is there a testnet?
@apoelstra @yeastplume Thanks for your responses. I'd just like to add one more bit concerning the blocktimes. Even if pools allow clients to produce blocks I would argue that is not sufficient as it only addresses on of the problems. It may solve decentralization of block production, but a pool is still a centralization of hashing power. An malicious third party or government agency can easily have a pool taken down or DDOSd. Performing such acts on solo miners is far more expensive. I would argue that solo miners are strictly the best miners. In every objective measure they are better for the network than a pool miner. The health of the network relies on decentralized hashpower which cannot be censored. Discouraging solo mining via long blocktimes I fear will lead to a less secure network. I believe this may be a real concern for grin because if it offers true anonymity then it will certainly play host to transactions which governments would like to scrutinize.
sifr-0: regarding "centralization of hashpower", that is not what a pool is either, a pool only centralizes payouts
if a pool is ddos'd it takes basically zero effort for the actual hashpower to switch to a different pool or to solo mine
This is probably just going to amount to a lot of stupid, but I’m considering the paper wallet problem, i.e. the fact that cold storage of any kind is going to be so unwieldy as to be unusable, cause you’ll need to update your offline storage with new amounts every time you send/receive anything.
Heh, well, in ignopeverell/grin#28 if I read it right, I think the discussion seems to indicate that the only way to do cold storage in MW is to allow the amounts to be brute forced by iterating with transaction keys over the entire UTXO set, and since there’s potentially 8 or 10 sig digits per currency unit and a who knows how bit UTXO set, this would quickly become prohibitive. So the only way to allow cold wallets is to somehow reduce the search space that a wallet needs to brute force through. One suggestion is denominations, I’m not entirely clear on what that means, I’m guessing means that you reduce the values allowed in an input/output to known divisions, like a “quarter” at 0.00000025, etc, which seems limiting but weighing that against the need for cold storage might not be such a bad thing... however
i didn't see this bug, this one is easy ;p
What's the solution? I was thinking that since there’s communication between both parties anyhow, would it not somehow be possible for the receiver to indicate he wants the transaction structured in a certain way in order to reduce the space that needs to be brute forced through?
old
But I meant communication before the transaction is finalised
yes, a cold-wallet in bitcoin doesn't communicate with anybody at all, except when redeeming coins
No, I didn't mean sending the money to a cold wallet, I meant as the transaction is being created, manipulate the blinding factor or transaction set somehow to make it easier for the recipient to identify later assuming he loses the amount, i.e. only has the private key that can be generated from cold storage
it's easy to encrypt stuff to yourself in your own rangeproof
and it's easy to detect your outputs by fixing the key for a specific digit
(it would be even easier with unconditional soundness where you have a key that's independent of the value)
so what's the hard problem?
without any online keys
MW inherently requires somebody prove ownership of transaction outputs, for those outputs to be valid
you can improve network privacy using valueshuffle and tor (we believe)
Unless you mean running all grin servers through tor as a default?
but morally, yes, that is what i'm suggesting
urza When you do transaction with someone in cash ($,€,..) you also need to meet the person and be both at the same place&time. We are used to sending btc to address without the recipient side even having to know about it, because that is how bitcoin works. But perhaps embracing mw/grin as equivalent of digital cash where both parties need to be online at the same time might not be such disadvantage as it sounds now, just because that is what we are used to?
and this gives a simple answer to the people who ask fearfully "what if grin overtakes bitcoin?", i've met many
i think the pretty pictures in my slides gives a misleading impression of how complicated MW is and how much design work still needs to be done