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Dash needs to implement Shadowcash technology and truly be anonymous.

Do you think Dash fungibility / anonymity is a critical feature?

  • Total voters
    45
GrandMasterDash said:
Not conspiracy. It was Kot at the Warsaw Block meetup on 25 August 2016 (see budget and Dash Detailed interview) where this convenient Coinfirm-Dash relationship was drawn up. In other threads I've provided links to Coinfirm's two-way relationships with companies like ShapeShift and Vodafone, and they are attempting to track and amalgamate transactions between bitcoin and dash (and other alts further down the road).

Evan has previously made clear statements regarding the importance to fungibility. I've provided links elsewhere but a search for "Evan Duffield fungibility" should do the trick.

For me, dash's self-funding model is a stand-out differentiator. However, time has shown severe limitations. I now view this as nothing more than a system to issue grants, it has little or no influence over core development. Other cryptos such as NEM are starting to explore similar funding methods. I think in time, other coins will adopt advanced versions and eclipse dash.
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I know about fungibility and Evan's statements, and how essentially fungibility has a lot to do with anonymity. And I can agree we have no test case to prove the DGBB has the power to fundamentally steer the core away from something the MNs don't want (I don't recall a specific case of that). But Kot's Coinfirm thing wouldn't matter IF anonymity features are improved. I think Amanda's latest video spells out exactly why Dash is behind Zcash in anonymity. It's nice to see her presentation, because it also reminds us what is RIGHT with Dash compared to that project. NEM and other cryptos are going to adopt this technology of DGBB, but it will be some time before we see if it has any more or any less teeth than Dash's.

Coinfirm can only track what Dash makes possible for them to track, same as Zcash or Monero. The issue isn't trying to gain compliance to facilitate mass adoption, but not doing so by forsaking the direction of the project as it concerns anonymity.

So, let's give the core a chance here, to make a statement. That means be a little patient and give them time to discuss it among themselves. Maybe to this point, that conversation has been less of a priority. If we don't like their statement on the issue, let's see if indeed the DGBB has teeth, by allowing the MNs to change their minds and be able to fire them if they refuse. Lastly, if none of this goes our way, THEN we can consider dropping support long term for the project. I think any other reaction is overreaction and rash.

And let me say, I am not a concern troll, or troll of any kind, so I hope I wasn't included in that particular label. I'm trying to say these people raising issues have legitimate points, but may be overreacting or reacting too soon out of fear their concerns will not be addressed. If anything, I'm trying to be rational here. Fear is only rational when directly proportional to risk, relative to all other risks you face day to day. So, I want to pull that fear down a notch, back into proportion with risk, so it doesn't merely become concern trolling or FUD. I think the intentions of most of the people posting about legitimate anonymity issues shouldn't be simply dismissed as "trolling". If we do that, before you know it, all legitimate concerns become "trolling" and the entire project becomes insular based on hubris and an echo chamber of group think.
 
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BenTucker said:
I know about fungibility and Evan's statements, and how essentially fungibility has a lot to do with anonymity. And I can agree we have no test case to prove the DGBB has the power to fundamentally steer the core away from something the MNs don't want (I don't recall a specific case of that). But Kot's Coinfirm thing wouldn't matter IF anonymity features are improved. I think Amanda's latest video spells out exactly why Dash is behind Zcash in anonymity. It's nice to see her presentation, because it also reminds us what is RIGHT with Dash compared to that project. NEM and other cryptos are going to adopt this technology of DGBB, but it will be some time before we see if it has any more or any less teeth than Dash's.

Coinfirm can only track what Dash makes possible for them to track, same as Zcash or Monero. The issue isn't trying to gain compliance to facilitate mass adoption, but not doing so by forsaking the direction of the project as it concerns anonymity.

So, let's give the core a chance here, to make a statement. That means be a little patient and give them time to discuss it among themselves. Maybe to this point, that conversation has been less of a priority. If we don't like their statement on the issue, let's see if indeed the DGBB has teeth, by allowing the MNs to change their minds and be able to fire them if they refuse. Lastly, if none of this goes our way, THEN we can consider dropping support long term for the project. I think any other reaction is overreaction and rash.

