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Topic: [ANN] Zcoin (XZC) - Implementing ZKP privacy without trusted setup - page 188. (Read 663229 times)

sr. member
Activity: 1004
Merit: 268
Firo (FIRO)
Yes the Coinomi wallet works awesome because it's a light wallet implementation which we would also have again with the Bitcoin core upgrade. A Bitcoin core upgrade would have costed us another 1-2 months and have MTP branded as vaporware so yeah I know it may seem strange on the decision and if investors were not hounding us for MTP, it would have definitely been our preference to work on the core and wallet upgrade as it is our immediate priority right after this.

However Leoreinaux's work was quite substantial and has helped a lot. The latest pushes also fix a lot of things. Also aizensou's work on znode.io also helped people in getting it synced. I'm not denying that logically, it makes sense for core upgrade before MTP and again, immediate priority after this over all else. Also for those of you asking for Znodes, the core upgrade is also a prereq for that ;P.

If anything, the mistake was made many months ago in committing to a release date for an undertaking as big and complex as this and I can say safely EVERY SINGLE DAY, we get bombarded with when is MTP coming. Some of our internal release targets when we were communicating with some of the community to keep them informed were instead spread as deadlines so it put a lot of pressure on us. Lessons learnt:P
member
Activity: 107
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@zcoinofficial

1. I'm on your side because I have a financial motive to see Zcoin prosper, and because fundamentally I believe it has a compelling case becaues, A. Monero can't scale, and B. Risk of un-auditable inflation from an unknown bug makes Zcash crazy, once revealed its price can drop from whatever may be to zero.

2. You thought you would prioritise implementing a new egalitarian mining algorithm over having a working wallet? WTF? Having a new better algorithm rather than an old and perfectly working one was more important than having a wallet that works and syncs? I have no doubt people have lost coin from that wallet of yours, I know I nearly did. But that was a lower priority for you? I think Zcoin devs made an enormous mistake in this regard, although if the Coinomi wallet works - I haven't tested yet - Coinomi seem to have solved it for you.
sr. member
Activity: 1004
Merit: 268
Firo (FIRO)
Zcoin has massively underperformed last few months. It does seem to me the problem is the inflation rate and lack of demand. Actually, MTP we'll believe it when we see it. The claims of Eth integration mixing integration - any privacy coin can say hey, we're exploring Eth mixing, we're going to cash in on its rise too without any evidence or explanation as to how they're doing it, who's doing it, and a timeline for doing it. To me that's meaningless.

Again with the incentivised nodes, do we even know how many coins per node will be required? All this stuff about it being to secure the network - what nauseous lies. Master node systems - as Dash showed so clearly - are really about pumping the price by locking up demand. In that sense, I think it is a good idea.

To me the real concrete step of value this month has been the Coinomi wallet. That's great. The Zcoin wallet was a joke, and it shouldn't have taken as long as it has to fix (if it even is fixed, I was lucky to get me coin off the old one and would be scared to use the new one).

Let's see if the devs told the truth when they said Zcoin would list on new exchanges soon, or if that's just another attempt to mislead to raise the coin price to increase their dev cut.

All in all, worth holding some given 10x upside if things work out within next 12 months, whereas downside is probably $4 minimum I would have thought.

For the Ethereum integration mixing. We will show the work in progress soon. You probably missed that we got ourselves a Solidity developer, Tadhg Riordan (@riordant) that has worked on something similar for zk-SNARKs before https://zcoin.io/tadhg-riordan-joins-the-zcoin-team-as-solidity-developer-for-ethereum-mixer/. This isn't an immediate priority but it is something we are definitely working on and have dedicated some resources to it.

You are right that indeed the Zcoin wallet experience is not where we want to be. The Zcoin wallet issues on syncing we have identified stemmed from three main issues. The first is the old Bitcoin core which we are upgrading right after MTP as our push towards Znodes but to solve the immediate issue we ported some code over from 0.13 You can see the original Bitcoin core issue listed here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/4353. The second issue is the Zerocoin verification which we believe we have identified the bug and pushed a fix but it's still a WIP. The third is that multi threaded verification is not in just yet so only one core is being pushed so there's a lot of room of optimization here. This can be focused on a lot more after MTP release since it's a prereq for Znodes.

