Quote from: aleix on February 23, 2017, 05:00:39 PM

Quote from: dinofelis on February 23, 2017, 03:40:32 PM

Quote from: btc_zero_sum on February 23, 2017, 03:35:40 PM

the truth about monero usage on deep web markets:

That's simply wrong.
https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/user-guides/prove-payment
What monero is still lacking, but I think it is in the making, is multisig, needed for escrow.

Quote from: toknormal on February 23, 2017, 04:44:14 PM

Quote from: Hueristic on February 23, 2017, 04:23:01 PM

And it's not Monero's fault that those AB users don't know how to use it....that guys an idiot or a lier either way he's not worth my time.

Are you serious ?

This has nothing to do with 'faulty users'. By any satisfactory auditory definition, a transaction is successful when one address balance has been depleted and another credited. (I realise there are other geeky definitions that involve transaction IDs but thats not what matters to users and it's not what would matter to any self respecting professional auditor).

In the abscence of a trusted 3rd party arbitor, you therefore need to see the movements at both address balances. The sending and receiving.

Furthermore, the parties that have an interest in auditing it are:

1. The sending participating party (to verify theyre liability is cancelled)
2. The receiving participating party (for obvious reasons)
3. Non-participating keyholders (because they are exposed to the value of the blockchain based asset and have an interest in the public confidence of the blockchain integrity)
4. Non-participating, non-keyholders (because they are expected to supply goods, services and other currencies in support of your blockchain asset's exchange rate).

(You would not want to eat a piece of fruit out of a bowl of rotten apples, even if one of them looked ok. In Bitcoin (and Dash for that matter), everyone sees the whole fruitbowl and everyone has access to the same information without condition or recourse to a third party).

The reason Bitcoins blockchain is anonymous but transparent is because there IS no 3rd party arbitor to resolve disputes. Blockchain transparency therefore makes the asset resistant to confidence attacks through rumour, dispute, aspersion and theft. It also gives transacting parties huge protection by supporting the interests of veracity in anecdotal accounts of failed transfers, whether they be due to mis-addressed funds, lack of confirmations, deception, hacks or otherwise.

The problem with the Cryptonote approach (whos original conception was intended to support trusted party backed credit money anyway b.t.w.) is that the participating parties are *on their own* mate. Nobody can see a thing and theyre each dependent on the others co-operation for verifying the transaction. If Poloniex say my deposit went through and no funds turn up and dont supply me a TXID or viewkey Im stuffed. Nor do I have recourse to the rest of the world. Take a look at the last 6 years of Bitcoin forums. Theyre littered with discussions about addresses, transactions where something went, where it didnt go.

Thats what gives a blockchain confidence and confidence is what supports its value. If all you have is one end of the transaction or a poxy TXID that you have to beg for, then youve a recipe for catastrophe. A while back I said that encryption was the cancer of cryptocurrency. I didnt mean that from the point of view of technical failure, I meant it from the perspective that ANY kind of obfuscation in an unbacked asset is corrosive to confidence and its only a matter of time before all its good for is a temporary payment rail thats valueless.

The reason these coins have no future isnt because they dont have good tech. Its because encrypting stuff is dirt cheap these days and doesnt add any value. (Sticking a gold bar or a diamond in a safe might cost you a small premium, but the price of the safe, not the price of the gold).

In fact, when it comes to cryptocurrency, encrypting stuff positively detracts form its potential value because were talking about a bearer token which draws its worth from authenticity, not obscurity.

How much evidence of that do you need ? If not the above posts (which will be the tip of the Iceberg), try this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg17896089#msg17896089

Ah, Toknormal's aberrant monetary definitions again

There's a difference between two aspects of a monetary asset. One is the BELIEF IN THE SYSTEM. The belief in the system resides in the fact that you are willing to accept monetary assets against goods and services, because you believe that others share that belief, and that you will be able to obtain goods and services against these assets.
That belief needs (but it is not sufficient) a kind of belief in the respect of the rules of the system. For a crypto currency, that belief in the respect of the rules is based upon the belief that the cryptography is sound, and the consensus mechanism is working correctly (that there is not a 51% attack going on for instance, and that such an attack is not imminent).

Again, the "technical" belief is necessary, but not sufficient, for the monetary belief to hold. If you don't believe that the crypto currencies' rules are correctly implemented (for instance, that there's a cheap trick to generate extra coins, or to reverse transactions), you can hardly believe the monetary value of it. But it is not because a crypto currency is working correctly, that you believe that people will accept it against goods and services.

So the "monetary belief" is ONE aspect.

The different aspect is a single transaction. One has already to assume the monetary belief, otherwise you won't bother getting involved into a transaction.
If you're on the receiving side, it is simple to believe in a transaction: you see that you obtained the funds. Given your belief in the functioning of the system, that's enough to convince you.
If you're on the sending side, it is also simple to believe in the transaction: you see that you don't have the funds any more and you can verify that you did the transaction.

So both parties can convince themselves easily about the veracity of a transaction. However, the receiver of funds has an incentive to *pretend* that he didn't get paid, because he's supposed to deliver goods and services for it. This only matters if the sender needs some form of social pressure on the receiver; that is, if he did his payment before being sure that he obtained his goods and services ; or if the receiver of funds thinks he can manipulate social pressure on the sender to get more out of him (more money, or getting the goods back).

So the only potential liar in this case is the receiver of funds (who knows he's lying), and he's lying to a particular audience.

The sender can prove to this audience that the payment took place (and has to sacrifice anonymity for this transaction in that case).

With monero, the sender can prove it to ANYBODY he estimates needs to be informed about the receiver's lie. If he sends the transaction key, the transaction ID and the receiver's address, ANYBODY can check that this transaction took place.

But it is up to the sender to give this information to the people he estimates, need to have this information (although these people can re-transmit this information further, which is an error in this system: it is not a zero-knowledge proof, it is full proof).

The revelation of this particular transaction has nothing to do with the monetary belief in the overall system. The overall belief is partially built upon the belief of the correctness of the cryptographic system, and the absence of 51% attack, and partially on the inavoidable belief in the group-think of it having value.

One doesn't need to know how to reveal an individual transaction: one has cryptographic proof that they are all correctly linked together.

The revelation of a particular transaction is only needed to correct a lie of a receiver of funds to an audience for which you, as a sender, think it is important to correct this.

These are two different aspects.