https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/401798811070107648We designed a new version of Zerocoin that reduces proof sizes by 98% and allows for direct anonymous payments that hide payment amount.
Is a 98% reduction in proof size enough to overcome any existing valid reasons to not merge ZeroCoin functionality?
I think so, Matthew Green mentioned that he was planning to implement Zerocoin into its own cryptocurrency. This seems like a reasonable idea me, it lets us test Zerocoin, and if it works well, we can merge it into Bitcoin (without the risk of damaging Bitcoin if something goes wrong).
btw see also "bitcoin staging" aka betaCoin.
http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg02944.htmlIts a way to one-way peg an alt-coin to bitcoin, so there is no native mining, the way you create coins in the alt-coin is my moving bitcoins into it. And the way to trade them back to bitcoin is to swap them with someone who would otherwise move one. If a security problem develops in the betaCoin, people stop swapping betaCoin at par for bitcoin, or market freezes until the issue is fixed. This is the minimum necessary feature to firewall bitcoin from betaCoin security issues while allowing bitcoins to move between betacoin and bitcoin in the normal case.
This is how I would go about doing an alt (otherwise the usual me-too coin is contingent on the hope of getting in early, or early mining and selling to next stage speculators before the pyramid collapses when it becomes obvious it has no chance of competing with bitcoin for acceptance. As this coins have no acceptance, they have no transactional value, their own value is speculative, which I think must implode at some point.) Also even in the hypothetical that a given coin did overtake bitcoin it could be a dangerous outcome as then what happens to the value of bitcoins? Such an untidy unravelling of bitcoin value would hurt the overall concept of digital scarcity. Say it was litecoin. Then if litecoin got to like 90% to bitcoins 10% BTC/LTC exchange would fall. But then people will be looking nervously at the next runner up, and hedging in the main runner ups. This is a net disservice to digital scarcity. Digital scarcity is a new virtual asset class, and I think is the future of money and financial networks. So we dont want to weaken the concept with me-too alts, even relatively well thought out ones because they define a new digital scarcity race. I think there should only be one credible digital scarcity race or we may have a problem. Digital scarcity becomes digital tulip, then who wants to invest in the next one.
betaCoin is also a way to do an alt that preserves the 21 million coin cap. Fees would be paid in betacoins (or bitcoins). Miners would mine both networks for profit maximization reasons.
Adam