Note afaik or afaics the two simultaneous equations was not addressed in this thread. I would have to look to see if the traceable ring signatures prior art had the same issue. If not, the line of argumentation Catherine Erwin used may not be entirely watertight.

I have since looked a bit more at how those two equations might be factored. An example of a new breakthrough doesn't directly apply but conceptually it shows how a large NP space can be reduced to P by using localized randomness to act as a proxy for the large search space. The key was an amplification trick on the relationship that enable the localized random recombinations. As animorex stated, we can't get into a mathematical discussion or debate in this layman's thread.

Also that official response doesn't mention that they improved (fixed) XMR to add decentralized, real-time checkpointing as a precaution. Also that official response doesn't mention that in the process an new algorithm was explored for de-anonymization and mitigation.

One thing that kind of hurts in that official response is the implication that I might have been helping to spread a rumor to drive the price down or force the hand of the devs. Or perhaps they were referring to others who were posting rumors in other threads in the altcoin forum. Remember it was jl777 who urged me to get involved and if you could see my PMs with him, I was trying to not get involved but he was concerned about the threat and wanted to motivate me to try.

I will of course feel ashamed if my attempts to find the exploit end up being duds and or if I helped to further any panic. All along I was telling everyone to be calm. Even in my PMs I was urging everyone to be calm.

Some of you who received PMs from me can confirm that.

Okay I hope this issue is over, unless devs need any more assistance from me on what they paid bounty for. I wish all parties the best.