And let me say, I am not a concern troll, or troll of any kind, so I hope I wasn't included in that particular label. I'm trying to say these people raising issues have legitimate points, but may be overreacting or reacting too soon out of fear their concerns will not be addressed. If anything, I'm trying to be rational here. Fear is only rational when directly proportional to risk, relative to all other risks you face day to day. So, I want to pull that fear down a notch, back into proportion with risk, so it doesn't merely become concern trolling or FUD. I think the intentions of most of the people posting about legitimate anonymity issues shouldn't be simply dismissed as "trolling". If we do that, before you know it, all legitimate concerns become "trolling" and the entire project becomes insular based on hubris and an echo chamber of group think.
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I think you're missing the point.

No one has found a way to improve on Dash's privacy without essentially breaking the currency for any kind of mainstream adoption.

The mixing solution will be improved so it's more usable, but implementing a 'stronger' privacy solution (i.e. crossing that line into a protocol-level private-ledger) produces a currency that is radically slower, less scalable, less usable, less accessible and more centralized than Bitcoin, i.e useless outside of small niche groups transacting between fullnodes in the long term - which basically means useless period, as small currencies don't have the liquidity / entropy / hashrate / node-count / price stability the small minority of users who actually want privacy will require (e.g. DNMs).

There are lots of options for 'privacy coins' that are taking that approach, it is hot right now purely with speculators same as 'dapps' were 6 months ago. and each one has zero chance at mainstream adoption outside of the crypto-speculator sandbox, IMO.

So to be clear, Dash's strategy at this stage is not to turn the ledger into a bloated, encrypted mess that no one can use without a desktop fullnode or audit to make sure that it's well distributed or heavily manipulated...Evolution's goal is to make p2p currencies accessible and usable by average users from any device in a decentralized way, i.e. without any kind of intermediary, so they can login with a user and buy online direct as easily as they do with centralized services like PayPal, and do this with an open ledger as per Satoshi's architecture plus our option to delete your transaction history in a trustless and decentralized way.

Privacy is a key feature, primarily for fungibility, secondarily for the tiny portion of actual users who want privacy, but not at the expense of preventing giving mainstream users what they want or giving us a chance to actually break out of the crypto sandbox and take p2p money somewhere that's useful to a large portion of the population, because if that's not the goal then what's the point.

Trying to push Dash towards these ridiculous privacy 'solutions' is breaking Dash...because an open-ledger is key to all the features mainstream users need.
 
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AndyDark said:
I think you're missing the point.

No one has found a way to improve on Dash's privacy without essentially breaking the currency for any kind of mainstream adoption.

The mixing solution will be improved so it's more usable, but implementing a 'stronger' privacy solution (i.e. crossing that line into a protocol-level private-ledger) produces a currency that is radically slower, less scalable, less usable, less accessible and more centralized than Bitcoin, i.e useless outside of small niche groups transacting between fullnodes in the long term - which basically means useless period, as small currencies don't have the liquidity / entropy / hashrate / node-count / price stability the small minority of users who actually want privacy will require (e.g. DNMs).

There are lots of options for 'privacy coins' that are taking that approach, it is hot right now purely with speculators same as 'dapps' were 6 months ago. and each one has zero chance at mainstream adoption outside of the crypto-speculator sandbox, IMO.

So to be clear, Dash's strategy at this stage is not to turn the ledger into a bloated, encrypted mess that no one can use without a desktop fullnode or audit to make sure that it's well distributed or heavily manipulated...Evolution's goal is to make p2p currencies accessible and usable by average users from any device in a decentralized way, i.e. without any kind of intermediary, so they can login with a user and buy online direct as easily as they do with centralized services like PayPal, and do this with an open ledger as per Satoshi's architecture plus our option to delete your transaction history in a trustless and decentralized way.

