Topic: Theymos's list of altcoins with some technical merit - page 4. (Read 33254 times)

*Grabs popcorn and waits until everyone starts promoting the coin they're invested in*

Oh wait.. that already happened? Shit.. ok..

*waits for the coinbashing to happen*

What? I missed that fun as well.. pff ok

Close this topic Theymos, it will turn into a circlejerk of coinshillers. mark my words

So much for the "crypto-heads"...smh PATHETIC. WOT A FUCKING JOKE.

Correct, Charlie forked Tenebrix to create "Fairbrix". That was his first attempt at "doing" a coin. This was all before LTC was ever created.

@Traxo:


Okay, this attack is one I was unaware of. But this kind of attack should only be a problem if the participants are "slashed" for voting on the wrong chain (e.g. "Slasher 2.0" as presented by Buterin), but not if they are slashed when voting on more than one chain (like in the first Slasher version and also in Poelstra's example). In the latter, the attacker cannot create a history where another participant is double-voting and so is punished, so in this sense there is no ambiguity. The nodes should simply follow the attacker's chain because it should have more "chain trust" (or similar "score"), but in that situation he is the "legit" validator so I don't see the problem.

I have to analyze this attack further, however. This is only a first thought on it. It may be wrong.

You guys may think I'm a stubborn PoS (e.g. NXT) shill. But I may even reconsider my position on PoS - in fact, after I read Vlad's blog posts about the Casper history about one year ago, I already got pretty skeptic on it, or at least I thought it would lead to over-complicated (and thus more exploitable) algorithms. The reason I got more optimistic on it were several forum discussions where it seemed that all really dangerous attacks on PoS would depend on very unlikely assumptions (e.g. stakeholders accepting cheap bribes) because of "altruism-prime" being stronger than initially thought.


Will read about that.

Here I fully agree.

As far as I remember, that was Tenebrix. It was however pre-mined and thus "lost" the race to the "fairer" Litecoin.

Google it.

In chat he wrote afahcs mathematically the client used by smaller nodes would sometimes diverge without some coordination due to propagation variances. So what ever the whales are doing, it has to be some form of coordination which is mathematically different than what is advertised.

He updated his public document as follows:


As @Spoetnik alluded to, Litecoin innovated Scrypt for the proof-of-work algorithm, which enabled it to receive much of the GPU mining that were pushed off of Bitcoin by ASICs in 2013 sending the price to $50 and 0.05 BTC.
Also Litecoin was the first major to activate SegWit sending the price to $50+ and 0.021 BTC; and if BTC-SegWit fails (which is not a totally implausible theory), then Litecoin probably remains the major offchain scaling alternative (possibly sending it to $80+/0.03 and beyond).

Theymos, I see that you put Litecoin in the 0 category since it is a clone of Bitcoin.

I am curious of your thoughts on Litecoin after segwit activation & the work the devs are doing on lightning networks & cross chain swaps.

I'm speculating that you will say that Litecoin is not really "innovative" necessarily because the devs are mostly working on tech that was theorized & proposed for Bitcoin proper, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

@theymos

To clarify Zcoin ($XZC) doesn't use Zcash code in any way! So it is not a clone at all...

We use the Zerocoin protocol which isn't the same as the Zerocash protocol.

While the Zerocoin protocol and a proof of concept software library (libzerocoin) was coded by the same guys who then moved on to the Zerocash paper and Zcash project, the implementation of Zerocoin is not trivial and indeed we're the first project to implement it.

We're in the midst of also improving libzerocoin as well and should be releasing updates soon.

The Zerocash protocol used in Zcash was meant to be an improvement of the Zerocoin protocol and it does achieve
a) smaller proof sizes
b) very fast verification time
c) no need for fixed denominations
d) hides tx amounts
e) allows direct send of z-balances compared to Zerocoin which requires conversion to base coin.

