Firstly, this is not intended to be an act of trolling. I was quite heavily invested in Dark, and believed in it's cause.
However, I would like you to carefully consider your position.
The darksend option of anonymity could be smashed by the NSA quite easily.
The anonymity market share you own - on the assumption that darksend works flawlessly - is about to be overtaken by Monero, and similar clones.
Their anonymity solution is superior to yours, developed by hackers. A purely trustless solution.
Good luck to you all, but buyer beware.
https://cryptonote.org/whitepaper.pdfPS. Darkwallet also should not be underestimated, simply because you don't like it...
While zeroknowledge proofs are neat just imagine the blockchain sitting there for 10 years accumulating your data, then one of a few things happen:
1.) The key used to start the system was never destroyed and was kept the entire time so a very powerful entity could see everything that goes on
2.) An exploit is found and suddenly the entire blockchain is cleartext
Darksend has no such vulnerabilities. The encryption we use could be completely broken and all of the transactions that have happened would still be anonymous.
Darksend relies on a collateral system - 1000drks per masternode, randomly selected masternodes, and these nodes sign off on the pooled transactions.
Sounds safe...how much money do you think the NSA has? How easy to simply stockpile virtually all the darks out there, and have the majority of masternodes running...
Sorry Evan but they are laughing at this solution...they will simply allow your network to grow, allow users to feel safe and protected, yet know the vast majority of transactions.
The only real solution to anonymity is encrypted packets of information, that are visible on the network by can only be decrypted by the intended recipient using their private key.
You are a smart, well intended dev. You have a loyal team, you have done well. But your solution is flawed.