Leap frogging zaddr

[secparam]

Zooko, this thread has turned into a question of if we should ever get rid of Taddrs. We all agree a lot of things need to happen for that to work.

So to assume good faith, can you answer this question ?

@secparam

This conversation is really easy to end

" I think taddr’s should go away. Eventually. Right now we need them for compatibility with exchanges and for a while at least, cross platform transactions that are crucial (at least t2z).

Getting rid of them will take time and we can’t do it quickly. We should do it, but cannot and should not do it quickly. Lets work to figure out how to"

if zooko said that, meant it, and followed through. i’d tell everyone in this thread to stop stirring up trouble and go home.

The fact that no one will say this is either 1) evidence they aren’t really all in on privacy even in concept or 2) just stuck in “but someone is wrong on the internet” mode. … for like a year now.

[dontbeevil]

@secparam

We all agree a lot of things need to happen for that to work.

Yes, nobody (afaik) (who wants Zcash to genuinely succeed) wants to remove t-addr now, only when all the shielded tech & support is ready & we (Zcash) have (dev) funds to do that.

[zooko]

@zooko

I love your point that the crux of where users can get default privacy is in the wallet, not in the Layer 1 protocol, and I love your point that we should be building our way toward success rather than trying to “argue” or “legislate” our way to success.

Something else I’ve observed, in addition to “building is more effective at resolving how-to-proceed than arguing is”:

“Trying it out is a more effective way to learn than arguing about it is”

I’ve seen that people really have a different feeling and different understanding — a much more positive feeling and a much more accurate understanding — when they’ve tried tossing some ZEC around using ZecWallet Lite, Nighthawk, or Unstoppable. Donate to EFF’s taddress! Or donate to their zaddress! Post on ZECpages! Private message your friends! Buy stuff from PayWithZ.cash! Look at your transactions on blockchair.com. It really helps.

[Oceanai]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[zorg5]

We’re not learning the lessons of digicash

https://web.archive.org/web/20090426214618/http://testgrid.allmydata.org:3567/uri/URI:DIR2-RO:j74uhg25nwdpjpacl6rkat2yhm:kav7ijeft5h7r7rxdp5bgtlt3viv32yabqajkrdykozia5544jqa/wiki.html#[[Decentralized%20Money]]

[holmesworcester]

@zooko

Holmes, I’m disheartened to see you echoing that smear. My arguments are made in good faith — from knowing a lot about how these things work at both a technical and business level, and wanting to use that knowledge the best I can for ZEC holders and for our shared mission of empowering everyone in the world with economic freedom.

Oh no! I didn’t mean that I thought you were arguing in bad faith!

I meant that I could see why Ian might get frustrated and think you were, because from his point of view he can see a way to add transparency on top of a private default.

But I totally agree with you that there’s a difference between having a dead-easy way to do this that everyone who understands Bitcoin immediately understands, and having Zcash-specific ways to do it. We’ve been doing stuff like messaging and username registration in Zbay with viewing keys and it is no picnic! So I totally agree with the following point!

@zooko

A lot of people have been saying view keys give you this, but currently they don’t! They would need to be extended, both in terms of Layer 1 protocol, tooling, UI, education, documentation, and deployment, before they would.

And @secparam, just to give one super concrete example of this, if you have an address on a public ledger you can look it up on any block explorer—piece of cake. But if you have a viewing key, if that particular block explorer hasn’t seen that viewing key before, it has to rescan the whole chain to tell you what’s happened at that address! I mean, one can definitely conceive of infrastructure that would do lots of this scalabley someday, and UX to explain to the first user why they’re waiting an unusual amount of time, but like, it’s not the same as just looking something up on a public ledger that has already been indexed, you know?

[tokidoki]

@dontbeevil

wants to remove t-addr now

There is someone on Twitter who think we should get rid of t-addr in the next NU. But yeah, until now that’s the only one I know who wants to get rid of t-addr as soon as possible.

I think it has become clearer to me now that t-addr is here to stay. Can we get rid of it someday? Probably not on the chain called Zcash.

