymore than you need to be an aerodynamicist to fly a plane. In fact they are usually completely distinct disciplines. All coin technologies are based on published academic research of one kind or another (Darkcoin's is - see white paper on blind signatures) but you don't have to be the researcher to do the implementation - you do have to be a coder.

One of the reasons Monero never got off the ground is because it tried to base it's whole value offering on a piece of academic theory rather than trying to produce something of practical value. Anyone who's ever used it will discover that in about 10 seconds.

Consequently, since that's the only 'hammer' in your box then everything else has to be a nail - including having to make other coin devs the target of baseless accusations such as "lack of understanding" about cryptography.

It's cheap, unsupported nonsense of the most unimaginative kind but as long as you keep sticking to that line no-one else will have anything to worry about.

[nakaone]

the plane analogy is quite fitting regarding the private coins - once they are broken it is catastrophic.

further the analogy is also not the worst by regarding xmr and drk: while xmr is really building an airplane, which is obviously needing a lot of research, drk is building a car with wings (btc protocol with implemented coinjoin). xmr at this point is also quite heavy (blockchain bloat), while no one knows if drks wings are strong enough to ensure privacy.

we will see which one is dominating the market, the car with wings, which maybe becomes a somewhat airplane or the airplane which is at this point not able to fly for a long distance

all that said you guys should be grateful that you get help from evil

[toknormal]

further the analogy is also not the worst by regarding xmr and drk: while xmr is really building an airplane, which is obviously needing a lot of research, drk is building a car with wings

...what that analogy is missing is that as long as Bitcoin remains the dominant 'force', the whole world is driving on city roads.

Planes are not an option. We don't have a 'clean sheet' where we can design our ideal technology from top to bottom any more than we have the option of designing the 'perfect html markup protocol' from scratch.

(Well you can but nobody's goin to use it).

[Pline]

further the analogy is also not the worst by regarding xmr and drk: while xmr is really building an airplane, which is obviously needing a lot of research, drk is building a car with wings

...what that analogy is missing is that as long as Bitcoin remains the dominant 'force', the whole world is driving on city roads.

Planes are not an option. We don't have a 'clean sheet' where we can design our ideal technology from top to bottom any more than we have the option of designing the 'perfect html markup protocol' from scratch.

(Well you can but nobody's goin to use it).

This is why ShadowCash is a contender that should not be ignored.  It has the cryptonote like ring sigs implemented onto the Bitcoin blockchain.  So in that way it has advantage over Monero.

[pozmu]

I was here 
Not sure how correct are OPs assumptions but it's good to see that people don't take anything for granted and try to find bugs - that's what opensource is all about.
BTW I'm not up-to-date, is Darkcoin finally 100% opensource?

[qwizzie]

the plane analogy is quite fitting regarding the private coins - once they are broken it is catastrophic.

further the analogy is also not the worst by regarding xmr and drk: while xmr is really building an airplane, which is obviously needing a lot of research, drk is building a car with wings (btc protocol with implemented coinjoin). xmr at this point is also quite heavy (blockchain bloat), while no one knows if drks wings are strong enough to ensure privacy.

we will see which one is dominating the market, the car with wings, which maybe becomes a somewhat airplane or the airplane which is at this point not able to fly for a long distance

all that said you guys should be grateful that you get help from evil

We are gratefull, he helped us with a bug before, oct 2014 i think. He even informed our lead developer about it which was pretty decent (who fixed it the next day)
Nobody is denying OP's ability to read and understand code but OP could be a bit more subtle in his announcements, specially when talking about a complicated
process like Darksend and its anonymity.  

edit : also after having read the reply of our lead developer in here i have to conclude this topic is incorrect (based on OP's incorrect assumptions about how the anonymization process currently works) and due to impending update v0.11.2.x soon to be obsolete as well (masternode blinding will change things drastically, anonymization wise).  

[g4q34g4qg47ww]

I was here 
Not sure how correct are OPs assumptions but it's good to see that people don't take anything for granted and try to find bugs - that's what opensource is all about.
BTW I'm not up-to-date, is Darkcoin finally 100% opensource?

Has been 100% open source for quite a while now: https://github.com/darkcoin/darkcoin

[GingerAle]

sorry can't add much (popcorn without a gif)

[coinits]

This is a good reason to look at an alternative:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=975984.msg10663673#msg10663673

[Kuriso]

If the OP is wrong, and admitted so, he should change the title of this post.  Here let me add a question mark to make it look like I'm NOT starting FUD, or am I?

[qwizzie]

If the OP is wrong, and admitted so, he should change the title of this post.  Here let me add a question mark to make it look like I'm NOT starting FUD, or am I?

are you ?   oh dear, i answerred a question with a question. Doesnt that give like 10 years of bad luck or something ?  

i'm gonna stick with this one though :

after having read the reply of our lead developer in here i have to conclude this topic is incorrect (based on OP's incorrect assumptions about how the anonymization process currently works) and due to impending update v0.11.2.x soon to be obsolete as well (masternode blinding will change things drastically, anonymization wise).  

[fluffypony]

And you (nor any of your Monero fudding cohorts) are not understanding the difference between academic research and practical implementation.

Silly duck, of course we understand the difference. Maybe you should take the time to look at our Design and Development goals, which will likely take us several years to achieve, but which are based on solid cryptographic principles instead of imagining that you can shortcut consensus.

A "cryptographer" is not a coin developer (not even a Monero one) but someone who sits in a University lab for years developing cryptographic algorithms and writing research papers that get accepted by academic journals.

Thankfully Monero has both.

They may or may not be coders but you don't have to be a cryptographer to implement successful applications anymore than you need to be an aerodynamicist to fly a plane. In fact they are usually completely distinct disciplines. All coin technologies are based on published academic research of one kind or another (Darkcoin's is - see white paper on blind signatures) but you don't have to be the researcher to do the implementation - you do have to be a coder.

I'm glad you brought up the Darkcoin whitepaper, because it includes this gem: "DarkCoin replaces abrupt reward halving with a reward curve, 2222222/(((Difficulty+2600)/9)^2). The maximum and minimum amounts are set to 25 and five respectively."

This would mean a maximum daily block reward of 576 x 25 = 14 400 DRK. Reality begs to differ:

If implementing such a simple formula can't even be done correctly, then it would seem your trust in your "dev" is deeply misplaced.

One of the reasons Monero never got off the ground is because it tried to base it's whole value offering on a piece of academic theory rather than trying to produce something of practical value. Anyone who's ever used it will discover that in about 10 seconds.

Consequently, since that's the only 'hammer' in your box then everything else has to be a nail - including having to make other coin devs the target of baseless accusations such as "lack of understanding" about cryptography.

It's cheap, unsupported nonsense of the most unimaginative kind but as long as you keep sticking to that line no-one else will have anything to worry about.

It's crazy how you misstate this. Let me ask you this: what has Darkcoin ever done for Bitcoin? You throw the "based on Bitcoin" card around, but what has it EVER contributed to the community that is responsible for 98% of its lines of code? On the other hand, Monero created the OpenAlias standard, and then went on to create and submit an implementation of the OpenAlias standard that is included in Electrum 2.0, directly contributing to the growth and usefulness of Bitcoin, despite Monero not sharing a single line of Bitcoin code. Hey - even Darkcoin could implement OpenAlias!

OpenAlias also goes directly against your "practical value" comment - it has given more practical value to the new cryptocurrency user than literally anything Darkcoin has done.

I guess the only cheap, unsupported nonsense in this thread is coming off of your keyboard.