Mixing whether it be done by centralized exchanges or by large anonymity sets increase the threat of domino cascade
Exchanges are just an example of a commerce transaction...
Incorrect. The distinction is an exchange acts (by its Terms Of Service) as an unallocated pool for all participants thus it warrants that every coin in the pool is fungible, whereas without explicit anonymity mixing a vendor spends a traceable coin on a transparent block chain and the trail of culpability stays only with that coin, not with all the other coins spent to that vendor.
This is a distinction without an ultimate difference, most certainly to the affected party...
The cost is charged to all customers of the exchange, whereas in the vendors case it is only charged to the last single bagholder holding that specific coin.
I am contemplating you imply effectively that rings may so radically cross-mixed that blacklisting anything blacklists everything.
Note the algorithm I did for the bounty. If that algorithm is worthy, then mixing is going need to be much less overlapping otherwise anonymity is lost.
I wasn't referring to overlapping at all, just the exponential growth of mixes. If one recipient mixes with 5 others and each of those mixes with 5 others, even if there is no overlap, then after a relatively small number of steps, a huge number of coins become mixed.
Mathematically can't get exponential growth of mixing without exponential growth of overlap, unless the supply of transaction outputs is also growing exponentially (which since outputs have to be same sized I think implies unless coin money supply is growing exponentially and/or velocity is falling exponentially). Any way, I have not formalized that and I am not going to. You guys are invested in ring signatures and thus you need to know.
attempting to impose some tracing-based blacklist becomes equivalent to to a coin ban.
No only a ring > 1 input ban, i.e. ban on anonymity.
More study is always needed, but again we are back to "there might be a flaw." Yes there might be. Anywhere and everywhere. Provide actual analysis or just continue to make these vague sweeping generalities that signify nothing.
Some specifics have been provided.
I never heard of dedicated and concerned developers that expected everything to be handed to them on a silver platter in completely polished form so they don't have to do any work.
Only doing the work and proving out everything will convince more people. There are no shortcuts. Even if I go away, I am not the cause of the price moving one direction or the other. Even rpietila would agree I have no impact on the price.
If XMR had responded to BCX's points about the quick difficulty readjustment and 20% discard with a whitepaper about such issues and the Cryptonote solution, then I would be more impressed.
I have been writing my own whitepaper over these days about issues that were raised in this thread.
A significant feature of ring signatures is the spender decides (i.e. has autonomy of) what to mix with, thus the authorities can make the spenders culpable for mixing with blacklisted anonymity sets.
Not if the mixing occurred before the blacklisting.
There will always be new coins mined that are not yet mixed with anything. I already made that point once. Thus the entire coin is never banned unless new coin rewards have stopped (but then the coin will be dead anyway according to my theory).
You keep repeating your point that authorities won't blacklist because it blacklists the entire coin. And I keep making the point that they don't care. If you fuck with their control over money, they will do anything they can effectively do, even probably taking us to nuclear war if it will achieve their aims. Rather you have to think more in terms of what they can and can't do operatively, not what you think they can't do because you think it is unreasonable.
Also orthogonally you repeatedly ignore the point that I am not convinced you can have that widespread mixing without having de-anonymization on a large scale. We need my algorithm to be tested so we can know. If that is not a high priority for you all, then fine. I am stating my opinions.
Thus the point that blacklisting is only relevant to fungibility if it occurs in a very narrow time window. Once the horse (and his DNA) is out of the barn, there is no turning back.
Again you ignore ongoing coin rewards (otherwise coin is dead) and de-anonymization (by my algorithm and also users that volunteer their passwords in exchange for an agreement to unlock their coins from the blacklist). Thus the real pinch point is if the authorities control the mining.
Since how many months have I been stating that I don't think anonymity mixing on the block chain is the killer feature that drives a coin to be #2 or #1. I don't think fungibility can be protected that way, but rather the choke point is the control over mining.
If I had to guess I would speculate something to do with the signal-to-noise issue I referenced earlier.
I could claim similarly about your posts. I think it is the nature of debate.