Previously with only Poramin, Saran and Aizensou busy working on MTP which is an immense undertaking since it was coded from the ground up, we didn't have the necessary resources to focus on everything we wanted to. Even djm34 helped us out a lot since his work is dependent on MTP being launched. However with more developers coming on board and Leandro (leoreinaux) joining the team we are rapidly expanding our dev team so that we can deal with several issues at once. The guys who have been following the code on our github on the MTPTest branch can see how much work  has been done where whole sections were totally reworked. We understand the frustration but you'll see it soon enough. The team thinks it's pretty soon Cheesy. Original development takes a lot more resources and we had to make a decision as to whether to focus on MTP which many people are waiting for or fix the wallet experience so it was a tough call then. We've learned from this especially when trying to estimate time needed for original development as compared to when porting code over from other projects. With more devs on board and people willing to work for us, this should sort itself out soon. Our cryptography advisor Tim Ruffing is also working on looking at libzerocoin.

For the incentivized nodes, it's more about the Zerocoin verification part and providing a layer to build on to work on things like a decentralized market place. Zerocoin verification currently is quite resource intensive and we wanted to offload that to incentivized nodes. This may become more important when we move to Sigma as despite the proof sizes we have yet to see the performance impact it has. The difference between our incentivized nodes scheme and other masternode like systems is that you don't have to trust any single masternode to maintain your privacy due to the cryptography we use. A Znode cannot 'spy' on your mixes due to the zk-proof unlike in coinjoin. We don't deny that it will help to provide price stability but it isn't the sole reason but that will be the easiest part to implement. Why we cannot provide exact figures as to how many coins you need for a Znode is simply because as you have seen, the price is so fluid and we need to cut a balance between keeping the bar high-ish without making it inaccessible. It will only be clearer once we get closer to release then we can make a more educated decision then. There have been some figures thrown around but yeah that's just speculation at the moment.
full member
Activity: 180
Merit: 100
I think we'll remain consolidating for a while until MTP is released, there's little reason to doubt this coin will be successful with such dedicated Devs behind it.

+1. I'm consolidating, and excited about this coin.

I'm looking forward to the growth and progress moving forward. Well done!

if somebody hasn't not yet got onboard. Please buy one ticket and get onboard quickly. This is the last chance for you.

member
Activity: 107
Merit: 10
Zcoin has massively underperformed last few months. It does seem to me the problem is the inflation rate and lack of demand. Actually, MTP we'll believe it when we see it. The claims of Eth integration mixing integration - any privacy coin can say hey, we're exploring Eth mixing, we're going to cash in on its rise too without any evidence or explanation as to how they're doing it, who's doing it, and a timeline for doing it. To me that's meaningless.

Again with the incentivised nodes, do we even know how many coins per node will be required? All this stuff about it being to secure the network - what nauseous lies. Master node systems - as Dash showed so clearly - are really about pumping the price by locking up demand. In that sense, I think it is a good idea.

To me the real concrete step of value this month has been the Coinomi wallet. That's great. The Zcoin wallet was a joke, and it shouldn't have taken as long as it has to fix (if it even is fixed, I was lucky to get me coin off the old one and would be scared to use the new one).

Let's see if the devs told the truth when they said Zcoin would list on new exchanges soon, or if that's just another attempt to mislead to raise the coin price to increase their dev cut.

All in all, worth holding some given 10x upside if things work out within next 12 months, whereas downside is probably $4 minimum I would have thought.
sr. member
Activity: 434
Merit: 250
I think we'll remain consolidating for a while until MTP is released, there's little reason to doubt this coin will be successful with such dedicated Devs behind it.

What is MTP?

https://zcoin.io/ufaqs/what-is-mtp/

"The MTP (Merkle Tree Proof) algorithm was devised by Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich from the University of Luxembourg in their paper published on the 11 June 2016 titled Egalitarian Computing. These are the same researchers who came up with Equihash that is currently used in ZCash and the Argon2 key derivation function."

I don't know much about the algorithm other than its based on Merkle Tree hashing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree

https://zcoin.io/what-is-mtp-merkle-tree-proof-and-why-it-is-important-to-zcoin/
says it should mean the coin is ASIC resistant, able to be mined on CPU/GPU, and provide quick verification for devices like smartphones.
Sound interesting and would be great to see this as the first coin to implement this.
sr. member
Activity: 368
Merit: 250
I think we'll remain consolidating for a while until MTP is released, there's little reason to doubt this coin will be successful with such dedicated Devs behind it.

+1. I'm consolidating, and excited about this coin.

I'm looking forward to the growth and progress moving forward. Well done!
sr. member
Activity: 700
Merit: 330
I think we'll remain consolidating for a while until MTP is released, there's little reason to doubt this coin will be successful with such dedicated Devs behind it.

