Yeah I tend to agree with your last paragraph there. Idealism is needed in the world, and has significant benefits "below the surface" of one's life.
And he's right in the general thesis of "it's inevitable that there is a straying from the original principles". But the original principles never disappeared in Linux, nor Bitcoin (heavily overlapping in FOSS ofc)
nostr:nprofile1qqsxwkuyle67y94tj378gw8w2xw2wa6nwmwlqhddlwnz0z7sztsaw2qn2rdgc
You say that you tend to agree with the last paragraph of my reply. Should I then also infer that you don't agree with the second one where I compared favorably our different choices on bitcoin versus monero in terms of privacy?
I'm really asking, not trolling. I'm very much interested in privacy and I very much respect your opinions about privacy software.
2nd paragraph: I think it's just debatable. The basic mechanism you point to is clearly something that has to be taken into account (anon set size).
The ecash one is particularly interesting because, many years ago I used to be fond of pointing out: if you want information-theoretically perfect privacy, you need to use Chaum's ecash type scheme (digicash), except, it absolutely didn't work because it was centralized and so it just stopped existing. Clearly systems like zcash and monero made different, more nuanced tradeoffs. I continue to be doubtful about Chaumian mints. The new extra ingredient is Lightning, but debating the merits of that hybrid is more about LN than Chaumian cash imo.
Imo the value of Chaumian mints is in more in scenarios where anonymity is valuable for an ephemeral client server relationship. Examples: Tor, Lightning routing nodes, coinjoin servers or generally buying digital services from a persistent online entity.
> I continue to be doubtful about Chaumian mints.
Are those doubts related to the privacy that can be obtained through cashu or rather related to the custodial risks?
In passing, I'd like to thank you for all your work on Joinmarket. It's the coinjoin implementation that I always recommend.
Have you heard of any project working to use something akin to coinjoin but on lightning, cashu, liquid, etc? It seems like it would be a match made in heaven.
Thanks! I am mostly talking about custodialness, and central control. And it is also true that claims of really strong privacy are really hard in any system; in this case, since there is a central coordination point, that can be a reason those claims fail.
I think coinjoin is a natural fit with Lightning (dual funding, but not only that, e.g. batched opens).
homeboy is absolutely correct that censorship resistance cannot be maintained if the community doesnt care about it.
original principles may not have completely disappeared but they are in extremely short supply.
my bro is right to call it out.
I've never believed that the community is what counts. Anything that works as a currency is functioning to overcome the limitations of human community at larger scales. A currency that depends on community will eventually fail.
sorry but it all comes back to people in the end.
I don't care how game theoretically perfect the protocol is, it exists in the context of people.
if those people have different values than the network represents,
they will either use it in a different, unintended way or they will use something else that accords with their values and the network will fail.
Let's take a networking protocol: is it in that sense "made of people"? I'd say mostly no: it just defines behaviours that any participant can follow. When it comes to money, the nuance is I guess that since we have to have a *consensus* that's so global (now i think about it, DNS does have a similar problem, hence namecoin, lol), the behaviour of people at large scale (think 51% attack) matters, and so, we want a system that has the minimum expectation of "good" behaviour (so we expect something like economic rational actors). Now I think about it like this, it's obvious that one can go further than what I just said before: Bitcoin only really works *because* community doesn't work, at scale: if enough bitcoin users coordinated properly such that they trusted each other fully, they could steal from the minority. So Bitcoin's design reflects (correctly imo) the failure of the concept of community, at scales >> Dunbar's number.
are you using "community" to mean "people motivated by a common but unrelated interest?"
because I think it just "the users" or people with skin in the game
so if behaving in an *economically rational way* means "maximizing Bitcoin holdings" you get one behavior
if it means "sell dickbutts on the chain for fiat" you get a very different behavior
both of these can be considered "economically rational"
but the deciding question is does the community (users) place a higher economic value on censorship resistant transactions than on crypto dickbutts
which is why maintaining the core principles homeboy references in the video is important.
I've seen privacy-loving people "using monero" with their crypto.com account. Others using it on Windows. You can find misguided people everywhere.
its true š
but sending monero straight from an exchange is still more private than using a transparent chain.
I will take better over worse.
I think it depends on how you use your onchain UTXOs afterwards. Are they coinjoined into lightning and then spent through cashu, liquid, etc.
But the number one low-hanging fruit for privacy, imho, is avoiding a centralized echange which requires KYC.
Then, the next low-hanging privacy fruit is what goes around any spend : using a pseudonym, private mailboxes, private email addresses, etc.
I don't understand what you mean by "use your onchain utxo afterward"
maybe I just dont know how crypto dot com works.
I mean that if you withdraw from an exchange through bitcoin on-chain (not through lightning or liquid), you'll have a UTXO (unspent transaction output) on the bitcoin blockchain, but what you then do with that UTXO will determine how much privacy you lose or regain.
sure
but the point I was making was that
even if you send monero straight from the CEX, a 3rd party doesn't know where it goes.
so while using a CEX or Windows or whatever isn't ideal, they still have some privacy guarantees.
on a transparent chain if you seek privacy its at least clear how you did it.
