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Monero

fible1

Well-known member
Dash Core Group
Masternode Owner/Operator
Well, you have to remember, fible1, that it comes at a price. For whatever reason, either because DS has a smaller foot print, or because people only use it if they have need, and use it as much (that is number of rounds) as needed. Either way, our blockchain is 1/4 the size of a similar coin, monero, which is 2/3 as old as Dash. And we would be destroying the ability to trim the blockchain in the future.

So, although it's very clever, it may not scale for long.

However, this could be used in some sort of side chain for other uses? What that might be, I don't know but it's important to keep these tools in the toolbox as you may have need for them in the future!

And frankly, I think us users, not the programmers, but users, are the ones that sometimes come up with the best ideas due to need, so we must educate ourselves :D

Ok, I'm still brain dead, I may need to step back before editing my attempt at explaining cryptonote, LOL In the meantime, please know it's not quite right, if you could read the expert comments afterwards, that should help :)

Hey :),

I'll grant I'm no expert on cryptonote but I've read pretty much everything there is to read on the net about it, including both white papers, core discussions and as much of the Monero forums as I could stomach.

The core benefit I see is that obfuscation is automatic. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a lot of people don't use DS and it most likely has to do with it being slow (days) and a bit confusing; both negative factors for on boarding.

I won't argue about blockchain bloat, that's pretty clear; but like I said on another thread, the era of normal users running full nodes is nearing it's end. You cant expect users to DL a a few dozen Terabytes of blockchain in ten years. I suspect that service providers will take on that burden and users will run "lite" clients so from my point of view blockchain bloat has clear solutions; and in the end, is the service providers issue, not the consumers.

I originally got on board Dash because of DS, but after having used the system for several months, I think it's pretty clear we need something more transparent. New users often complain "I've had DS on since yesterday and it still hasn't finished!", and "how does this work?". I myself stopped using DS when I tried to anonymity 600 Dash, 5 rounds deep, I stopped it after 1 week.

Wouldn't it be so much better if anonymity was built in?

So granted it may not be the cryptonote model, but I think we can likely do better than the current implementation in terms of it being more transparent for the user.

Hope that helps :)

:)

Pablo.

PS: I have a strong feeling Monero is vaporware. My bullshit meter went "Code Red" every time I read so called "experts" who tried to explain the tech, so please don't think I want us to clone Monero tech, I am merely making the point that their vision of anonymity vis a vis it being transparent and automatic is better than our implementation. Granted ours works and theirs is in the air, but it's worth it to understand transparent and instantly untraceable payments are the future, not coinjoin.
 
PS: I have a strong feeling Monero is vaporware.

From urbandictionary:
  • Vaporware:
Software that has been delayed so long that it will never be released.


Since Monero is fully working as intended since more than a year, the term "vaporware" doesn't seem appropriate.
Pablo, could you be so kind to substantiate what supports your "strong feeling"?
 
From urbandictionary:
  • Vaporware:
Software that has been delayed so long that it will never be released.


Since Monero is fully working as intended since more than a year, the term "vaporware" doesn't seem appropriate.
Pablo, could you be so kind to substantiate what supports your "strong feeling"?

You are correct the term vaporware is not correct for the entire project, I apologize for that. Regarding my "strong feeling" some factors include:

1. The White paper by Surae Noether which is meant as a third party audit and annotation of the the original white paper (which I will get to in a sec). It is not a professional audit, it reads like a puff piece in most places. White papers are academic presentations, this paper attempts to make a case for Monero instead of being a presentation of the tech. Why is this important? In my experience, cons usually try to have "third party authorities" vouch for them.

I would like to add that the original paper, by Van Saberhagen, is by and large a well executed, very well thought out and documented piece of writing.

Fun activity: compare the quality of both White Papers and see which one you believe was written by an engineer and which one by someone trying to lead opinion,

2. Further, who is Surae Noether? He doesn't seem to have a rep in the community like Kristov Atlas does. I could not find a lot about him outside Monero.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/31jz5u/three_monero_devs_with_the_surname_noether/

http://1.hidemyass.com/ip-3/encoded/czovL2dldG1vbmVyby5vcmcva25vd2xlZGdlLWJhc2UvcGVvcGxl

2. .Fuzzy new algorithm described by Von Saberhagen, Noether says:

"It’s absolutely unconscionable to to come up with a new “Proof of Work Al-
gorithm” and then refrain from including any sort of pseudocode to describe that
algorithm. Upon which. Your entire. Coin. Is. Based. Ugh."