Privacy is a key feature, primarily for fungibility, secondarily for the tiny portion of actual users who want privacy, but not at the expense of preventing giving mainstream users what they want or giving us a chance to actually break out of the crypto sandbox and take p2p money somewhere that's useful to a large portion of the population, because if that's not the goal then what's the point.

Trying to push Dash towards these ridiculous privacy 'solutions' is breaking Dash...because an open-ledger is key to all the features mainstream users need.
Click to expand...

I see what you are getting at, and it does make sense. That said, however, I am thinking that it might be possible to have Dash have certain transactions/coins/addresses use the already established methods already in place, but also have other transactions/coins/addresses which are encrypted at the protocol level, and of course, the ability to move coins between these encrypted and unencrypted addresses. In other words, for most people, most of the time, the current situation is actually fine -- but it would be great to have some built-in and totally trustless way to send/receive coins in a completely private way, at protocol level. (And these special trustlessly-private transactions would not have to involve instant send, but could take place at normal speed.)

You can see that I am not delving at all into the nitty-gritty technical details here, just describing in a general way what I think would be feasible way to achieve trustless privacy in parallel with the current system...and I know, of course, that this would take work and time. I also know that such work and time would be worth it in the end, as we would have a coin which would be simply unsurpassed in terms of its privacy and usability.
 
AndyDark said:
I think you're missing the point.

No one has found a way to improve on Dash's privacy without essentially breaking the currency for any kind of mainstream adoption.

The mixing solution will be improved so it's more usable, but implementing a 'stronger' privacy solution (i.e. crossing that line into a protocol-level private-ledger) produces a currency that is radically slower, less scalable, less usable, less accessible and more centralized than Bitcoin, i.e useless outside of small niche groups transacting between fullnodes in the long term - which basically means useless period, as small currencies don't have the liquidity / entropy / hashrate / node-count / price stability the small minority of users who actually want privacy will require (e.g. DNMs).

There are lots of options for 'privacy coins' that are taking that approach, it is hot right now purely with speculators same as 'dapps' were 6 months ago. and each one has zero chance at mainstream adoption outside of the crypto-speculator sandbox, IMO.

So to be clear, Dash's strategy at this stage is not to turn the ledger into a bloated, encrypted mess that no one can use without a desktop fullnode or audit to make sure that it's well distributed or heavily manipulated...Evolution's goal is to make p2p currencies accessible and usable by average users from any device in a decentralized way, i.e. without any kind of intermediary, so they can login with a user and buy online direct as easily as they do with centralized services like PayPal, and do this with an open ledger as per Satoshi's architecture plus our option to delete your transaction history in a trustless and decentralized way.

Privacy is a key feature, primarily for fungibility, secondarily for the tiny portion of actual users who want privacy, but not at the expense of preventing giving mainstream users what they want or giving us a chance to actually break out of the crypto sandbox and take p2p money somewhere that's useful to a large portion of the population, because if that's not the goal then what's the point.

Trying to push Dash towards these ridiculous privacy 'solutions' is breaking Dash...because an open-ledger is key to all the features mainstream users need.
Click to expand...
Hi Andy, in the most recent core conference call Evan mentioned a new "quicker, lighter, better privacy implementation" for evo. He stated it would only take a few seconds and also involve mixing. (1:09:00)

Can you elaborate a little on how it differs from the existing mixing implementation?

thnx
 
ScioMind said:
My opinions:

1. Instant transactions are amazing, and are crucial to real-world, brick-and-mortar store adoption. The masternodes are needed for this, and is a service for which they should be (and are being) paid. Nothing needs to change in this regard.

2. Automatic anonymity, rather than having to "opt-in" to be anonymous, would be great, but not necessary. While this is not a priority, it actually does seem easy to implement at the wallet level.

3. Using something like ShadowCash style encryption for anonymization, rather than masternode mixing, is definitely preferable. The masternode resources could be reserved for Instant transactions, whereas anonymization can be done via automatic encryption. In those cases where the transaction is to be non-anonymous, perhaps some extra bit of information can be sent along, to indicate the sending address.

In my opinion, the above would make this the undisputed choice for "perfect coin."
Click to expand...

