1) The only "coin" that is absolutely anonymous by default, with no transparency offered, is zerocash. With Cryptonote, you can optionally have transparent transactions, and there's the viewkey that you can give to others. Cryptonote is basically built around you, options, what you want/can do. We don't know who made cryptonote (The person behind the name), probably just a pseudonym like the name satoshi nakamoto. Shadowcash is purposely trying to affiliate themselves with the darknnetmarket, it just copied/cloned features from other coins anyway, not worth anything.
Yes, I agree that Cryptonote is great and unique. My statements more has to do with how they are marketed and who uses them. Bitcoin is already going mainstream so is passed the stage of attracting only speculators and silk road users. These other coins are still at the stage and thus are at risk for more scrutiny specifically because of this.
So lets give some examples of some of the coins and how they are marketed:
Ordered Per marketcap :
1)
https://www.dashpay.ioPRIVATE
Keep your
payments private so nobody can track you thanks to
Darksend.
2)
https://getmonero.org/homePrivate
Monero uses a cryptographically sound system to allow you to send and receive funds without your transactions being easily revealed on the blockchain (the distributed ledger of transactions). This ensures that your purchases, receipts, and
all transfers remain absolutely private by default.UntraceableBy taking advantage of ring signatures, a special property of certain types of cryptography, Monero is able to
ensure that transactions are not only untraceable, but have an optional measure of ambiguity that ensures that transactions cannot easily be tied back to an individual user or computer.3)
http://bitcoindark.pw/Bitcoin
darkhttps://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.8353544It’s about best practice, old-school street smarts and a complete ecosystem
designed from the ground up for privacy.The future’s Dark4)
http://shadow.cash/Shadowcash
True Anonymous CryptocurrencyShadowSend‘s unique zero-knowledge, dual-key stealth address and ring signature protocol enables near-instant,
untraceable, unlinkable and trustless transactions.5)
http://darknote.cc/Darknote
Privacy Protected Payments and Information Transfers.
Anonymous and Untraceable, All of these currencies are marketed in such a way that they will exclude many businesses , statist users, governments , and institutions. If you followed the meetings between bitcoin advocates and both regulators and government officials they specifically pointed out that bitcoin isn't as private as cash(We understand this is only half true as the user has the choice to how much privacy they need from bitcoin), and other digital currencies and the blockchain can help investigators research crimes. So many of these currencies are going to align themselves with more of the scrutiny found with darkwallet crowd where ironically they bring more attention to themselves and bitcoin users don't have to appear as if they are privacy conscientious while at the same time use darkwallet in secret.
So yes, with Cryptonote you have the choice of being transparent or not but what we are talking about is the marketing and demographic of users with these currencies and how ironically such marketing actually brings less security to their coin just like telling people you use darkwallet brings more scrutiny to you. The problem we have is we both have to promote privacy and let people be aware of these great tools but at the same time not scare them away or bring extra scrutiny to the currency. I believe bitcoin has the right balance because statists, governments , and institutions can use bitcoin and distance themselves from "fringe" privacy advocates like us anarchists, while at the same time mask and wash our transactions when we mix them with their transactions.
I entirely agree with this part. The marketing isn't as "family friendly" as it should. But we also have to differentiate the currencies that try and intentionally market themselves as "dark" and "anonymous" to currencies that try to intentionally market themselves to broader and wide audiences. When looking at that, development, features of the currency(including future), the past of the currency, and more.
1) Darkcoin renamed itself to Dash, in an attempt to re-market itself to a broader audience. We all knew a coin with the name "Darkcoin" would be interpreted as being for the darkweb/illegal things only by outsiders, which is why it was renamed to Dash. This coin has a unique problem however, while it's former name was a blocking stone to any meaningful success, it's instamine is basically a full on barrier to any meaningful success. I used to be a darkcoin supporter in 2014, but I picked myself up and thought, "Why the hell am I supporting a coin, that had over 2million coins instamined in less than 2 days on a linux only release while it was relatively unknown, then had the block reward cut by over half and the coin supply cut by over 70% after the instamine was over?". To sum it up, with this coin, the name doesn't matter, because the instamine is already a barrier that cannot be broken or changed, and one that will stop it from ever achieving success. It was basically a scam.
2) Monero, is sort of like the "light in the dark" for me. From the very beginning, David Latapie, who's Monero's PR guy, had stated that he/they personally avoid using the term "anonymous" when talking about Monero, because the word "anonymous" itself is connected to illegal activities in the minds of many people(Outide of crypto), so instead he chooses to use the word "Private" to describe Monero's abilities. Many advertisements for things in the real world use the word private as well, it's just more family friendly, less hostile and "illegal-like". Besides that, Monero has never had any changes done to it's emission schedule or coin supply, both of which Satoshi has said should never be changed. It has also attracted the attention of not just altcoiners, but bitcoiners and even those not involved in the cryptocurrency community as well.
3) Bitcoindark, I admit I'm not too familiar with their code or history. I do know that they are the main coin behind Supernet, which seeks to "unite" blockchains and do cross transfers, similar to AT(Or am I wrong in that assumption). If I'm correct then that's a noteworthy goal, as they're seeking to "unite crypto". On branding, the point you made about the term "dark" applies here, as "dark" is in the very name, which might imply that it's an "illegal"coin to outsiders. However, the slogan for Bitcoindark uses the word "privacy" instead of "anonymity" which is good, shows that even though the name itself contains dark in it, the slogan uses a word that's more family friendly.
4) Shadowcash also has Dash's previous vibe with the dark, illicit, type name going on. I don't know much about Shadowcash besides their' basic feaures admittedly. I know it uses some tokens and a version of Monero's ring signatures. I do know however that it's PoS, instead of PoW. I am not a fan of PoS in it's current form, it's simply far less secure than PoW, also the PoW period that Shadowcash had was extremely short and could be counted as a sort of fastmine, though not nearly as nearly as bad as Dash's instamine.
5) Darknote, I remember when it used to be called Ducknote, and was marketed as being the Cryptonote equivalent(or better version) of Dogecoin. We can all see that Ducknote was intentionally rebranded to Darknote to focus more on anonymity and the "dark" "net".
What you've said is the thoughts I had when choosing a currency to "settle down with". I looked at their name/branding, past, development team, integrity, features, and community to decide. Out of all those as you can tell I found Monero best fit the bill, it's marketed without using the term "anonymous" as to outsiders, that would look shady, and instead with the term "private". The name, Monero, is also pretty beautiful to type and say out loud(And makes it stand out from all the other "Blahcoin" names). It's parameters have never been touched or changed(Block reward, coin supply), and the dev team's work has attracted the eyes of bitcoiners as well as those outside this crypto community.
When/If "big" investors start coming into the crypto markets, they'll be looking for currencies that have integrity, a redeemable past, good sized dev teams, and a marketable name.
