For anyone who watches Kristov Atlas' news cast, he recently featured XC (minute 9:36) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsNJcwQvEi8&feature=youtu.beHuge thanks to Kirstov for highlighting XC, but some of the information is not accurate and I thought I'd post synechist's (Arlyn Culwick) clarification on how XC works (seen in the youtube comment section) here, to help avoid possible confusion.
synechist: Every XC app is an Xnode and no balance needs to be held in it. Secondly, while this review is correct that XC is different to Darkcoin and that it doesn't use Coinjoin, it's not correct that XC's privacy transactions are off-blockchain.
Privacy Mode is on-chain, but breaks transactions into fragments and utilises trustless mixing to forward fragments on to the recipient. (It's not a ring signature either; it's a unique m-of-m multisig transaction.)
- Since every node forwards fragments, there's no telling whether a node is the originator or final receiver of a fragment. Therefore receiver/sender address is concealed.
- Since fragments are sent, there's no telling what the full amount of any given transaction is. Therefore the amount sent/received is concealed.
- Since trustless mixing is m-of-m multisig, no node can steal coins. They can either sign or opt out. (In the latter case, fragments are sent via spare nodes).
XC will soon be adding "stealth addresses" to its arsenal. This will allow the receiver to publicise a receiving address, while payments sent to it will arrive in another address, prevent associating the receiver with amounts received.
Finally XC nodes can run as TOR nodes, so that not only are their IP addresses concealed, but since they do not use exit nodes they're immune to packet sniffers.
As such, XC claims to be completely private. Sender address, receiver address, amount, and IP address are all kept private. Future developments will allow increasing control over degrees of privacy, enabling XC transactions to be flexible and tailored to a wide variety of use-cases.
I should have an updated whitepaper on both the decentralized trustless mixing [which is multi-sig based] and the xchat by Sunday night, if not sooner.
