Replying to ede3d957...

If you maintain your own bitcoind software the mathematical assumptions in Monero won't be over your top. Yoy just need some reading.
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Nyoro~n 1y ago

The mathematics/cryptography behind monero is way over the top which is even more reason for me to stay away from it. Not all mathematics has to leave the blackboard.

The Venn diagram of post-doc mathematicians and privacy advocates also leads me to believe that theres really not many users who actually know what's going on. Bitcoin on the other hand, I truly think almost anyone can understand.

Piling on top of that, monero as it stands today is smaller in BTC terms than its cryptonote predecessors (i.e. it wasn't unheard of for those tokens to fetch many million of sats each) and hasn't offered much other than ever growing excuses to hardfork. As it stands, it appears to be designed to hardfork in perpetuity, relying on pinky promises masquerading as math

I've done plenty of reading over the years, perhaps the conclusion is that everyone wants to be..... thankful for today 😉

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Saberhagen The Nameless 1y ago

There's nothing "over the top" about Moneros tech. It's based on cryptography from 70s-90s (Diffie–Hellman key exchanges and commitment schemes)

The venn diagram of "mathematicians and privacy advocates" AKA cryptographers

There's at least tens of millions of Bitcoin users. ~20,000-50,000 Bitcoin nodes. A fraction of that previous fraction are more than simpler node runners who actually pay attention to whats going on. Vast majority is obviously not capable and/or interested in understanding/verifying for themselves even with Bitcoins "simple" math.

Ability to fork is the whole point of FOSS. You can't control what software individuals choose to run. That includes Bitcoin software.

As normie Bitcoiners continue to dilute ideological Bitcoiners theres no guarantee the economic majority will stay on BTC in the future. It's easy to imagine governments having a "regulatory friendly" fork using carrots and sticks (i.e. tax breaks, credits, heavy taxation or even criminalization of BTC use, etc) to incentivize normies into taking their NGU and hashpower with them to that fork. Without that what is left of BTC? Bitcoins advantages dont extend into permissioned white markets where most of BTC price, transactions, and liquidity comes from today (CEXs, ETFs, corpo mining, etc)

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Nyoro~n 1y ago

Case in point, you have no idea whats going on. Or if you do, go ahead and go around in circles explaining the merits of ed22519 over secp256k1. Meanwhile there's payjoin to play with both curves.

In the context of over the top math: Keccak-256 was established in 2015 (AFTER your token launched, crazy, no?), not the 70s. It's use for the last decade has mainly been for token projects. (nicknamed SHA-3). You pass around a bunch of coins represented in hashes that only a classroom of people knew how to produce a short decade ago. Coupled with the inability to validate the circulating supply due to lack of transparency...(i.e. your cryptonote predecessors) no red flags go off? You don't think you're acting a bit insane when Bitcoin continues to tick along?

Going along with this, users are under the impression that the ASIC resistance of the CPU-mined token comes from RandomX/CryptoNight/whatever-its-called. Memory hard or not, NOTHING is ASIC resistant; Taiwanese are very clever🥳 . Your token's ASIC resistence comes from lack of market interest and constant top-down hard forks. ASICs are a good thing -- real demand from supporters and/or attackers

PS: if we're being pedantic, the Venn diagram would be cypherpunk-aligned cryptographers (again, tiny). Cryptographers aren't always privacy advocates 🥹

Bitcoin is money, it'll work in all markets (black, white, and everything in between). There's only a finite amount of Bitcoin and more ideological Bitcoiners each day.... it doesn't go backwards What will be left? Them.

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Saberhagen The Nameless 1y ago

First you say the advantages of Bitcoin are because it's so simple to understand the math for users...

Now you're wanting me to go in circles with you explaining the intricacies of ed22519 VS secp256k1 as if most users would understand the cryptography underlying Bitcoin and not just trust the few people who understand it to tell them it's ok.

LOL

Choose an argument bro

I was talking about general protocols when referring to 70s-90s not specific curves or hash functions.

It's fair and factually true to say that Moneros chosen curve and hash function is newer and not as battle-tested.

They both have their pros and cons. i.e. SHA-2 security is less "future proof" and more likely to be compromised before SHA-3, less versatile, less efficient, etc

Red flags like Bitcoins chosen curve and hash function having heavy involvement from the NSA? 🚩🚩🚩

But that would be stupid of me to say that automatically means anything by itself. The same way the age of a curve or hash function doesn't automatically mean anything by itself.

What is your response to the node runner issues I brought up? Being able to do something, but never doing it, is functionally the same as not being able to do it.

Payjoin is obfuscation. Obfuscation is weaker privacy than encryption. You seem too intelligent to accidentally leave that out.

I never contested that Bitcoin isn't ticking along. Monero is ticking along too. Why is that relevant?

RandomX has different advantages over ASICs and vice versa. Accessibility, ubiquity, plausible deniability (i.e. energy draw, noise, heat, everyone knows what you're doing/going to do with that ASIC miner you bought, etc)

PS: True, fair enough 👍

Again, Bitcoins advantages DO NOT extend into white markets. If you're going to ask permission to transact and follow the rules (thats what i means to operate on white markets) you might as well use fiat for that. Bitcoin is just a slower, less accepted, expensive (in tx fees and tax liabilities), less private version of fiat in that scenario. Worse in every way.

Normies will always outnumber ideological anything by definition...

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Nyoro~n 1y ago

I'm not making an argument when asking you to compare signature schemes (you brought up something irrelevant and I clarified for you that it would go nowhere, you're welcome). I was being helpful to help you get your terminology straight.

