
Is Zcash’s encrypted blockchain Satoshi’s vision? - mbgaxyz
https://cryptopotato.com/zcashs-encrypted-blockchain-satoshis-vision-interview-zooko/
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madmax108
Is it just me or are more and more stories which look like fluff pieces for
ZCash coming up on the HN frontpage? If they were a startup, I'd guess they
were prepping for an IPO/acquisition. Most of them have titles with rhetorical
questions, and come across as marketing pieces more than anything else.

Really weird.

~~~
Legogris
Along the same line, you get public endorsements and comments from people like
Snowden and Assange.

ZCash, as opposed to f.e. Monero, is a private company and consciously
spending time, money and effort on brand-building and PR.

Nothing really weird with that IMO.

~~~
zooko-at-zcash
For the record, someone who gives an interview to a journalist almost never
gets a say over what headline it gets published under. Did you read the
article? I really liked the way it came out!

Also for the record, we didn't ask Assange or Snowden to start accepting
donations in Zcash or anything. Or at least, I didn't. It's quite possible
some other members of the Zcash community did without my knowledge.

[New account because I can't remember my password and when I ask it to the
reset the password on zooko-zcash it says "sorry there is no valid email
address associated with that account". Maybe it thinks "zooko@z.cash" is not a
valid email address.]

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dangero
The unfortunate thing to me about Zcash is that privacy is opt-in. It would be
like if Signal was default no privacy, but then you could enable it per
message if you wanted to send something secret. Governments could just ban you
from turning the privacy on and we've already seen this happen with TOR.
Opting into privacy "raises suspicion", and we need services where privacy is
enabled by default. Monero does this.

~~~
silur
you can interpret this as a problem and as a solution too. Yes, ztransactions
will could dye your money so no exchange will accept it because you are a
terrorist and the US can ban the usage of ztransactions. In my opinion it's
better like this, since the overall goal is to not rely on exchanges and
regulatory thirdparties. In a P2P economy (which is this technology is meant
to lead us) fungibility problems are not a thing beacuse there is no relative
central party to make a standard.

~~~
gingeropolous
> In a P2P economy (which is this technology is meant to lead us) fungibility
> problems are not a thing beacuse there is no relative central party to make
> a standard.

wat?

fungibility is not about a standard. fungibility applies at every level.

"Hrmmm yes while you are looking at this car here I'm just going to scan your
blockchain activity and hrmmmmm it seems that you are in about the top 30% of
income in this country so yessss the price of this car is X"

boom. That car salesman just defacto made your tracecoin less valuable than
some poor shmuck in the lower 50%.

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IIAOPSW
No. Two words. Trusted setup. Monero is way closer to Satoshi's vision, up to
and including having an unknown inventor.

~~~
JelteF
The trusted setup is not as bad as those two words make it sound without any
context:

1\. All people present in the trusted setup would have to be colluding or be
compromised to cause an issue.

2\. Some of these people have reason to make the currency succeed, because
they own large amounts of zcash.

3\. Some show the lengths they went to to prevent compromise:
[https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-
trust...](https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trusted-
setup-ceremony)

One of my own opinions on collusion:

If collusion was suggested by one or more of the people present in the setup
it would be quite likely that another one would have come out and said
something about it. This would have made zcash and the person itself very
untrustworthy. This makes it likely that it wasn't worth the risk to the
person thinking of collusion in the first place.

~~~
nubela
Erm, #1 is not that far from being achieved. IIRC, that's just 6 people,
guarding hundreds of millions of dollars.

There lies the inherent problem with "trusted setup", why leave there a
possibility of 6 people not colluding? That just isn't scientific or
exhuastive. Just drop the IFs, go with Monero's method of RingCT.

Beside, Monero's privacy is a working feature today, with no pre-mines, unlike
ZCash.

~~~
sowithit
It is not down to 6 people forever not colluding. It's down to 6 people not
having colluded at one point in time in the past, each having been scrutinized
during the procedure, with post-hoc inspection of the software and hardware.
If those 6 people decided at any point after the procedure that they wanted to
collude, then it would be too late for them to do so.

Essentially they each produced a private key, and if each of them revealed
their private key to the same party then that party could derive a master
private key that would allow them to (among other things) mint Zcash for free
(privacy wouldn't be broken). Assuming that any one of the 6 did in fact
destroy/corrupt his private key without revealing it, then the collusion
opportunity is forever lost.

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georgecarlin
I think the fact that there is no Satoshi means that 1. his/her/their vision
is up for grabs and 2. whoever did create Bitcoin didn't want people
continuously asking him/her/them what their vision for this is. It hasn't even
been 10 years, why are we already arguing over catechism?

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aryehof
My guess is that Satoshi's vision wasn't that Bitcoin would start a frenzy of
"blockchain technology" endeavors that feature the movement of capital to
promoters and investors, and between speculators.

~~~
zby
I cannot find it now - but I am sure that he wrote somewhere about competing
currencies and lateral inflation.

~~~
danieldrehmer
if you find a link for this, I bet many of us would love to read it

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jameskegel
No. Absolutely no. Satoshi didn't envision a corporation pulling strings
behind the scenes just in case some bad guys might use it some day down the
line.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
Yup, Satoshi totally didn't create a protocol where the cops can already
figure that stuff out themselves without any outside help...

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rspeer
Someone explain this part to me:

> I would be happy if Zcash and Bitcoin could serve as a gateway from an
> unstable currency (Venezuelan Bolivar) to a stable currency (EURO/USD)

How would this actually happen? Who is on the other side of this transaction?
Who would want to cash out their Bitcoin in Venezuelan bolivar?

I assume the Bitcoin trades that actually occur in Venezuela are for USD and
black-market goods, not for bolivar.

~~~
irremediable
Presumably one might want to trade the BTC for bolivar to immediately spend
them somewhere?

~~~
rspeer
Not that I have experience in the matter, but I have heard that spending
bolivar in Venezuela means waiting in long lines for goods with artificial
prices, whereas you can buy whatever you want in USD.

I suspect that the bolivar/BTC trade is just a feel-good story, and the
reality is that Bitcoin is not available to ordinary Venezuelans.

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nextstep
What? How could any protocol requiring a trusted setup be considered close to
Satoshi's vision?

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mmel
I ignore all pre-mined cash grabs

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neuralzen
CryptoNote coins (Monero and Aeon) are leagues closer to Satoshi's vision.

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krisives
Digital chain of signatures, the rest is icing on the cake.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
I mean, the entire architecture of Zerocash is completely different, so...

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arisAlexis
no because of the trusted setup it can never be.

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tromp
When Zooko says that Zcash "is a kind of money that doesn’t come from any
government or company" he is only 90% correct...

~~~
polarized
80% for the first 4 years. 90% "eventually"

~~~
tromp
Correct. 20% of block rewards before the first halving (roughly the first 4
years, accounting for half of the eventual Zcash supply) goes to the "Founders
Fund" for investors and developers.

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silur
accusing a chaumian crypto violating the satoshi vision is like ranting about
windows not being POSIX enough

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RandVal30142
Zcash takes one of the only novel parts of Bitcoin, not requiring trust in a
central authority, and pitches it into the garbage.

The garbage is likely where Zcash belongs.

