Quote from: mmortal03 on September 30, 2014, 05:05:54 AM

Quote from: cbeast link=topictrust-less manner.msg8995070#msg8995070 date=1411841002

Quote from: mmortal03 on September 27, 2014, 05:34:46 AM

Quote from: cbeast on September 27, 2014, 04:28:14 AM

It appears it protocol may be evolving into something more like Zerocoin.

Can you provide more detail on why you think this?

I am not a dev, but well written white papers are supposed to summarize the disposition. My take is from the language used regarding goals and intentions of each project. Cryptonote started with a Project manager over it's ring signatures and now uses an oracle. I'm not sure how they will handle bloating. Cryptonote claims to be no longer competing with Bitcoin and wants to work in parallel just as zerocoin does as well. This is a reasonable approach with an unproven technology. But Cryptonote seems to be testing the waters with altcoins. This probably isn't going to help them. Both are a work in progress and the winners will be the ones that integrate with Bitcoin. Zerocoin seems to have the edge so far.

My understanding was that Zerocoin hadn't been released yet and was being reworked since they couldn't get it incorporated into Bitcoin. Zerocash is their newest project. Are you familiar with it? Is this only a theoretical edge that you're claiming, given that there's nothing actually released yet? Everything about it is still academic.

IMO both technologies are extremely unlikely to be implemented into Bitcoin. Bitcoin is too worried about playing nice with governments and achieving mass adoption (getting rich). Bitcoin is allergic to change due to no one wanting to risk the value of their coins for the betterment of society and the technology. That and because opinions differ so much that it is hard to get anyone to agree to do anything. This is why Alt coins are needed, to push the technology forward and improve upon cryptocoins since Bitcoin is unwilling to do so for the most part.

Zerocoin and Zerocash are two different things. Anoncoin (possibly others) is still working on implementing Zerocoin and I think they are close to having the first implementation of it (a month or so according to their dev.) Zerocash is being developed by the original Zerocoin developers and a few others.

Zerocoin does not offer as much anonymity as Zerocash, but it has a benefit over Zerocash in that it can be implemented in a more trust-less manner by the use of RSA UFOs.

That being said, there is still some risk involved in that someone may already have cracked the RSA UFOs (the NSA) or someone could do so in the future. In this case it wouldn't affect anonymity, but they could print free Zerocoins. If it is cracked at some point with faster computers then the coin could be hard forked with higher security RSA UFOs, but the damage could already be done. There is a lot of debate as to how secure the RSA UFO approach is, and I am on the fence about it after hearing a lot of opposing opinions.

I have also heard a lot of opposing opinions as to how much trust would be required to setup Zerocash. The developers claim and I quote "there is trust involved but it is more like having to trust that only one person out of 20 is not cheating you." Furthermore, there are mentions of using multiparty computation to set it up, which is similar to how Anoncoin is setting up the Zerocoin RSA UFOs. Again, I am on the fence as to how much trust would be required and what the better solution is as there are a lot of opposing opinions.

You cannot link a buyer of a zerocoin to a seller of it. You cannot do that in Zerocash either, but with the added ability of not be able to tell how much value a transfer was for. Here is a good place to start learning about Zerocoin and Zerocash, although it may be a bit biased towards Zerocoin: https://wiki.anoncoin.net/Anoncoin_Wiki

I think ring signatures are the best currently available option for anonymity as they are implemented in Cryptonote coins. However, I have heard of at least one coin that is improving upon the anonymity of ring signatures as they are implemented in Cryptonote coins. I believe these coins are using ring signatures, but implementing them a little bit differently. I guess current Cryptonote coins can upgrade if it is a better solution.

The jury is still out as to what anonymous technology is best and opinions differ. It is challenging in that all of these concepts are hard to understand, especially the complicated cryptography in Zerocoin/Zerocash, and I think that is the main reason why the answer is not clear. If they can be implemented in a sufficiently trust-less and secure manner, they could beat out all currently existing technologies.