I'm not sure if/how this was resolved on the current Monero Code but it bears making the point.
.
3. The belief and publicity given to an "unamed large, Finish corporation who is buying Monero at high rates and already owns 1%". This is another normal trick of the con, the "secret investor" scam. It lends credence to the coin that a "corporation would invest in it" and that it is a "large and foreign corporation". I could also claim a large Afgahani corporation is buying Dash and holding 20%; noobs will rally on that but it doesn't mean anything to the coin except that interested parties are manipulation the market. This seems to be a widespread belief from my review of the forums and makes this an important point.

4. There seems to be a cutlure of "closed source" in Monero. I read a couple of posts on the Monero forum regarding the public wallets (not the full node). People who ask to review the code of this wallet, which is meant for day to day users are told "hey, did you pay for development? go build your own!" That is in opposition to Dash and Bitcoin where the most used wallets are open source, think BlockChain,info, et al.

5. There seems to be a working coin, although I am not sure whether the relevant parts of the ecosystem have been made open source/.

6. And finally, after 10 years working with digital currencies, I think the whole thing smells. Don't get me wrong, I am not going by gut here, I just see a lot of what I have seen in other projects that have gone under. Do I think the whole community is rotten? NO, not at all, I think a lot of people honestly believe in Monero, and like I said, the tech AS DESCRIBED in the original White Paper is very interesting, but I see a lot of manipulation going around without the relevant issues being vetted.

Would I like to be proven wrong? Hell Yeah! I love Monero's concept of anonymity and have said so in several places, and I understand that if you look at most coins you will see a lot of these red flags, but it is the accumulation of them that bothers me.

Hope that helps :).

Pablo.
 
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Thank you Pablo for your questions. I'll come back here tomorrow. (both for a matter of time, and because I can't post anything with links in the first day after registration...).
:)
 
Damn it!! Looks like you'll have to wait one more day, I am sorry, the limits require strictly more than a day. :(

Sorry, you were not able to save since the content contained a link

For this Forum, before you can create content with links, you must first meet the minimum requirements

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The number of posts you have created must exceed: 2 (Yours: 2)
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Damn it!! Looks like you'll have to wait one more day, I am sorry, the limits require strictly more than a day. :(

Sorry, you were not able to save since the content contained a link

For this Forum, before you can create content with links, you must first meet the minimum requirements

Minimum Requirements
The number of posts you have created must exceed: 2 (Yours: 2)
The number of days you have been registered must exceed: 1 (Yours: 1)

Feel free to PM me the info :).

Pablo.
 
Good points, Pablo. Especially, point 4. I cannot figure out why there is still no decent Monero wallet, something the user normally starts with.

Apart from the technical aspects, I also do not see why a Monero Core dev finds it appropriate to troll Dash on Bitcointalk. Instead of investing his precious time into new cool features in Monero. Maybe I miss something...
 
I have to split the post, the forum doesn’t allow me to write a single long one!

Important preliminary note: "Monero" and "whoever released the cryptonote whitepaper" are two *completely* separate entities.

The cryptonote people also released "bytecoin"; though the exact nature of the link between bytecoin and cryptonote is not completely clear, probably a team split of some sort, or somebody got his hand on the new tech and decided greedily to make something scammy out of it, or... Anyway, bytecoin was the first actual implementation of the cryptonote idea. The issue was that it was ~80% premine (and trying to hide it!); the fact that it was not honest is the reason Monero came to existence and flourished. An investigation about the cryptonote/Bytecoin scam can be found here.

The distinction between "Cryptonote/bytecoin" and "Monero" is important, in my answers below I'll try to make clear what came from cryptonote and what came from the Monero team/community.



1. The White paper by Surae Noether which is meant as a third party audit and annotation of the the original white paper (which I will get to in a sec). It is not a professional audit, it reads like a puff piece in most places. White papers are academic presentations, this paper attempts to make a case for Cryptonote instead of being a presentation of the tech. Why is this important? In my experience, cons usually try to have "third party authorities" vouch for them.
I would like to add that the original paper, by Van Saberhagen, is by and large a well executed, very well thought out and documented piece of writing.
Fun activity: compare the quality of both White Papers and see which one you believe was written by an engineer and which one by someone trying to lead opinion,

Context: This audit was made/mandated by the Monero team, in order to assess whether we could rely on the promising cryptographic principles detailed in the cryptonote whitepaper (authors unknown, and since they were involved in the bytecoin scam, it's pretty natural to have doubts and a wish to double-cross-check everything).

