Quote from: Brilliantrocket on May 19, 2014, 07:10:28 PM

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.1340

"So we can see as it is currently structured, CryptoNote doesn't really support anonymity much.

Sorry to blow holes in your enthusiasm. Reality sucks if you haven't taken the time to do some serious work before launching."

LOL. That text contains gems such as:

coupled with constant use of elliptical curve cryptography which is known to be broken under quantum computing, as well is suspect to broken by the NSA[1] or could be broken since it is number theoretic public key cryptography.

I am struggling not to laugh while typing this, but it's too hysterical. If quantum computing exists in any usable form (it doesn't) or if elliptic curve crypto is broken by the NSA (unlikely) we are in WAY bigger trouble than "oh noez, can't spend magical Internet moneyz". Seriously. It's the equivalent of saying "it is suspected that the NSA can screendump every monitor in real time and capture mouse and keyboard movements, so the best thing to do is move to your own hardware you've built from scratch and your own operating system you've written from scratch." It's such an extreme case that it either doesn't exist, or if it does we've got bigger problems.

And the use of one-time ring signatures mucks up the pruning of the block chain of spent addresses. There is a tweak to improve this over the current CryptoNote (one of the tweaks I alluded to upthread).

Which makes SPV and thin clients difficult, but certainly does not affect anonymity on any level.

Bottom line is most of your anonymity will come from obfuscating your IP address with something more reliable than Tor and I2P, not from the block chain mixing of CryptoNote or Zerocash/coin, i.e. if your IP is correlated to your identity, then the one-time ring signature doesn't obscure your identity when you spend.

Monero and other CryptoNote coins can already use Tor.

The case where the one-time ring signature is really useful is a transaction with multiple inputs wherein the spender is merging his coins, thus enabling tracing of those coins to the same entity (the current spender). And it is very unfortunate the one-time ring signature is optional in this case, because it is the identity of the upchain spenders who suffer from this action by the current spender, thus the motivation is not there.

Those upchain spenders are the ones that either need to flush their inputs using a high mixin count, or they need to insist those sending funds to them do. This is not a technical issue, and is the equivalent of "I use WhateverAnonymousCoin but someone forgot to send coins anonymously to me".

So we can see as it is currently structured, CryptoNote doesn't really support anonymity much.

Agree to disagree.

Sorry to blow holes in your enthusiasm. Reality sucks if you haven't taken the time to do some serious work before launching.

Just to be clear: Monero supports all this joyful anonymity from today, not from "V2 guize!!!1111". Any problems, holes, and bugs will be ironed out over time. Any coin implementing ring signatures later will have the added disadvantage of still running in to issues later on. For me, personally, I'll stick to the software that will reach ring signature maturity faster.

Note that the use of a separate payee address for each transaction is a very useful strategy. This is a positive aspect of CryptoNote that adds anonymity, but again it is not so effective without reliable IP obfuscation, as the payee will reveal himself on spending.

Hence: Tor.