Concerning how useful this tech is, is there any chance it will be adopted into Bitcoin?
If not the core, how about a side chain?
Putting it in the Bitcoin chain itself is a hard-sell because there is a serious scalability downsize (all the cryptographically strong anonymity techniques break pruning), among other pedestrian reasons. A side-chain using it seems virtually certain to me, limited more by the deployment of sidechain tech than anything else... even more so than the ZeroCash anonymity design simply because the ring signature approach is so simple by comparison.If not the core, how about a side chain?
But it's all a guess at this stage. Technology progress in Bitcoin is slow for good reason and now with the prospect that altcoin pumpers may we well funded to try to disrupt that progress well, it'll be sad if what kills cryptocurrency isn't competition from traditional financial instruments or authorities but just poisonous behavior between competing systems. :-/
It will be sad indeed.
But I tend to hope for the best, competition is a strong instrument and may (or may not) push the tech centuries ahead, including cryptocurrencies.
I don't know about the "good reason" behind the Bitcoin slow progress. It stuck pretty much where it all began - low anonymity, ASIC problem etc. Popularity is the only thing that keeps Bitcoin afloat.
I bet that if some people took some CN ideas and started to populate it in some super accessible (for masses) way - it would become (eventually, yes) more popular than BTC.
Anywho. For now we're just stuck with BTC monarchy and it's sad.
