A Dark Horse
Many question why ring signatures are not simply added to Bitcoin’s codebase. According to Bitcoin core developer gmaxwell, ring signatures are possible, but present challenges. A new arrival in the arena of anonymous crypto-currences, StealthCoin (XST), promises to add ring signatures to the Bitcoin codebase with StealthSend, which is still in development. According to the StealthSend whitepaper (
https://www.dropbox.com/s/do4urdefwoungjz/Stealthsend-Whitepaper-Brief-201409.pdf?dl=0), StealthSend transactions using ring signatures of 100 keys will only require about one third the space of similar CryptoNote transactions, but give the same level of privacy protection. This savings is achieved through the use of the use of so-called “Chandran Signatures”, and innovations related to the selection of the keys used for the ring signatures. In StealthSend, key selection is based on four numbers: two random numbers (called “nonces”), one number that reduces the difficulty of selecting the keys by specifying a subset of all possible keys, and one number to specify the size of the ring. Thus, the nonce key selection specifies any set of randomly selected keys using only 32 bytes of storage.Applied to CryptoNotes, the nonce key selection proposed for StealthSend would lead to a space savings of about 30% for future transactions.
If successful, Stealthsend will have an obfuscated blockchain similar to CryptoNotes while utilizing the well established bitcoin protocol. Additionally, it will also offer a significant reduction in storage.
To avoid the memory-expensive proofs required by an anonymous proof-of-stake coin, StealthSend will be a proof-of-work coin. StealthSend coins will be created by rewarding holders of StealthCoin at a 1:1 ratio in a proof-of-burn conversion. In other words, to get one StealthSend coin, a StealthCoin holder would have to burn one StealthCoin. After the proof-of-burn conversion, the remaining 15% of the total money supply will be emitted via proof-of-work, using a smooth emission algorithm.
Website –
http://stealth-coin.comWallet –
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8rWObF4xz1YWHdhNlVHcWJ5dWM/edit?usp=sharingSource Code –
https://github.com/StealthSend/Stealth/Decentralized Dark Markets
In addition to Stealthsend, the Stealthcoin team recently announced that they plan to support Open Bazaar, which is an anonymous, decentralized marketplace. With the closings of Silk Road and many other Bitcoin commerce sites, a decentralized solution to an anonymous marketplace would fill an important niche.
Open Bazaar promises to be such a solution. It is an open-source project touting many innovations that improve on traditional markets, including a reputation system based on proof-of-burn pledges, which allow users to burn Bitcoin in exchange for reputation. Released under the permissive open source MIT License, the Open Bazaar project plans to launch before the end of 2014.
The Future of Anonymous Crypto-Currencies
Anonymous crypto-currency technology has progressed from virtual non-existence in mid-2013 to being a central feature of a multitude of crypto-currencies today. A year from now, we may see a crypto-currency that boasts network, blockchain, and address privacy. It will also be “trustless”, meaning that users need not trust a central service to provide anonymity. This future currency will require only small amounts of storage and may even usurp Bitcoin as the leading currency on the Dark Markets.
I recommended everyone I know to get into Bitcoin right now while it's still cheap. I also told them if they want to triple or 5x their BTC then get into XST now. This is opportunity of the life time guys. Stealthsend and OpenBaazar going to be HUGE!!!