My single biggest question after reading the entire paper is the how did they choose their elliptic curve constants? The protocol appears sound; who chose the constants? Will there be a plan for choosing new constants in the future if needed?
As I understand it the constants were chosen by Daniel J. Bernstein. I think this is noted in the white paper but may have been missed during that initial review when cryptonote suddenly dropped out of the sky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdDSAI'm not a cryptographer so I may be getting some of this wrong.
I've not seen any answer to this, though you could try asking on their forum. That can be hit or miss. Some of the people posting there on behalf of "cryptonote" obviously have technical knowledge but others are just clueless.
Daniel Bernstein seems well qualified to make that decision. Maybe he will share his thoughts with us. Is he on bitcointalk?
The second question may or may not even matter (I have no reason to assume there is something wrong with the chosen hash function). Only because of the importance of the decision am I wondering about the selection. I have not registered on the CryptoNote forums but may do so at some point.
Thank you for your time.