Quote from: AlexGR on September 03, 2014, 09:56:51 AM

Quote from: JypsiCreme on September 03, 2014, 09:18:00 AM

Quote from: AlexGR on September 02, 2014, 05:34:27 PM

Quote from: JypsiCreme on September 02, 2014, 01:46:45 PM

Hey! I've come across a few ardent Monero supporters the other day and we've gotten in this argument about whose technology for anonymous transactions is more advanced, DRK or XMR. What arguments do we have to shut them up?

The obfuscating technology of ring signatures is superior in terms of anonymity compared to coinjoin-based solution. However it is impractical and doesn't scale, therefore rendering the cryptonote-based coins as something like proof-of-concept, rather than usable coins that can experience wide adoption.

Also note that superiority of ring-signatures does not automatically translate to something like NSA-proof level of anonymity. Both DRK and Cryptonote can be practically anonymous for any third private party that watches the transactions on the blockchain but both can be vulnerable to NSA-tracking. If you are an individual using either DRK or Monero for example, coupled with good IP obfuscation and a high-level mixing, nobody will find your transaction. The NSA though, might.

This means that on a practical level, the technical superiority of ring signatures cannot translate into a market advantage, as both coins are anonymous as far as third-private-parties are concerned, but they both are vulnerable to NSA-level resources (where monitoring networks and even hardware devices is a reality).

If DRKTor -or whatever it's named- is a good enough alternative compared to I2P or Tor, then DRK might become the only NSA-proof anonymous coin, as it will have covered the IP obfuscation in a sufficient manner that I2P or Tor hasn't. The fact that the IP obfuscation nodes cannot be sockpuppeted without significant cost, is quite a plus. However it will require a much greater degree of decentralization where Masternodes are installed outside "big" data centers known to cooperate with government agencies.

Very well said although monero fans might argue that scalability issue is bit far-fetched. Their argument is that they are pretty sure that the number of users and complexity level won't grow exponentially, so the coin should keep going even when the number of users is very high.

Well, as we know[1] the value of a network is proportional to its use, so the argument is actually suicidal for investment purposes. "Hey not many people will use it, so it should be relatively ok..."

If you want to be "online cash" / ecash, you have to lift a tremendous amount of "weight" in terms of transactions. When Visa has a peak transaction volume of ~40.000 transactions per second and more than 200mn tx per day, there's a real problem for cryptocurrencies that desire to get a percentage of that action... Btw, that also includes Bitcoin blockchain tech, which is an order of magnitude leaner than Cryptonote tech.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=655792.0

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....but when I do, it's AlexGR's posts