Topic: Pros and Cons to Anon coins, Including Darkcoin / Cloakcoin, lets discuss them. - page 7. (Read 8787 times)

I know in DRK's case they are just using him to make sure there are no glaring issues in the code before releasing it. After that they are open sourcing it. That's not to say there won't be some crazy issue in the DRK source, but this step at least allows the minimization of bugs on a system that is already deployed. If the network wasn't running the closed source code currently, I doubt Kristov would even be needed. It could just be instantly open sourced.

Yes and no. Yes I like the move but I think this would bring a lot of people who have no idea about the technical part to say, I am professional, I saw that POSA or Masternode System is not working. Market reacts, fear , fear sell .. big boom. Saw it at Vootcoin, not that Voot is an as strong community as Dark or Cloak.

I more think about to have 3-5 people who show their expertise / trust  and then investigate a coin. Just at the beginning .. in long-term open source is maybe the way to go in Crypto World to get coins really started off.

Agreed, one person saying "its good" does not make it good. In a perfect world both Dark and Cloak should open all their code to the public and allow the community to decide, not select players in the crypto or security world.

I approached him via email right after I read the thing in this thread. He is exactly the person I am looking for as a neutral consultant to investigate the Cloakcoin specifications. But here I have to say it again, one person can not make a coin legit. I prefer to have at least 2-3 people investigating a coin to get a good view of the technical specifications and to suspend any fears of bias.

I know it will not be easy but I hope I can get this off in the next months if Cloakcoin is still existing. ( )

1. Peer-reviews consist of multiple eyes on things, not a single person. Either way, let's see what comes out of that. At this stage I have my doubts about him being unbiased.

2. I know you're talking bullshit. Do you know you're talking bullshit? Here is AnonyMint's overview of anonymous cryptocurrencies. He lists many common "cons" among the coins (many of which are not credible threats at this juncture, if you want my personal opinion). He does, however, make a point of noting that Monero (and Boolberry, by extension) are "cryptographically unlinkable & untraceable", whereas he notes that DarkCoin is not as anonymous, as it suffers from "unlinkability Sybil attack on masternodes". The only thing AnonyMint says about Cloakcoin is that, in respects to DarkCoin, "this is the best CloakCoin's anonymity could improve to as it is similar conceptually in design".

3. Nobody is expecting fool-proof. Everyone is expect, at least, that an incredibly simple block reward formula in the whitepaper works in the code. That is not the case, and incompetence in one area almost always indicates incompetence elsewhere.

4. and 5. (no clue how this relates to 5) - collusion on its own is irrelevant. Of course it will be ineffectual. It would always be coupled with the compromise or the DDoSing of additional "masternodes". In such an event, the number of available masternodes is massively reduced, which means the the little Google spreadsheet is incorrect. Many hosts will null-route a dedicated server (even more so a VPS) if it is experiencing a DDoS. Other attacks such as a DDoS group constantly requesting a stream of blocks from a masternode would lead to its traffic exceeding normal use and massive traffic bills. Similarly, a DDoS group could broadcast thousands of bad blocks a second to a masternode, leading to it chewing through CPU cycles doing very heavy X11 verifications, ultimately leading to it becoming inaccessible or being killed by the oomkiller. Those are just off the top of my head, of course, and the attack stands regardless of whether these specific scenarios can be mitigated against.

By this logic Satoshi and Gavin are also incompetent.  

It's almost like software development is a complicated process. Who knew?



CLOAK
Cons:
Nobody knows how it's anonymity feature works, nobody can explain it, not even a rough technical outline, and therefore nobody knows whether or not it's trustless. Are you literally sending your coins to a node? Nobody knows.

1) Kristov Atlas is reviewing the code and design right now.
2) Wrong - this has been discussed in depth for over 6 months, why do you think its 2500 pages. People like anonymint have given the thumbs up even over Monero.
3) Software development to this scale and complexity is not a fool proof science, id like to see you try. At least he is full time and trying until he and the team succeeds.
4) & 5) Look here for things like collusion probability

https://darkcointalk.org/threads/development-updates-july-15th.1788/
https://darkcointalk.org/threads/development-update-july-30th.1924/

fernando on the darkcointalk.org forums created a chart outlining the probability of unmasking a Darksend by way of Masternode collusion at depths of both 2 and 8 Masternode hops:

2 hops: http://goo.gl/g1dQ3C
8 hops: http://goo.gl/TcWoF0

Oh absolutely, I'm not suggesting he invent new cryptography. I'm suggesting he provide cryptographically sound mathematical models to show how these "masternodes" are impervious to collusion, Sybil attacks, or an attacker DDoSing the DarkCoin P2P port on enough of them so that they control a sufficient number. This is the sort of thing anyone competent would do BEFORE they start coding.

