You may claim that is absurd, and yet, the cryptonote whitepaper references bitcoin extensively! They recognize that their system takes many ideas from Bitcoin and builds upon them. They likewise give credit in their white paper, and clearly explain what part of their work is new and what is based on bitcoin. In fact the entire first section of the cryptonote white paper explains this. Have you read it?

Can you clearly explain this (i.e. which parts -- specifically -- are original, and which are derivative) with respect to shadowsend? Because the shadowsend whitepaper doesn't.


That is nonsense, because stealth addresses plus ring signatures is exactly the method used by the anonymity functions of cryptonote, and cryptonote was the inventor of using these methods for a distributed cryptocurrency. Why is that so hard to understand?


False. Quoting from the Shadowsend whitepaper: "The blockchain is searched for the provided keyImage, if one is found the transaction is
considered a double­spend attempt and denied."

This works exactly the same.


The list is not endless.

As far as I can tell the list is:

1. Shadow transactions occur on a Bitcoin-style chain (transaction formats, etc.), wheres the cryptonote implementation has its own blockchain and transaction formats.

2. Shadow shares a blockchain with a non-anonymous coin SDC. Operations allow exchanging one for the other.

3. Some relatively minor implementation details of the Shadow anonymity scheme differ, such as the denominations used. Likewise, I read somewhere that Shadow uses a different elliptical curve for its elliptical curve cryptography, though I can't find that in the white paper.


Then why are you arguing about something you don't understand?