I'm not sure. nostr:nprofile1qythwumn8ghj7ct5d3shxtnwdaehgu3wd3skuep0qyt8wumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgtcqyqsc8628tpyp6rcjf77e83tve2j9ulj5tnht34fgfrucy5l5j7uh2r2aejt has an ongoing challenge with Monero users and seems to be able to trace a lot of things :
lol
nostr:nprofile1qqszrqlfgavys8g0zf8mmy79dn92ghn723wwawx49py0nqjn7jtmjagpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wchszyrhwden5te0dehhxarj9ekk7mf0qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uynmh4h and I have an ongoing discussion
he likes to call it "tracing" because saying
"the sender of a transaction knows the destination"
doesnt sound very impressive.
but that all that stupid "challenge" of his shows.
it isnt "tracing monero."
he just thinks its funny to make work for other people.
But that would mean that the CEX could see where the moneto went, no?
thats correct š
they know the first hop but not where it goes after that.
Do you know of work (research) I could look at that might compare monero and lightning+cashu privacy?
not really direct comparisons no.
it doesn't make a lot of sense for researchers to compare them since its apples to oranges.
but theres lot of individual comparisons, particularly of monero and LN.
I thought i had a bookmark with a list of LN papers but looks like it was lost.
I haven't read this but Juraj is usually right on
A bit on tracing Monero transactions
https://youtu.be/-sTT84Up7FY?si=6SS2_wvCk3aDgMh3
I've written a bit about Cashu as well:
https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2025/03/18/cashu-bitcoin-freebanking/
thanks!
> doesn't sound very impressive
What it sounds like to me a serious privacy flaw that lands people in jail
> it isn't tracing
It clearly is. Tracing a cryptocurrency payment is following it from its source to its destination. Monero makes this trivial for the sender, it provides him with a cryptographic proof-of-trace in every transaction (the view key). Lightning makes it impossible under some circumstances.
dude stfu with this horseshit.
if I send you a letter I didn't "trace" the mail.
even if the receiver shares a super secret one time hashed mail drop with the sender and the letter success arrives, it isn't "tracing".
the recipient told the sender where to send the fucking thing.
you want to change what words mean so you can FUD harder.
GTFO with your bullshit.
shitcoin monero is an unimportant crypto in 2025.
Idk what that is, I've only heard of groundbreaking anonymity blockchain Monero
Oh yeah, I've heard of that! I use lightning because its tor-like routing protocol offers really good privacy protections if you run a node. Monero is that one cryptocurrency that's traceable by default, right?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/chainalysis-leak-monero-traceability
Lightning is traceable by default too, every cryptocurrency is
Then do it
A lightning invoice is attached
Why don't you pay it and tell me (1) what pubkey received the money (2) what its total balance is?
I'll do the same for monero if you like. Give me any xmr address, I will pay it and tell you (1) what pubkey received the money (2) what its total balance is
lightning:lnbc10103770p1p5rsh7mpp5dnjxpfcnt769h8l4xf7wxl3lsuluvf2f25qzjextw0k492mxq7ashp598ktapplptj7q0jg65flj8texw4rul208lljstt84adxp88kakxscqzdyxqyz5zpsp52h2ntu5c5luklflx53su43x202m2fukujrykmq3zcseaxmtjdq0s9qxpqysgqrflep2rykypncpenk6gt9flssljt9sdz2akgh6wq7s6te0ree20pa8dttqjp330fh66rscrpjn249ujw6tynnutzpf87prtncr5f88gp9eglxh
What makes you think I'm that kind of fed?
I don't think you're a fed
Now guess which IP address I am using.
People here often lack the tools for tracing. Quite different from governments which invest in specialized teams dedicated to that purpose and with legal power to force operators to disclose IP address information.
These same governments even offered quite a large bounty to break Monero privacy and yet failed (look it up)
So I probably can't do what you're suggesting
Neither could a fed
The criminal kind of fed can
Nah
Wishful thinking isn't good protection
Big difference between lightning and monero: you, a random nostr user, admit you don't have the resources to trace a lightning payment. I, a random nostr user, can provably trace a monero payment. Anyone can, because monero is designed to be trivially sender-traceable.
Monero is surveillance money. I recommend using lightning.
Trace a Monero payment then, moron
Lightning works
No one paid this invoice yet but if some one does can use this tool https://github.com/andrerfneves/lightning-decoder
Payee pubkey https://terminal.lightning.engineering/explore/0371d1be108e08d70ec12302abce6e927b0d3b687468ed00c9536ec6e683273e42
I used trampoline routing with a decoy pubkey. Meaning you got the wrong recipient. The actual recipient was Tating Turnup on nostr; Epic Astronaut merely runs a routing node. (See lnproxy.org for more on how this works.) Meaning if you were a chain analyst, you are now stuck watching the wrong pubkey! You've been led on a wild goose chase. Even if Epic Astronaut closes his channel, you'll be following the wrong person's money. Decpy pubkeys is a trick lightning can do but monero can't.
Rent free in your heads š