So if that's the case, why are we at Zcoin bothering with the Zerocoin protocol?

a) we retain supply auditability so if coins are minted out of thin air due to a flaw or the trapdoor discovered, it is easy to detect. Zcash's setup combined with its trusted setup allows creation and sending of forged coins which cannot be detected if there's a problem.
b) trusted setup in Zerocoin is far less controversial comprising of two huge prime numbers. There is also research on removing the trusted setup for Zerocoin using Sigma protocol (https://zcoin.io/zcoin-moving-beyond-trusted-setup-in-zerocoin/).
c) Zerocoin private tx are easily created with a few seconds of computation time compared to Zcash private tx which requires a few minutes.
d) We use RSA cryptography compared to new zkSNARKs.

Note that proof sizes and verification times are something that we're actively working on. Sigma allows proof sizes to be in the 1 kb range as well. We continue to evaluate and test.

While we do agree that the Zerocash paper and its technologies are pretty amazing, we do think that pursuing active research and development into Zerocoin should be encouraged and it's thanks to Zcoin and our team that many other coins now are adopting our work and re-looking into Zerocoin.

Supply auditability in a system that allows destruction and creation of coins is pretty important especially when a trusted setup is employed. Also in encouraging anonymous tx use, a few seconds of computation time is much more palatable compared to minutes and also allows weaker devices to continue to do private tx.

I hope this clarifies any doubts you may have that Zcoin is merely a Zcash clone. The truth couldn't be any further and I hope that the OP can be updated.

@Hyperme.sh: (AnonyMint?)

So your theory is that in PoS currencies like NXT, whales use a special client to coordinate their choices when the chain forks, and impose these to smaller nodes? Well, NXT's Economic Clustering, as far as I know, is indeed doing something similar ("it shows you where the whales are"), but it doesn't force other nodes to follow their chain. So I interpret it to be different than centralized coordination. For whales (and other nodes, too), however, it may be rational to follow other whales because they're those who most lose in a chain split event.

Of course I'm aware of the limitations of "altruism-prime" and about short term N@S attacks.

I propose you to present your "shocking document" here (in a dedicated thread) once it's ready, I'll read it and then decide if it's convincing for me or not. The first lines Traxo quoted, however, didn't present nothing new for me, these lines are based on documents presented in 2014 or 2015. Maybe however, labeling the document as superficial was premature, but to be able to judge about that, I must read it completely.

(PS: I had already deleted the section about Steem before you answered. Here I made a mistake, it's a long time ago I last dealt with Steem, and you are right, its current iteration is DPOS.)

Do you want technical merit? What about this:

GitHub: https://github.com/skycoin
Development Blog: https://blog.skycoin.net/

That is technical merit, they lack of marketing but they do have software and huge improvements not as many coins lately.

Their project is ambitious yes, but they atleast has been working for years in something they believe it is necessary for the future.
Internet is more an more controlled and manipulated everyday, we must take precautions and start building a decentralised network replacing ISPs, the developers are quiet aware of the numerous backdoors that exists in nowadays servers and smart devices and they want to prevent the fatal consequences of corrupted internet. We must avoid miners to get control over the blockchains, this is the main flaw of the Bitcoins original vision , skycoin has been doing research the last 4 years to solve that problem.

Please, just have a look at the development blog, and tell us your thoughts!

Theymos gave its insight of the coins he thought were worthy, he has not looked into dash deeply because I’m sure that he is a very busy individual, there is not a way to keep track of every single project so I think this is an unfair critic to him since Theymos stated directly he has not looked at Dash in depth yet.

Nice to see BitBay at the top of that list. It's one of the very few cryptos with working tech that's been around for a few years already. As far as I know it's the only one with double-deposit escrow and a fully working marketplace?

Would really like to see how you rate it

Cointelegraph, coindesk etc need to stop spread ICO vapourware panic & news and tell people about unique development that has been 3-4 years in the making. These are the altcoins that should get recognition and awareness! Invest in the tech! Not an idea!  For that reason I own Bitbay & from looking at the list now Blocknet

https://zcoin.io/zcoin-and-zcash/ should get you "up to speed".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GijBiepK0ws informative video. No need to thank me.

Hi theymos! Just a little message to say that Zcoin is not a clone of Zcash, though that is a common misconception, so don't be too hard on yourself because a lot of people are "labouring under that illusion". But you should def change the OP as it's inaccurate and untruthful. Thanks, love V.

I'm interested in your NEM review.

You put a lot of value in technical merit, I do think there is more that certain coins can bring to the table.