Quote from: whirlwindmoney on Today at 03:12:36 AM

I want to mention that while we certainly could store logs about every transaction and we can't prove that we don't, in case you believe that we don't then I'll tell you how the current system works: we only store a Notes public key and balance in the database, when you generate a Note that is its corresponding private key. So in the database the Notes are not stored in chronological order, it's random. There is no link between a Note's public key and its corresponding deposit because we don't store anything about that. If you want to take it a step further you could withdraw a small percentage of the Note or combine 2 of them together so you alter the link between the exact deposit amount and Note public key balance in our database.

Absolutely, it's important to understand that Whirlwind goes above and beyond the standard, generic mixer, assuming we trust their word, which I do (but that's up to everyone here to make their own decision).

Quote from: whirlwindmoney on Today at 03:12:36 AM

Great explanation and I'm glad you found the idea interesting enough to allocate time for this!

Thanks! What I think is so industry-changing about the blind certificate model is how these blind certificates are as good as cash, so they're transferrable, fungible, and they store value. No other mixer creates something like that. You could have secondary markets built where people could swap around their blind certificates to further enhance their privacy, which is something Theymos proposed back in 2018 when he briefly discussed blind certificates. It's exciting to be a witness to the beginning of all of this because for once, it's something bigger than just a single mixer. If successful, it creates an entirely new, layered system where others can build off the blind certificate model that Whirlwind creates.

Another thing that is so interesting IMO is how applying blind certificates to payments/money was first proposed 40 years ago. You have to wonder "how has this not been built before?" I think once in a lifetime, you might get lucky and stumble upon sort of "ancient wisdom" (for lack of a better term) that has been merely forgotten until now. My favorite example of this sort of thing is Gose: a type of beer that is becoming very popular only in recent years, yet it was invented in the 1200s. It went completely extinct before being rediscovered and reintroduced in the 1980s by a normal man who owned a pretty small pub in Germany. This was a man who searched through history to find an "ancient wisdom" sort of drink and reintroduce roughly the same formula in modern time. And boom, he became a multi-millionaire. That's what we're seeing happen with this blind certificate model - something that was first proposed very publicly 40 years ago, but then for one reason or another, no one stepped up to actually put it into practice.

If we could debate the reasons why, I'd argue that the corporate banking system has had a hand in suppressing this technology. It's utterly a direct threat to their existence. There's no other way to put it.