What is professional or not is subjective and I respect your opinion. In my eyes, the review is very much what I would expect as a review of a scientific paper, especially if the idea is to check whether the crypto is sound or if there are some shady aspect/potential backdoors of some sort. I am a researcher in computer science in academia, though I didn't have the expertise to check the cryptographic/mathematical aspects of the paper. I welcomed both the idea of a review and the outcome of it.
Again, this is subjective. Let me simply add that other peoples who also studied the cryptonote whitepaper were Andrew Poelstra and Gregory Maxwell. Together they used this knowledge in their paper. Subsequently, Gregory Maxwell&co within the Blockstream company proposed the "confidential transaction" sidechain concept, a so-called "major improvement for Bitcoin privacy and fungibility", assuming you use this sidechain, if this sidechain ever comes to existence.
Yes you read it well, the cutting-edge state-of-the-art way to improve Bitcoin privacy and therefore fungibility from a 30M$ funded company employing several bitcoin core devs is very largely inspired by cryptonote.

(Adaptive block size proposals floating around are also inspired of it, see here, but it's yet another topic...).




2. Further, who is Surae Noether? He doesn't seem to have a rep in the community like Kristov Atlas does. I could not find a lot about him outside Monero.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/31jz5u/three_monero_devs_with_the_surname_noether/
http://1.hidemyass.com/ip-3/encoded/czovL2dldG1vbmVyby5vcmcva25vd2xlZGdlLWJhc2UvcGVvcGxl

Kristov Atlas is a real name of somebody making a living in the Bitcoin world.
Surae Noether is the nickname of a person who works in academia and for some personal reasons doesn't want to reveal his real name. I can understand it, being associated with a cryptocurrency might not be easy in a possibly pretty conservative/competitive environment, when we frequently see all this negative mainstream articles about Bitcoin. Anyway, it really doesn't matter, because of point 1. above.
Surae Noether and other people involved in the research side of things are doing a very high-quality job by the way, anonymous or not, anybody is free to review it. You can read their reports here: https://getmonero.org/research-lab/
All information about the core team members (pseudonymous or with RL identities) can be find here: https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/people



2. .Fuzzy new algorithm described by Von Saberhagen, Noether says:
"It’s absolutely unconscionable to to come up with a new “Proof of Work Al-
gorithm” and then refrain from including any sort of pseudocode to describe that
algorithm. Upon which. Your entire. Coin. Is. Based. Ugh."
I'm not sure if/how this was resolved on the current Monero Code but it bears making the point.

You are right it's one of the "weakness" of the cryptonote whitepaper, it describes what the proof-of-work function *should* do, but not how to do it. The actual proof-of-work used in Monero comes from bytecoin, which fulfills pretty well the idea: reduce the gap between each technology CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC. You can read an interesting story about how the bytecoin code was voluntarily crippled (to hide the 80% premine...), and how people quickly improved it during the first month of existence of Monero here.



3. The belief and publicity given to an "unamed large, Finish corporation who is buying Monero at high rates and already owns 1%". This is another normal trick of the con, the "secret investor" scam. It lends credence to the coin that a "corporation would invest in it" and that it is a "large and foreign corporation". I could also claim a large Afgahani corporation is buying Dash and holding 20%; noobs will rally on that but it doesn't mean anything to the coin except that interested parties are manipulation the market. This seems to be a widespread belief from my review of the forums and makes this an important point.

This quote is from Risto Pietila, who is a well-known businessman and a member of the Bitcoin community since 2011 (I think? I arrived a bit later...). He was always very vocal and passionate about what he believes are good investments. It was the same with Bitcoin, you can read all his posts about Bitcoin from the old years... He got enough money from his Bitcoin investment to buy a castle (that he called the Bitcoin castle). This castle is now a hotel and a famous crypto professional/conference hub. You can accuse him of many thing, but not of being secretive. Besides, he's not associated with the Monero team, he's just a supporter since very early on. I believe Monero is the only coin he owns besides Bitcoin, he explained in details why, you can read more about it, here.
Anyway, post from a single person should not be interpreted as a trend of a community, be it from R. Pietila or anybody else.



