I trust (as far as my feelings, the market and the brutal test of time can assure) Shen, the Monero team and gmaxwell but from my readings it seems TPTB_need_war may have a breakthrough of some kind in the area of math and anonymization (of quanties), what is exactly what Shen and the Monero team is researching, if he and knowledged parts of the Monero team could dialogue in secret (because he doesn't want to reveal any part of his research he says the Monero team is "copying" but has no way to find out), and if it is found he has an useful, unprecendented method that can translate into code for betterment of the Monero network, I can see a crowdfunding motion having success or he eventually takes the highest bidder.
I'd really like to receive about $75,000 total for the work already done plus assisting on implementation. If I am not mistaken, the guy who was selected to optimize Monero's mining algorithm pocketed an alleged $150,000 worth of coins before releasing the optimization generally.
I know this is not true and you make it sound everyone involved in coding for Monero is making rivers of money which is unrealistic as the core devs are literally making most for free if not in the red already (no IPO, no premine), and most coders working and submitting on github at the moment were funded by the community.
I have not thought Shen, Monero team, and gmaxwell were copying my work. I did think for a brief moment perhaps someone had tipped them off that I had claimed the same feature and maybe that motivated them to attempt the same, but I never thought they literally copied my work since no one else had seen it so that was impossible (unless someone hacked my computer which I don't think is the case).
Their algorithm is significantly different than mine, so it is also quite obvious we independently developed our solutions.
I believe now based on new information from Shen that it is likely he has a solution to the same problem set as I do. But I do believe his may be less general, e.g. the open question about whether he can merge multiple inputs from different signers in same transaction (I am nearly certain he can not but awaiting his reply). Also so far I view his as more mathematically complex to explain and trust. But perhaps he can improve that with more english elucidation in his paper. He may not wish to do that, if he prefers the typical "math snob" style of academic papers (where the reader is burdened with acquiring the domain knowledge rather than it being explained) which is fine for academically targeted white papers. Our market is crypto and the users need to trust and understand tech. One of my talents is explaining complex tech in simple ways. My white paper could use some more refinement on this aspect of explanation to the laymen, yet I am very sure I can do it.
I do believe I have something of value even if Shen is able to resolve every flaw I might find, because there is more than one way to skin a cat and mine is I think simpler to understand. Also mine should be more generally useful, because mine can sign the transaction even to 0 outputs, e.g. a burn transaction or signing to a future of outputs that will be decided later. And there are probably other scenarios where not conflating the inputs and the outputs in the signature has some use case that Shen's can't do (other than the one I already asked him about).
Separation-of-concerns is a fundamental design concept I follow. Conflation violates this and invariably leads to corner cases.
He may be awesome at math, but I have a lot of experience with design patterns.
So in end, I expect my invention to be worth $millions in the market. The question is how to best capture some of that future value now.
Well I am saddened to read that Monero devs are in poverty. I want to read that we are expanding the crypto markets and all of us are getting wealthy while improving the world.
Hopefully we can lead in that direction. I am trying to be healthy so I can do more coding less talking. I am not really happy about talking here. But I need to make a wise decision about what to do with my anonymity algorithm at this juncture given the recent competitive developments.