Re: Peter Todd calls dash snake oil.

I don't trust this system. I can't see it and verify it. What good is it for everything to be hidden completely, to the point where you have to trust that it is working?

With a simple, understandable system that fully protects the privacy of the user, yet requires no trust - as was always the whole point of the decentralized crypto currency of Bitcoin - DASH is not more superior due to it's complexity, but due to it's simplicity. If you're such a technocrat that you don't understand this, I can only feel bad for you because the majority of the world will.

LOL. Here's the attack vector Evan created out of ignorance, stupidity or pure not giving a fuck.

The easiest attack is to buy masternodes and ddos attack competing nodes until you own the traffic. Evan claims it's financially implausible, but ignores that nodes are most profitable when there about a 1,000 masternodes (he has a ROI graphic on the dash BCT thread that underscores this). He also ignores that the attacker would be pulling incomes from these masternodes--given that most are held on corporate servers underlies that no one knows who owns them outside of the host and the owner. He also ignores how motivated an attacker may be, that he or another masternode operator might comply given the right circumstances (threat or lawful compliance) and how deep LE's pockets are--silly, dangerous, stupid.

If you trust that system knowing the flaws, you deserve whatever comes your way--except maybe being linked to pedophiles--can you show that link on your explorer?

DOS'ing masternodes doesn't reduce the anonymity set of the transactions or coins mixed before the DOS. If the masternode count drops 50% for example all of a sudden, mixing coins at that moment is not a good idea. It was already suggested a year ago or so that the wallet would take care of this and protect the user during the network downtime. It hasn't been implemented yet afaik, DASH must grow at least 10x at minimum before this (an appearance of such a motivated attacker) would become even a possibility.

I'd say more like 1000x (even 100x wouldn't get to Bitcoin's size, and Bitcoin isn't attacked all that hard) but the problem is that these issue are unfixable without a complete redesign.

The anonymity set attributable to the masternodes is unknowable because you don't know, can't know, and will never know to what extent the masternodes are compromised. The best you can do is run a few masternodes yourself (assuming you are rich enough to afford it; in the unlikely event that Dash were really successful the masternodes would all be owned by billionaires or major corporations or governments), but unlike running your own Bitcoin or Monero node, that doesn't really help you because you are only going to be a tiny fraction of the network. What the rest of the network and the underlying infrastructure is doing (and on which your privacy depends) is unknowable to you.

That's quite close to the definition of snake oil, being a potion of unknown composition which is alleged by its promoters to be helpful but can't be tested or verified for safety or efficacy.