What is MTP?
legendary
Activity: 1288
Merit: 1002
I think we'll remain consolidating for a while until MTP is released, there's little reason to doubt this coin will be successful with such dedicated Devs behind it.
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 1000
quarkchain.io
..it's nothing seen yet , just watch Smiley
full member
Activity: 138
Merit: 101
Woow great rising of zcoin, any news about MTP?

apparently testing is going well and nearing the implementation
member
Activity: 120
Merit: 10
Woow great rising of zcoin, any news about MTP?
legendary
Activity: 1414
Merit: 1001
To weird to live To rare to die
legendary
Activity: 1414
Merit: 1001
To weird to live To rare to die
We've passed Zcash's volume today.
sr. member
Activity: 1451
Merit: 258
Today is the resurrection of zcoin, may always be glorious!
full member
Activity: 129
Merit: 100

Terribly sorry, you are correct.

I have checked that all the parameters in the code now match the paper, except those related to the use of SHA256 for the branch hashes.

I still encourage you to deploy this new code to testnet at least a few weeks before trying to roll it out on mainnet.  It's a really huge (but positive) change from what is currently running on testnet.
legendary
Activity: 1260
Merit: 1046
market buy for 11k coins on bittrex  Shocked

Whales are coming in. Expect a rise within the coming days. Technically it is ready to fly to the moon. No hype. If you don't believe me do your own technical analyse and see if what i am saying is BS.

Also, watch for a video on youtube today. Someone one within the crypto world will upload a video on Zcoin today and why it's ready to go up. Wink

Yes. Zcoin is flying in the sky and it will continue to attract more big whales to join this party.
I could watch this fact 1 week ago and I joined this party. I hope it will hit 0.005btc again next week.
This coin will hit again 0.005 btc very soon, but it real value is more than ZCash (ZEC, 0,11 btc now)
full member
Activity: 138
Merit: 101
Did all you said but the same problem remains unfortunately... same error message and immediate crash

It is frustrating but not the end of the world... the price is going up today so im a happy camper.. I decided to store my zcoin on iconomi on my phone for now, just to have them off Bittrex...
Im even considering buying a new windows steered laptop and try to download that wallet... The weird thing is i have tried this now on my macbook and macbook air and this problem occurs on both macs...

I remember btw i had this same problem on a laptop with windows10 and some time back in this thread (mid april i believe)  someone advised me to make some changes  through the terminal - or whatever the name is for the terminals equivalent on windows... maybe thats also the solution here?

Believe me it sucks to have no IT knowledge being a crypto investor lol...  still im very gratefull for your continued effort to help me solve this... and am I the only one experiencing this?

sr. member
Activity: 1004
Merit: 268
Firo (FIRO)
A Fatal error occured. Zcoin can no longer function safely and will quit.
EXCEPTION: St_runtime error 13
CDB() cant open database file wallet.dat
error 30974
Zcoin in runaway exception



Dear Zcoin Team, Please help me solve this problem... I have a mac and downloaded your wallet from your website, but it always crashes after a couple of seconds showing this error as written above.

Please help me solve this so i can be onboard and store my zcoins safely in the wallet


Thank you, I am awaiting your reply

Could you let me know your Mac OS version?

And when did you download the mac version? Does your Application Support/Zcoin have existing files inside?

Yosemite 10.10.5 is the version
Should I delete all Zcoin files on my mac and try to start over downloading it all?

Im sorry but tech-wise Im on the level of a 3 year old unfortunately.... Would be great if I can get help with this issue!  I will delete all zcoin files i have on my laptop now and wait for your reply.

Downloaded on February 19th

Many thanks!

Try the latest one? I think the one you have is pretty old.

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/releases/tag/v0.8.7.8
sr. member
Activity: 1004
Merit: 268
Firo (FIRO)
Awesome mjosephs! The params have changed. You can view the latest code here:

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/commit/5b6d2941616e756051ec584085297cc691a5614e

Wow that's quite a megapatch you merged onto the mtptest branch yesterday.  I hope you plan on running those changes on the testnet for a while.

These probably will be the final parameters that we're working on for the release.

So L=70 as here:

 https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/blob/5b6d2941616e756051ec584085297cc691a5614e/src/mtp.cpp#L8

rather than the L=140 in the paper?

Please do drop by our Slack http://invite.zcoin.io and head to #developers

Ah, realtime IRC/chat is not really my thing... had to give that up because I couldn't get anything done.  Thanks though.

L seems to be 70 in the paper.

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity16/sec16_paper_biryukov.pdf

Quote
We suggest L=70, so that the entire proof consists of 140 blocks and their openings, or 180 KB in total.

Where did you get the 140 figure from?
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