Thanks @zooko and everyone. I will stay away from the this forum for a while.

The next thing that I will do in relation to ZEC is to make sure WZEC and RenZEC on Ethereum can start to be useful.

[dontbeevil]

We need a solution for existing shielded transactions anyway! hopefully Nighthawk delivers this as well.

[dontbeevil]

So sad to see another member exit! I was on the verge of it. Not sure how Zcash will survive without enthusiastic members!

[aiyadt]

Per @secparam DM

Maybe ECC/ZF can make relentless efforts to write to and work with exchanges to implement Z-address setups and make it the default deposit/withdraw method.

So many small-cap projects have actually taken that relentless approach and got their unique token listed with deposit & withdraws. All Zcash team needs to do is to make exchanges use Z-addrs and ultimately the users will catch up!

[aristarchus]

I think the argument is that the Ren bridge bringing zec to ethereum wouldn’t exist right now without t2t transactions. Right now you can store your zec in the shielded pool, de shield and take you zec over to all sorts of defi things on ethereum, and then go back to the zec shielded pool. You can do all this with pretty good privacy even though the ren bridge uses t2t transactions to unlock your zec.

Would you really want to get rid of t2t transactions even at the cost of losing applications like the ren bridge?

[dontbeevil]

REN can’t accept transfers from shielded ZEC? IIUC, WZEC accepts shielded ZEC.

[dontbeevil]

@aristarchus

Would you really want to get rid of t2t transactions even at the cost of losing applications like the ren bridge?

Just like how ECC worked with Gemini to support shielded withdrawals, some work needs to be done, so users can still get RENZEC without t2t. There is large downside of acquiring potential users vs keeping t2t for the sake of one dependency which can be mitigated.

Status quo needs to change. Dependencies need to be upgraded. This is common with any service that will be deprecated for greater good & better service.

[aristarchus]

Yes, but you can use ren right now because Zcash has t addresses. Ren doesn’t currently support monero and I doubt it would have supported Zcash if we had already rushed to remove t addresses.

T addresses make it very easy for developers to support Zcash ASAP with little extra effort. This is a network effect we inherited from Bitcoin. We shouldn’t throw it away, at great potential cost, and often no gained privacy benefits.

The losses of throwing away t addresses are very real. The supposed privacy gains are dubious. I’m very skeptical about doing all this in the name of a ‘culture reset’ proposal.

[aristarchus]

It can accept zec z2t like any other service. there is a t2t transaction when you remove your zec from ren.

Edit: the key point is that you can use ren right now with good privacy even though their service currently uses a t2t tx. As long as you immediately send the zec you receive into the shielded pool.

[dontbeevil]

Can’t you do t2z? from Ren @aristarchus

[dontbeevil]

@aristarchus

The supposed privacy gains are dubious

It’s not for privacy gains. I thought that was clear. It is to reset perception.

[dontbeevil]

@aristarchus

T addresses make it very easy for developers

ETH ecosystem with smart contracts seem way more complex than integrating with shielded ZEC. Then we should make it trivial for developers to improve integration process.

[zooko]

@dontbeevil

REN can’t accept transfers from shielded ZEC? IIUC, WZEC accepts shielded ZEC.

Yes, you can use RenZEC by sending from your stash of ZEC stored in the z-pool to Ren’s t-address. That means nobody can see from the blockchain where your ZEC came from or what else it is linked to, but that you can use Ren’s functionality that they’ve already implemented and deployed using t-addresses. It’s the best of both worlds.

It is basically impossible for anyone to add ZEC support into their new product without thereby adding utility and options and value to shielded-pool-users, and shielded pool users can use that added utility without revealing where their ZEC came from or what other transactions their ZEC is linked to. Few understand this. Am I meme’ing right ?

[aristarchus]

So we remove t addresses, even though there may be no benefit, and high potential costs, so that uninformed potential users think we made a real improvement? I must be misunderstanding

Edit: this is about the ‘reset perception’ comment by @dontbeevil