People who don't run nodes cant be 100% sure the Bitcoin they hold is real or have the unencumbered ability to broadcast transactions to the rest of the network. People who don't run nodes aren't actually using Bitcoin to its fullest extent, even if they hold their own keys. It's not ideology, it's just the way things are, a necessity. No permission necessary. It's a learning process everyone goes through, and not going anywhere.

Payjoin is not privacy by obfuscation, obfuscation would be sending Bitcoin in random amounts over and over again to yourself as privacy measure (this doesn't work because of input heuristics). Payjoin is a protocol to construct bitcoin transactions.

Payjoin allows users to break input heuristics by allowing users to coordinate how to use inputs from multiple parties in transactions, securely. (I brought it up because it uses the similar ECDH signature schemes "from the 70s-90s" you listed). Does it solve "privacy"? of course not (theres other heuristics), but it's an incremental improvement addressing a need; another option to construct transactions which wasn't available before.

Privacy means a lot of things. What I think you possibly are trying to get at is the transparency of all transction that happen on Bitcoin being out in the open makes for bad privacy. That's just the nature of the design and has little to do with signature schemes or hashing algorithms. Privacy isn't a feature of the base layer (utxos), and the idea is to build privacy tools in protocols using the existing utxo set instead of going out and build a whole new token. Amounts of all utxos are out in the open in order for anyone to independently validate that supply and issuance schedule are being followed and not being changed without anyone knowing.

Personally "Use this token if you want privacy" doesn't make sense to me. Cryptonote tokens don't have the same assurances.

Speaking of obfuscation, perhaps that applies to RandomX alongside countless other memory intensive PoW schemes. The claims you made that those PoW schemes have advantages in accessibility, ubiquity, plausible deniability (strange selection btw) and declaring those schemes as means to control energy draw, noise, or heat is nonsense. Those schemes exist to obfuscate energy use -- adding unnecessary complexity to a transparent process.

PoW is about energy placing a physical constraint on changing something in the digital space. Being able to channel as much energy as efficiently as possible is exactly how people came to iterating ASICs, and if you are at all worried that the developments in that space could "break" Bitcoin, its already been solved for you with the difficulty adjustment. (the only thing as scarce as block space on this planet, is wafer space)

Almost any device can be used to construct SHA256 hashes (you can even do it with pen and paper), ubiquitous and accessible which is why hashing can be performed anywhere by anyone -- starting with a humble single CPU. It's an even playing field. There's really nothing stopping you from buying top-of-the-line chips on your own and assembling your own device to fit your power envelope or trying your luck on your laptop. Someone recently found a block solo-mining with a BitAxe using like 5 BM1366 chips (~80 Watts of mining power) -- for reference an S21pro has 432 chips (3500 Watts).

I suppose there's not much point comparing Bitcoin and what remains of cryptonote tokens. I will admit I don't have the mental bandwidth to keep track of anything outside of Bitcoin. It may seem like your token is still ticking along, but it doesn't to me.

Happy to be proven wrong, don't let me stop you from holding more tokens

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Saberhagen The Nameless 1y ago

"People who don't run nodes aren't actually using Bitcoin to its fullest extent, even if they hold their own keys..."

I don't see how this detracts from my point that almost no Bitcoiners are capable and/or interested in understanding/verifying for themselves. They're just "trusting". So how is that different from Monero for those users (vast majority of Bitcoiners)?

"Payjoin is not privacy by obfuscation...Payjoin allows users to break input heuristics..."

In other words obfuscation...it's ownership obfuscation. If it wasn't, you wouldn't need to break heuristics because it wouldn't be possible to begin with i.e. Pedersen Commitments and Stealth Addresses used by Monero that actually hide information.

"Does it solve "privacy"? of course not (theres other heuristics), but it's an incremental improvement..."

I was never contesting that payjoins are an improvement. They surely are. But it is still weaker obfuscation. It is "leaky" and vulnerable to statistical analysis. This is why Monero sender privacy is weaker than it's other layers and is replacing ring signatures with FCMPs.

"That's just the nature of the design...Privacy isn't a feature of the base layer (utxos), and the idea is to build privacy tools in protocols using the existing utxo set instead of going out and build a whole new token..."

Okay, I get that. But "why" Bitcoin is designed this way doesn't change the fact that Bitcoin is not private.

"Personally "Use this token if you want privacy" doesn't make sense to me. Cryptonote tokens don't have the same assurances."

Ok, again, that last part has nothing to do with privacy.

"The claims you made that those PoW schemes have advantages in accessibility, ubiquity, plausible deniability (strange selection btw) and declaring those schemes as means to control energy draw, noise, or heat is nonsense. Those schemes exist to obfuscate energy use -- adding unnecessary complexity to a transparent process."

You're conflating the reasons RandomX was created with unintended advantages that emerged from it. I never claimed those were the reasons why RandomX was created.

You say they are strange and nonsense advantages, yet don't really elaborate why.

Having more accessible and ubiquitous general purpose mining + being able to "blend in" and have plausible deniability that you are mining, sound like massive advantages in adversarial environments to me.

i.e.

"Police raid a concealed #Bitcoin mining operation, initially mistaking it for an illegal marijuana farm due to the heat signature"

https://twitter.com/BitcoinNewsCom/status/1721359382745874489

It would be more honest to say both projects are optimizing for different goals and have advantages/disadvantages that come with them. The same way a hammer is not the ideal tool for every single task that exists.

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brito 1y ago

You could say the same line of arguments for bitcoin 10 years ago.

You wouldn't have bought bitcoin 10 years ago, you wouldn't buy monero now.

There is a reason why monero has replaced bitcoin everywhere except government-sponsored activities.