Anti-fud Campaign; T Addresses

[GGuy]

I keep hearing noise/fud about t addresses. There’s an easy solution. Launch a ZecShielded wallet.

Offer a ~$40k RFP.

~$10k of which can be used to maintain a fork of a wallet (E.g. Zingo, YWallet…) that removes T addresses. Name it something obvious so everyone gets the idea (e.g. “ZecShielded wallet”).

~$30k goes towards marketing so we can get the word out that “Zcash has just launched a wallet that removes transparent transactions! All incoming and outgoing transactions are fully shielded! ”.

The other added benefit is the community can reapply pressure on exchanges when they don’t support our “premier” wallet.

[noamchom]

Wallets without T-address won’t dissolve the issue about the base layer which still does primarily use T-addresses. To resolve the issue, the existence of T-addresses needs to be handled (killed).

(which is a topic that has been lingering around the ecosystem since 2018)

[GGuy]

@noamchom

To resolve the issue, the existence of T-addresses needs to be handled (killed).

So do you support this idea or not? If t addresses did get killed then wouldn’t we need to drop t support from wallets anyway? Why can’t we start with the wallet?

It gives users the option to download an app that sends out the message “you don’t support shielded transactions? I don’t support you.”. Good, fun, relatively cheap experiment that moves Zcash closer to your dream of no T addresses. I’m confused why you wouldn’t support this idea .

[Autotunafish]

See also (but not limited to)

The Future of Zcash

Unless ECC has changed its policy since the end of January, neither the Foundation nor ECC believe that it would be wise to switch off t-addresses (or disable t :arrow_right:t transfers) at this time. Coincidentally, the Foundation engineers raised this topic on an Arborist call late last year (while I was still at ECC), and I put together a presentation that outlined what we/ECC believes needs to happen before t-addresses could be deprecated, without risking severe adverse consequences (e.g. …

Principles for deprecating t2t transactions

We should deprecate purely transparentem (t2t) transactions eventually. Keep t2z so you can move old money into the shielded pool. To quote @aiyadt “It’s literally not Zcash” : t2t transactions have no zero-knowledge in them. This is an issue of principles if we care about privacy. It’s also an issue of commitment and signaling. To claim purely transparent transactions offer “the best of both worlds” conceptually undermines our principles and the one thing that differentiates zcash. It’s a l…

[joshs]

fwiw, I believe that Edge is zaddr-only, but it provides some challenges when someone wants to fund the wallet from a taddr-only product such as a hardware wallet or exchange. The idea of a unified address is to promote “privacy by default” where the receiving wallet auto shields any incoming transparent funds.

[GGuy]

Twitter user advocating for encrypted only transactions

Tweet: “Zcash allows transparent transactions. Most exchanges only support transparent transactions. Your information is being leaked.”

And then can proceed to show a Z to T transaction where 1 ZEC was transfered the user might be concerned that’s too much information leak.

Zcash supporter

Tweet: “Unified Addresses make Zcash transaction shielded by default. This protects a user in most cases.”

Users conclusion

“That’s concerning. I wasn’t aware I could be tricked into leaking information. I thought my information was always shielded. Do any other cryptos exist that preserve my privacy better?”

If a shielded only wallet existed

“Hi potential Zcash user. You should checkout ZecShielded wallet. It only allows for shielded 2 shielded transactions. Here’s what a shielded transaction looks like. No information leakage !”

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Maybe I’m wrong and there is a better argument that fits into a tweet on how Zcash protects users. But at the moment it feels like fud wins in a twitter augment.

Maybe, just maybe, we are wrong and the argument isn’t fud and users don’t want to think about if and when UAs protect them.

[Boggerster]

I wonder what’s taking so long. It’s been more than 4 years, it’d be a very clear net positive, makes using the network much much safer, ironfish is doing it, etc etc etc.
It has to be fear of a regulatory boogeyman banning $ZEC from major exchanges, that’s the only reason I can think of. mind boggling.

[GGuy]

@Boggerster

It has to be fear of a regulatory boogeyman banning $ZEC from major exchanges

But isn’t creating a shielded only wallet give us the best of both worlds? It allows users to use a wallets that only supports shielded to shielded transactions. Protected 100% of the time. And if at some stage the regulatory boogeyman comes along users can still recover their assets through the transparent pool?

[zancas]

Hey folks! Zingo supports Unified Addresses.

If a user opts to send to a t-address the transaction will be partially public.

If a user chooses to offer a t-address the transaction will be partially, or depending on the sender, wholly public.

We can add warnings to make it more explicit to the user that this is the case, but what if a user wants to leak data?

We aren’t interested in working to proscribe behavior. In other words, we want to offer people innovative new options, not dictate to them what they should do.

Philosophically we are motivated by the idea that tech should serve the user not dictate to them.

Zingo incentivizes its users to want to use shielded transactions. This is because our technology is focused on, and building on, encrypted memo fields that only exist in shielded transactions.

We believe that this will align users interests in a way that naturally expands the shielded transaction set.

I will try an analogy…

Suppose that you think that riding horses is problematic because horses poop in the street. People riding hoverboards have to dodge and weave around horse-poop all the time.

What should you do? Launch an anti-horse campaign? Maybe horses should be shot on sight? Maybe horse-riders should be publicly derided for their anti-social behavior?

Or maybe, we should build better hoverboards that float above the poop?

I don’t think legacy t-addresses are worth bothering with. People will stop riding horses when alternatives are better. We’re building systems that offer new features to folks using shielded addresses. We believe that those features will be attractive enough to convince people to use them (and hence stop using t-addresses), at least most of the time.