So, keeping it in line with topic:

Darkcoin Cons:
- lack of peer-reviewed cryptography
- lack of understanding of threat models
- developer is clearly incompetent (see failed RCwhatever releases causing forks)
- whitepaper contains no mathematical proof of the resilience of the anonymity set to attacks
- whitepaper contains a mathematical formula for the block reward curve that is completely unrelated to the actual block reward curve (see Darkcoins in Circulation - First 128 days, and Darkcoin Block Reward Emission Curve - First 128 Days), implying either a completely incompetent developer, or a developer that actively and aggressively cheats

Cloackcoin Cons:
- lack of peer-reviewed cryptography
- lack of understanding of threat models
- "elected" nodes open to Sybil attacks and cheating
- whitepaper contains no mathematical proof of the resilience of the anonymity set to attacks
- uses PoS, which introduces lots of technical failures and methods of cheating of its own

And this is just another few reasons why Darkcoin coin will succeed:

• Darksend+ technology which has over 6 months of development and been written from the ground up to evolve previous solutions, this is how you get better, you try, and try again until you succeed. Success very rarely happens on the first go
• Darksend+ huge advantage that coins are anonymized & denominated through 8 masternodes and sent back to the user. The user can then send straight to the recipient anonmyously. This removes any responsibility/liabilities that MN owners could have. Competitor coins all forward coins through their systems which is flawed.
  
• Professional solution explanations with diagrams to clearly how the proposed solutions will work
• Full transparency to the testing environment where everyone is involved, nothing is hidden
• Open communication about what bugs they are tackling, this shows confidence in the solution
• World class team, leading innovation which all coins just look toward and copy in some way shape or form
• Taken seriously enough to have Kristov Atlas onboard to help review and improve the technology
• Over 830 masternodes which their potential has not even begun to be realized, and already solves many economic pitfalls apparent in the BitCoin node design. 830 Masternodes is likely more than any competitor has for wallets open at a single point in time.
• IP obfuscation solution has been announced and the solution will be open sourced after Kristov review is the last piece of the puzzle.

Now compare this to some of the competitors who:

• 4-6 weeks old and have not had any REAL discussions on how the technology actually applies to design & attack weaknesses. When questioned, replies like "we have thought and tested through these scenarios"....so suddenly you are world leading security experts and can test against all known attack vectors.
• Release whitepapers with a box with a single word in it which supposed to encompass the entire solution, my 3 year old can do this
• Have to tell their users to "refrain" from using the solution when they release it, then why release it?
• When questioned about their solution, delete the posts in their thread and in the media deliver one line statements like "the data is encoded to hide the sender"...but how..?
• Cannot even get anonymity working so lets start coding an entire openmarket to give more hype....If you dont think anonymity is a serious and complex enough solution, you obviously have no idea.
• Can only make videos as justification to prove it works.
• Have no background to the development team as they are 100% anonymous. What if they are just great video editors and graphic designers.
• Both of the main competitors use Proof of Stake and have given only 1 week of PoW....this is taking centralization to a new level.
• Dev's have admitted to not having great anonymity, and are still trying to think of solutions for bad actors such as centralized black listing which was floored in the XC rev 1.0 design and hence thrown out. Additionally now possibly copying Darkcoin by requiring to have "small investments" to become a node
• Have made no announcements or plans to open source.
  

Sure i am open to that, can you send me some pros and cons with sources to each point?

The issue with Darkcoin is the release at the most  inconvenient time, Sunday 4 AM and then instamining the shit out of it with 50 Amazon AWS nodes and 50 microsoft cloud computing, no windows wallet is just another minor fact.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.7535561
I did have a fair few darkcoins but exited Dark and got Cloak about a week ago.

Note though, that he is not creating new cryptography, he is using well established, true and tested existing cryptography.

Mathematicians and cryptographers have often produced new crypto that has later been proven faulty.



Offtopic. Create a new thread for your predictions.

Well... Kristov Atlas is looking at the code and said in a video yesterday he will be helping in test net. Hes a pretty big deal.
http://anonymousbitcoinbook.com/pages/about-the-author

You'll notice that, unsurprisingly, he has no experience or education in mathematics and cryptography, the two things you need for a cryptocurrency.

I think both Cloakcoin and Darkcoin are irrelevant, in a year or two they'll be nothing more than a bootnote on a Wikipedia article on failed cryptocurrencies.

Darkcoin uses a trustless system of multiple premixing advanced conjoin variant more like it.

More pros for darkcoin

- while darksend+ is still closed source how it works has been explained (unlike PosA - could be great, could be useless, who knows, hope it's good because competition is good)

- Code review by the creator of conjoin sudoko - kristov atlas so if he says it's good, it's good.

- Higher volume over a longer time period (cloak is shooting up and well done to them but on average DRK has had way higher volume for way longer)

Cons
the instamine could you include http://wiki.darkcoin.eu/wiki/FAQ#Was_Darkcoin_Instamined.3F
Written about in detail and people can make their own minds up.

And include sources in general..

Cloak, who knows
Dark, Evan Duffield
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/evan-duffield/15/455/986

While we're at it, why not add XCurrency also into this discussion? All three coins are in the same basket, aren't they?

Nice thread!

What I would like people to compare:

1.  POSA vs. the RC4 Masternode System


2. One Market  vs. the opportunities with the Rc4 Masternode System


3. The Developer Team Cloak vs. The Developer Team Dark

Cheers guys!

Disclaimer: I want to be neutral so I cannot discuss, I ask questions