Hi, how does this compare to Monero in terms of long term value, security against attacks, anonimity features... etc? XMR has gone the i2p route and TOR seems not as safe anymore it seems.
Stealthcoin will be like a monero but without the future problems of XMR. TOR was only the beginning
I'm just going to play devil's advocate here for a second, but before I do, I just want to state that I've been with XST from the beginning and I really want to believe in this project. I'm not trying to spread FUD...take it as you will.
I understand waiting to release the whitepaper, due to copycats, but I have to play devil's advocate and wonder if there is such a thing as StealthSend or are the devs just giving themselves enough time to figure out a plan.
Again, I'm not trying to spread FUD but I think it's okay to ask questions and show concerns. I don't plan on getting rid of my XST anytime soon.
These are great points. First let me say that I had absolutely no chance to work on that retreat because I couldn't get an internet connection most of the time. I couldn't even fix the syncronization problems with StealthCoin during that period. You'll notice that the day I got back to civilization, things started to improve. Since then, the StealthCoin network quickly became the healthiest network on bittrex and StealthCoin has consistently been in the coinmarketcap top 100.
Changing the plan for StealthSend was completely my idea based on what we wanted StealthSend to be and on the fact that I lost 10 days during the retreat. We've gone through three plans for StealthSend, each more ambitious than the previous. The first plan was to do a centralized mixer, but that idea was scrapped pretty quickly because mixing does not provide trustless cryptographic anonymity.
The second plan was cryptographic in nature, but we decided the problem of blockchain bloat would be crippling after a year or two. I personally investigated this problem of bloat for about one week until I found a solution in the cryptography literature, using a signature system that has only been outlined as a protocol and theoretical proofs. In other words, there is no implementation of the signature system we are going to use for StealthSend. I could show our hand by citing the paper here or even revealing the first author, but that's going to wait for the white paper.
But I believe I can say the following without revealing too much. I'll compare the StealthSend signature system to Cryptonote signatures, which is the only true cryptographic anonymity for cryptocurrencies presently available. A cryptonote signature of 100 keys means that a particular transaction only has a 1% chance of belonging to any one of the addresses in the ring (1/100 = 1%). However, the ring signature for a transaction of 100 keys requires about 64 kb of block chain storage. The StealthSend signature system provides the same level of cryptographic security (1% chance of ownership for the sender) but needs only 1/15th to 1/10th the the space (4 to 6.5 kb). That's a HUGE savings and has serious implications for the long term viability of a coin. Bear in mind that the theory of our signature system is fully supported by peer review and has been published in a reputable journal.
But why will implementing our signature system take so long? Well, there won't be much code in implementing the signature system, but the challenge is in determining what that code should be from the theoretical description of the protocol. That takes time, understanding, and testing. Two months is probably on the short side, but I believe I can do it.
In the mean time, we have been working on a mobile sending technology that I'm really excited about. But we plan to release details in a few days. This technology is no where near as difficult to implement as the new signature system. It's also completely practical. In my opinion, it's a far better mobile technology than other teams have offered.
We'll keep you posted.
--Hondo
XMR going to get a run for its money -fact 