On the other hand if the occasional horse-back ride is appropriate, then folks can choose that option.

I predict that the expansion in shielded transactions that comes from users making self-aware choices will make t-addresses a minor fraction of the total transaction pool in the near future.

In other words, the solution is to provide superior alternatives, not to dictate-via-tech how people should be private.

ZingoLabs will be publishing a Grant Proposal to the @ZcashGrants committee soon. That proposal will outline the specific features we plan, that will, among other things render this issue increasingly obsolete.

Not to put too fine a point on it, if you want the transaction pool to shift away from t-addresses, then support Zingo we’re innovating in ways that will causes that to happen.

[GGuy]

@zancas

I will try an analogy…

Suppose that you think that riding horses is problematic because horses poop in the street. People riding hoverboards have to dodge and weave around horse-poop all the time.

Hoverboard users will simply try to use streets that have less horse poo. In the same way that users concerned about privacy will choose to use wallets that leak less data. That’s likely to be a wallet that doesn’t support T addresses.

[zancas]

Why would a wallet that doesn’t support t-addresses be less likely to leak data?

I mean, I guess an explicit shout from a user like “LOOK AT ME I AM SENDING THIS MUCH ZCASH” isn’t really a “leak”.

Zingo depends on maximal privacy for it’s core value proposition.

If you don’t know who’s aware of your transactions, then you’re unware of critical information. Our entire focus is on providing self-awareness. We can’t have leaks. Privacy leaks are antithetical to our goal.

We don’t disallow users from explicitly announcing data.

The price of ZEC is a really good example of this. A moment’s thought will show you that requests for price information announces a great deal of information about the user.

Other wallets have rolled the price information into their lightwalletd instance. That is, they get price information from the same source as the get blockhain information!!

Think about that for a moment. Given that all lightwallets depend on a proxy for blockchain data, what does it imply that some of them also depend on the same source for price information?!

We think this is a really juicy target for an attacker… imagine that you can lie about the price in a completely convincing way! What a failure mode.

For this reason zingo does not rely on the proxy for price information.

Again, requesting price information IS divulging important information about the user’s state. What should we do?

Zingo’s solution is to require the user explicitly request price information.

If you really want a t-addressless wallet, then maybe you should also ensure that that wallet doesn’t provide price information. But once you’ve started in that direction, what you really want is a wallet that prevents the user from requesting price information!!

Maybe it should monitor the network traffic of the device, and blacklist known price publishers?

I think this is absurd, but is philosophically consistent with an approach that allows tech to dictate behavior to the user.

[GGuy]

@zancas

I mean, I guess an explicit shout from a user like “LOOK AT ME I AM SENDING THIS MUCH ZCASH” isn’t really a “leak”.

Journalist is in a foreign country and walks into a shop and them entering the shop is captured on CCTV. They accidentally approve a transaction to a T address for 0.24 ZEC and the amount is published on chain. The government know posters with anti government messaging are sold for 0.12 ZEC… .

Coz you know, when your nervous or feel threatened people don’t make mistakes and make the wrong decision in the moment or click the wrong button . I’m sure if that journalist has a choice they’d choose the wallet they would never allow that to happen right?

[GGuy]

@zancas btw I’m not saying Zingo is wrong or bad. I think it’s a great wallet and think the Zingo philosophy is great! I’m just saying one size doesn’t fit all and maybe a subset of users might want a shielded only wallet.

[zancas]

Sure, but we can make it effectively impossible just by having UI that makes it clear what is happening.

[hanh]

Just set the minimum privacy level to medium or above and ywallet will not make transactions with transparent input/output.

For more info, refer to Transaction Privacy :: Zcash Warp Sync

[ChrisGilliam]

Some of us see the T address option as a plus. Options are not a bad thing.

[Autotunafish]

I’ve always thought of it as a sort of atomic swap function that we’ve had though we don’t call it that. The coins on either side are pretty far cries from each other. And with unified addresses you can have one with no transparent receiver whatsoever if you choose and send funds between the shielded pools w/o having to use the transparent pool except for exchanges and stuff and in which case youre likely deshielding it out of the enciphered gibberish anyways. I seem to recall that the idea of somewhat strong-arming exchanges into using shielded addresses came and went around when the gdpr was first announced years ago (idk exactly why I correlate those two happenings with each other but I do).

[noamchom]

To your questions I would generally reply that Z-address only wallets sidestep the challenge of the constant waves of FUD and it sidesteps the point that the Zcash base layer is less appealing, less technically usable, and users are less secure when having to weave amongst exchanges and wallets with varying support for Z-address features. I don’t see any compelling reason to spend resources to build a Z-only wallet that is a gamble for long-term adoption. Energy needs to be invested in elimination of t-addresses.

To your point @Boggerster I hope that regulatory fear isn’t driving ECC and ZF actions, but I fear that you may be correct (basing this conclusion on the cold reality that the t-address ban has been eliminated from the ecosystem roadmap-whiteboard. It is an upgrade that has been left for dead, while the PoS upgrade has taken first focus). They (rationally) do have to perceive the threat to their entire legacy and ongoing job security if regulators cracked down severely (I think this is likely) if Zcash upgraded itself to Z-address only.

[zancas]

I like this because it lets the user decide.

[dontpanicburns]

I have not seen fud around t-addrs. T-addys will be very useful for ZSA’s and could be used as public did registries once identity becomes an important topic. Currently, T-addy’s are the only type of key that can be used to sign messages, they are the only accounts with multisig, and for better or worse they are what exchanges use. Exchanges need to adopt UA’s and that is a topic for another day.

I would rather see the trusted setup pools be phased out than T-addys.