4. There seems to be a cutlure of "closed source" in Monero. I read a couple of posts on the Monero forum regarding the public wallets (not the full node). People who ask to review the code of this wallet, which is meant for day to day users are told "hey, did you pay for development? go build your own!" That is in opposition to Dash and Bitcoin where the most used wallets are open source, think BlockChain,info, et al.

All monero wallet software are open source. Because of this post (from a competing coin's developer), you are referring to mymonero.com, a company operating an online plateform that similarly to blockchain.info, allows you to use an online wallet without ever revealing your private key to their server. The client-side code is open source, the server-side is not. This was not developped by the core team, it is a private initiative that cost money to develop, and as such I think it's reasonable they don't want to release all their efforts right away. Using them is free anyway. It never knows your spend key and thus cannot spend or steal your funds. If you're paranoid, then just use one of the open-source local software.

Also I believe you are mistaken, blockchain.info is closed source. Otherwise we would have helped them to fix their broken software by now... ;)

See next post...
 
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... follow-up of previous post.

5. There seems to be a working coin, although I am not sure whether the relevant parts of the ecosystem have been made open source.

See answer above in 4. Commercial entities are free to open the sources or not, that is entirely their choice. For the rest, everything in monero is open source, for instance see:
(Being open-source is probably the reason why Monero received sponsorship from well-known tech companies listed here: https://getmonero.org/getting-started/donate/)



6. And finally, after 10 years working with digital currencies, I think the whole thing smells. Don't get me wrong, I am not going by gut here, I just see a lot of what I have seen in other projects that have gone under. Do I think the whole community is rotten? NO, not at all, I think a lot of people honestly believe in Monero, and like I said, the tech AS DESCRIBED in the original White Paper is very interesting, but I see a lot of manipulation going around without the relevant issues being vetted.

I don't know what to add about that. I can maybe try to understand your feeling: the Monero history and community is the most honest one I've witnessed in crypto since Bitcoin, but there is a lot of "reverse trolling" going on, on bitcointalk especially, where random accounts create dozens of threads to support Monero in the most over-optimistic and pedantic possible ways, so that it becomes extremely annoying to every readers. If you were actually involved in Monero, you'd know like I do that these accounts are not from the Monero community, but trying to harm it. The Monero community is by far the most balanced, tempered, anti-pump, and educated one I've seen in the crypto space.

Sorry for the long post(s), I hope I helped to clarify things at least!

Personally the reason I am into Monero is because I got fascinated by the cryptonote technology as I haven't been since I discovered Bitcoin. And Monero is the first fairly launched cryptocurrency that is based on it, so I stick to that. With time I also found out the core team is great, honest, anti-pump, and the community is typically of relative high-quality.

Privacy-by-default/transparency-on-demand, achieved at the cryptographic level rather than through "mixing obscurity on top of a fully transparent blockchain", is astonishingly powerful. Disclosure for honesty: I am binaryFate on bitcointalk and other places.

I appreciate the possibility of a factual discussion about the technology, and especially your and TanteStefana's willingness to understand the aspects of it, thank you both for the open-mindness! :)
 
Hey so-called-expert,
Thank you for the clarification, I actually learned a bunch about Monero. Allow me to annotate my thoughts a bit:

1. I was aware that the original Cryptonote White Paper was separate from Monero. I was not aware of the bytecoin connection and the pre-mine, that was an interesting point and puts things into context. I do disagree with you regarding whether the Monero review paper is professionally written being subjective, there are clear standards to academic writing which his paper does not meet. It is clearly not objective and geared toward convincing instead of presenting fact.

2. Hmmm. I'm honestly not comfortable without knowing who Surae Noether is. Why would a researcher hide his identity? You mention he is in academia; where in academia, what are his credentials? I appreciate the fact that someone outside crypto could bring in a "fresh" view but we are being asked to take the word of someone whose credentials we do not know, and whose leanings we are unaware of. Also, being me, what stops me from just making him up?

Although a lot of the points you make made a difference in my thinking this is one of the biggest red flags I still see.