You hit it all. If you keep pushing the shadowcash style encryption for Dash, I'll keep pushing the InstantSend addition with the Shadowcash guys. Lightning might also have instant/anonymous transactions too. And yet another a top 50 coin has both instant/mixing features. Who knows what ends up as the perfect coin.

As for zcoin vs zcash. Zcoin bloats the blockchain - similar to Dash but only takes about an hour to mix. Transactions are still the speed of.....bitcoin. Zcash bloats the computer memory sending a transaction (4GB of ram), but keeps the blockchain clean. One of them is planning instant transactions in the future. I don't think either are magic bullets. We need an always anonymous sending coin - no option to not mix. Otherwise, you can't have fungibility with coinfirm now monitoring the mixed vs unmixed coins.

Hopefully, Dash can focus on something other than budget coding and more on features users actually can benefit from. At this point, I see just a few months left before a coin good enough becomes dominant. 6-12 months waiting on Evolution is probably not going to make it in time.
 
Solarminer said:
You hit it all. If you keep pushing the shadowcash style encryption for Dash, I'll keep pushing the InstantSend addition with the Shadowcash guys. Lightning might also have instant/anonymous transactions too. And yet another a top 50 coin has both instant/mixing features. Who knows what ends up as the perfect coin.

As for zcoin vs zcash. Zcoin bloats the blockchain - similar to Dash but only takes about an hour to mix. Transactions are still the speed of.....bitcoin. Zcash bloats the computer memory sending a transaction (4GB of ram), but keeps the blockchain clean. One of them is planning instant transactions in the future. I don't think either are magic bullets. We need an always anonymous sending coin - no option to not mix. Otherwise, you can't have fungibility with coinfirm now monitoring the mixed vs unmixed coins.

Hopefully, Dash can focus on something other than budget coding and more on features users actually can benefit from. At this point, I see just a few months left before a coin good enough becomes dominant. 6-12 months waiting on Evolution is probably not going to make it in time.
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I pretty much agree with everything you said...except DON'T push InstantSend with the ShadowCash guys, or anyone else! I want Dash to win! LOL

In all seriousness though, Dash does have a really incredible dev team. If anyone can pull it off it is them...provided they focus on IMPORTANT features: trustless-privacy, instant transactions, and fungiblity. Actually, Dash is already, in my opinion, the king in terms of features, but I do see room for improvement...and sincerely feel that NOT making such improvements will ultimately mean that someone else will.
 
Ethereum is working on much faster confirmations and zero knowledge transactions. I'm not supporting Ethereum, am just saying there are some serious upcoming competitors.
 
Fortunately, it is now much easier to remain anonymous, at least in the network. There are a lot of free options and there are paid methods. In the extreme case, you can use the TOR browser or vpn
 
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Why no one has cited Vcash? People in this thread are talking (mainly the devs) like it would be impossible to have a stronger and instant anonimity without breaking the scalability and that by doing it would "produce a currency that is radically slower " but we see it's not the case with Vcash, it has instant anon, and instant transactions - even faster than InstantSend. We are in better position right now than Vcash, we already are working on DAPI and we already have the DGBB, that they are working on it too. So, I would ask, why can't we take a look at that coin?
 
Vcash has zeroledger which is like Dash's Evolution. They also have a lot of things like variable block size and encrypted network traffic. Once they have mobile wallets they will be ahead of Dash.
 
chenriquelira said:
Why no one has cited Vcash? People in this thread are talking (mainly the devs) like it would be impossible to have a stronger and instant anonimity without breaking the scalability and that by doing it would "produce a currency that is radically slower " but we see it's not the case with Vcash, it has instant anon, and instant transactions - even faster than InstantSend. We are in better position right now than Vcash, we already are working on DAPI and we already have the DGBB, that they are working on it too. So, I would ask, why can't we take a look at that coin?
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Could you please give the url references of what you have just said? Is there another coin on earth with DGBB (Decentralized Governance Blockchain Budget)?
 
chenriquelira said:
Why no one has cited Vcash? People in this thread are talking (mainly the devs) like it would be impossible to have a stronger and instant anonimity without breaking the scalability and that by doing it would "produce a currency that is radically slower " but we see it's not the case with Vcash, it has instant anon, and instant transactions - even faster than InstantSend. We are in better position right now than Vcash, we already are working on DAPI and we already have the DGBB, that they are working on it too. So, I would ask, why can't we take a look at that coin?
Click to expand...

