anyone with an opinion. feel free to z2z.to/zcashvr to maintain anonymity.
sometimes I wonder if I am poorly reflecting on zcash community by picking fights to highlight monero’s weaknesses.
On the other hand, I could address concerns about the “main issues people outside the community have” that you’ve listed.
I have pent up creativity, refining my artistic process, and hope to be prolific. any direction helps.
Cool, well, this is how I see the issues I outlined.
Trusted setup
Fixed by halo, however this is a very hard point to talk about. Halo seems simple but is pretty esoteric. I probably wouldnt rely too heavily on arguing against the downsides of the trusted setup. Also be prepared for people to point out that mistakes have been made before with the trusted setup so critics can bring this up. Unless you are Daira, Sean or Str4d the conversation will probably end there with them declaring victory. However it is an acknowledged problem and one that is theoretically fixed. The point I would make is that it is being worked on.
Founders Reward.
This is contentious. People tend to have made up their mind on this and there isnt much you can do to persuade them. Going forward through the MGRC is a very strong point in favour of the ECC having good intentions all along. I think encouraging people to get involved in the discussions is the best thing. if someone has already made up their mind it wont change it, but it could bring positive new voices to the community. For me it finally clicked when @tromer said on one of the dev livestreams that “zec is a very good mechanism for funding zcash”
However the lopsided way the funding was weighted is hard to reconcile. i think the best way to sum it up would be “mistakes were made” - it is a past problem though and not a future one. The ECC have themselves recognised it and to some extend have tried to fix the issue through funding of the zfnd.
Lack of transparency as to the owners of the ECC
It is a for profit. The owners have the right to stay anon. the only thing would be to bring up the MGRC again and how the community is moving away from the ECC.
Complexity.
This is something we can do something about. I started before covid a few articles on how to use zcash properly. covering metadata leakage, correlation attacks, deanon methods, etc. for both zcash and monero (i was inspired by a MCF podcast covering the same issues and what is different, why, etc). Guides and documentation is good but it doesnt win arguments. functionality does.
So in my opinion the best ways to fight toxicity is to get more active non toxic community members contributing. So rather than detracting from other projects point concentrate on showing how we are working to fix the issues within our project.
oh I forgot mining centralisation. - I have yet to find any reassurance about this.
idk, these are just my opinions. i would be very interested to see what you could do with this sort of theme. showing the promise of the future rather than contrasting to other coins. Putting a strong message out about what values zcash holds and how it will get there. It is an evolving project come be a part of it.
Zcash cannot fully audit their supply, independent of whether it has t-addresses.
Integrity of sapling pool supply rests on computational hardness assumptions about certain cryptographic primitives.
Let me tell a story, as not to strawman anybody. I will let the readers judge if the same situation applies.
Let’s say that Bob is cheating on Alice with Eve. A compromising photo finds its way to Alice. Bob’s reaction is to firstly mention mow much he suffers from war memories (eliciting sympathy for himself), then say that Eve is a bad person and nobody likes her (attack on character), and that he bought Alice a bouquet of flowers so he cares about her (irrelevant minor gestures).
This is gaslightling 101 - all of the above can be true and Bob is still cheating with Eve.
Does anything in his post address my central argument - “Zcash relationship with Monero is one sided and we are getting the raw part of the deal”?
We literally paid for their food and board. And all we are getting in return are cheap attacks.
I think I understand what youre saying. I meant to refer to the enforced turnstile migration that ensures that only a maximum number of Zcash can exist on the other side. Thanks for clarification
it might be worth trying to fight fire with water rather than fire.
Did anyone respond to Howard asking him the real world identities of this address?
zcaWeZ9j4DdBfZXQgHpBkyauHBtYKF7LnZvaYc4p86G7jGnVUq14KSxsnGmUp7Kh1Pgivcew1qZ64iEeG6vobt8wV2siJiq
until chainalysis can offer some insight into that address, an exceptionally high value target. I would take anything they say about deanoning zec with a grain of salt. this would be my go to example when defending zec.
Here is the shadowbrokers post from 2017 which contains that address and their reasoning for using zcash rather than monero. (memo’s) and their concerns over zcash. (which imho history is showing to be not actual concerns. but we are making that history at the moment)
This is a good idea - I have been making some moves towards organising a volunteer force to handle ideas like that. Should I PM you with more details?
The shadow brokers’ address is not a good example, because some of the senders used t-to-z transactions and practiced poor opsec. The details of that are in section 8 of the 2018 Kappos, Yousaf, Maller, and Meiklejohn paper.
I think that example is a really good example, the paper you posted supports this. My logic is this:
If I observe decent opsec and I accept only z transactions, then “wash” through a z2z it doesnt matter what opsec or type of transaction someone sends me, I cannot be deanoned.
This, as far as I know, is a feature unique to zcash. (it kind of exists in other coins, but not in the same way)
The response is really more aimed at the chainalysis article. TSB is a very high value target. It could have been an interesting discussion on the merits of privacy by default. as a side linking up with the eff in a more formal way could have massive benefits, but I will post that somewhere else.
I really should finish the articles I was writing on this. I wonder if the EFF would apply for a MG…
Dude you’re off topic and this kind of covert “name-calling” is really disgusting. What people think of politics is none of your business to report. Deal with it.
I agree, we need to encourage and promote Youtubers that are genuinely interested in privacy. Zooko tweeted about one of them not long ago. We need to have community members in all these major social platforms and build community there.
I really think the Foundation could be instrumental in that regards.
What are the odds the Foundation could partner with the EFF and other international privacy organisations to build a privacy HUB full of resources about Zcash ? What about having a up to date Wikipedia page (for the records, I know someone in the ECC tried that, but some idiot reverted ECC’s changes).
My 2 cents
I feel like nobody can prevent attacks, and I’d suggest you can’t ban a whole community based on few people nasty comments.
The only way you can make these attacks irrelevant is
That’s the recipe to win.
I tried to tell you people, the minute this guy showed up and started acting friendly. I got a warning back then coz of that.
Now nothing left to do other then sit back and watch him play his games. In all fairness a lot of you are making it waaay to easy for him, mostly because there are some messed up people in Zcash too.
Step 1 was act nice, Step 2 is pit Zcash people against the evil Monero. Next will be finding the enemy within Zcash i guess.
Hey Zcash folks, you are being played!!!
In the end truth will beat propaganda.
I wish that was always the case. But in real life it isn’t - just look at how skillful they are at bashing me just to divert attention that Monero is both taking money from ZF and calling it “pure snake oil”. I’m not even sure how I factor into that particular equation, but it doesn’t matter for the psychological trick to work.
Monero won’t be worth anything some day soon. They don’t have the skill to make it better so they attack something that is. It’s best not to feed the trolls and just laugh at them because you know the truth- that they are pathetic.
First day on the planet?
Not even close. Just not a cynic or nihilist like most.
I’m not necessarily up-to-date, but I don’t see a “Clarán Murray” here:
Maybe that page is out-of-date, or he’s an “officer” of some other Zcash-related organization?
As an almost unrelated point, whatever that person’s affiliation with with Zcash, I don’t see anything in the image you linked about either Zcash, or Monero.
Thanks for saying this @Shawn! This forum has helped me to understand very different view points because proponents were able to express them thoughtfully, even when the difference was large, as it seems to be between @fireice_uk and @sgp in this case!
I think that’s a beautiful thing!