3. What I understand here is that the algorithm is not described in the White Paper but is implemented into Monero, is that accurate? Could you post a link to where I can get some more info one this? I am actually quite interested in learning how this works.

4. I have to say I am unaware of this gentleman but a quick Google search results in this accusation of mental illness, and general negative rep (just google Risto Pietlla scam):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=793787.0

Again, it's weird. Let's say this is a rumor started by this gentleman, it still seems to have considerable penetration in the forums. But I do concede that, given this guys perceived negative rep, this is not enough to damn the coin in itself. It is telling however that he has such a big voice in the community.

5-6. Since you posted the links to the GUI wallets, I concede this point. Weird I did not find this in my review.

As far as I know Blockchain.info is open source, please se ehere; https://github.com/blockchain

7. Again, this is not subjective, I am basing my opinion on the facts already discussed.

I think we will just have to agree to disagree :). I did learn a bunch from your posts, but like I said, tI still think here is something going on here but I do suspect I am not going to change your mind. I do hope you found something to chew on with my presentation as well though as I did pick up interesting information from yours.

I do plan to continue my research into Monero, it's proposed tech is really fascinating.

Pablo.
 
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I have been watching xmr and appreciate you have posted dialogue on the subject, here in altcoin.
Question... If the programming has now proven itself? does it really make a difference who Surae Noether actually is ?
I have been under the impression it's all about recognition of the algorythm.. Am I incorrect ?
Mentioned above, the possibility of manipulation of a coin with a smaller market cap is a possibility and matter for concern.
As a newbie, most of my review, to date, has been concerning DASH. It seems to be well thought out and presentations inspire confidence.
I have much to learn, yet feel digital implementation of P2P is a great thing.
Best
rc
 
I have been watching xmr and appreciate you have posted dialogue on the subject, here in altcoin.
Question... If the programming has now proven itself? does it really make a difference who Surae Noether actually is ?
I have been under the impression it's all about recognition of the algorythm.. Am I incorrect ?
Mentioned above, the possibility of manipulation of a coin with a smaller market cap is a possibility and matter for concern.
As a newbie, most of my review, to date, has been concerning DASH. It seems to be well thought out and presentations inspire confidence.
I have much to learn, yet feel digital implementation of P2P is a great thing.
Best
rc

Hey Rusty :),
I don't think I can provide any more information on my thoughts on Monero than I did above; I decided against investing in it and have not been following developments in the community particularly closely (I have to keep the number of coins I monitor small for sanity's sake). Keep in mind this discussion is pretty out of date.

As to your specific question of why it is important to know who actually wrote the white paper, well, its like reading a medical paper on the cure for cancer, it really makes a difference who wrote it in terms of how believable the claims are and how replicable the results. Its always suspect when people who claim to have extraordinary results do not present themselves. Further, as I am not a developer and can not read the code to see for myself, the authority of the White paper to explain to me what this is all about is paramount.

Could I be judging Surae Noether harshly here? Possibly. My main job as a crypto investor is to identify red flags and minimize my risk, and not knowing who wrote the paper which backs up your entire coin is a red flag, especially if you advertise this person as a top level academic. Also, I suspect this is part of a pattern of aggressive marketing that Monero has become known for.

I am not going to rehash the discussion here as I don't think its productive to get into the Monero situation all over again. If you wanna talk in more detail, feel free to email me :).

Pablo.
 
Tnx Fible, I did not mean to rehash, just clarify a few points. I'm always interested in options, and xmr was interesting... Your presentation/thread was the first I have read on it... I will review more as I come across it. I am principally interested in the DASH concept andfeel it does have great potential.
I do think it should all be in the algorythm... that should be the control upon anything that is done with that process?
... how to explain? ... pretty much as a projectile released, it follows it's path until it's energy is expended, whether that is upon an intended target, or for naught. (Gosh, I hope that works! lol) ...as an explanation...

Best
rc
 
Is it possible for some of the technical guys to explain in one sentence why dash's anonymity solution is superior to that of Monero?
 
Is it possible for some of the technical guys to explain in one sentence why dash's anonymity solution is superior to that of Monero?

I am not technical guy - so my one sentence won't be technical ;):
"The number of users with whom you're mixing - is more important for real anonymity than the way of mixing (technology)", and Dash has more users now and will be even more (most?) popular with Evolution coming soon..."
 
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