Vcash is not anonymous / funglble from what I can see. I scanned the website and whitepaper and saw nothing related to that.
 
Solarminer said:
If you keep pushing the shadowcash style encryption for Dash, I'll keep pushing the InstantSend addition with the Shadowcash guys
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Though Shadowcash does not have "instantsend" it has a 60s blocktime. This has the effect of making most transaction confirmations very fast. So, it is not that far behind Dash in that regard. My primary issue with shadowcash is that it is a PoS coin. If it was not for that, then I would have put my money in it a long time ago.
 
Solarminer said:
Just look at their website. They have mixing called chainblender and Zerosend like instantx. They are also working on a governance system.
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I finally found some actual information: https://github.com/john-connor/papers/blob/master/chainblender.pdf


It appears to be essentially mixing, so it suffers the same issue that Dash has. The coin does seem to be interesting though in other respects. Pity it was not developed with bitcoin codebase. It will make it harder to adopt.

One thing is for sure, Dash does not have 18 months (or 2.5 years more likely) to develop Evolution. These other coins are quickly obtaining feature parity and even surpassing Dash. Dash currently has no network effects or real market adoption, so it is still at the stage (unlike bitcoin) where it has to compete on coin features.
 
xdashguy said:
I finally found some actual information: https://github.com/john-connor/papers/blob/master/chainblender.pdf


It appears to be essentially mixing, so it suffers the same issue that Dash has. The coin does seem to be interesting though in other respects. Pity it was not developed with bitcoin codebase. It will make it harder to adopt.

One thing is for sure, Dash does not have 18 months (or 2.5 years more likely) to develop Evolution. These other coins are quickly obtaining feature parity and even surpassing Dash. Dash currently has no network effects or real market adoption, so it is still at the stage (unlike bitcoin) where it has to compete on coin features.
Click to expand...

Now that coinfirm is monitoring mixing vs non mixed transactions, it makes sense to look at fungibility with how mixing is performed. Monero and Zcash might win this battle since all coins are mixed. Shadowcash basically has a 2nd layer that is all mixed so that should qualify too. The hidden transactions with Monero and Zcash could be another problem. If Vcash defaults to mixing on for all wallets like they have said they will, that might be good enough.

Vcash uses better code than Bitcoin. Traffic is encrypted. Calls to daemon are secure, not an open RPC port. I don't see this similarity to Bitcoin code having much benefit if you have features that make it more secure and robust. On the other hand, similarity to Bitcoin code may make a feature easier to add into Bitcoin.

Actually, Dash also has to compete with Paypal, Circle, Coinbase, Ripple, and Stellar the main centralized payment channels or centralized semicrypto systems....because Dash is focusing on usernames, being a bank, and making things easy for mom.
 
Solarminer said:
Vcash has zeroledger which is like Dash's Evolution. They also have a lot of things like variable block size and encrypted network traffic. Once they have mobile wallets they will be ahead of Dash.
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Yeah. And they are already ahead. This monday it's main dev reported that the DWAPI feature is already completed, so they already have Evolution and these features are just waiting to deploy. After that they are only lefting to release the wallets on the mobile stores and they'll be done - like next month at max. Right now Vcash is a much better investment than Dash, given it's price.
 
chenriquelira said:
Yeah. And they are already ahead. This monday it's main dev reported that the DWAPI feature is already completed, so they already have Evolution and these features are just waiting to deploy. After that they are only lefting to release the wallets on the mobile stores and they'll be done - like next month at max. Right now Vcash is a much better investment than Dash, given it's price.
Click to expand...

And in this thread, they discuss Decentralised Governance.
It seems their governance model is not ready yet.
Am I wrong? Have I miss something?
 
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