Very interesting video. Is far as I can see, there are really only three points of weakness that were exploited by the chain analysis. The first was if the transaction was started using one of their Monero nodes. The second was exchanges or partner services. The third was the fee structure used. So as long as you use the default fees, use trusted Monero nodes (especially your own), and you either don't use exchanges/partner services or at the very least, have multiple wallets where each wallet connects to at most one exchange/service (i.e. one wallet has public money inflows from a single service and another has public money outflows from a single service), it would be virtually impossible to have your transactions traced.
g2devi
joined 1 year ago
A few things. (1) The most valuable real estate is the top of screenplay of the page since it might be the only one people read (in transit to go to the menus), so it need to make a statement or be useful. As such, the circle takes up way too much room and gives little information or a feel for what Monero is. Also, the "[Insert Crypto] Means Money" slogan is a bit of a cliche and is claimed to apply to many crypto. If you want to keep the slogan, at least make it more Monero specific like "Monero Means Private Freedom Money" or "Monero is mind your own business money".
(2) I'll agree about the criticism of the black background. While it is true that some people complain about a white background burning their eyes, the "burning" problem would more likely apply to white text since it makes the text blurrier...especially if the text is smaller. The point of text is to be read. White text is "hole" in the background. It's easier to read text rather than a hole where the text is supposed to be. For my text editor, I tend to use off-white (so it's not bright) and dark gray text. IMO, using a graytone background of any colour plus and off-black text is the best best compromise, but if you want to have a dark theme in addition to the white theme, please make the text bigger and bolder and off white so it's easy to read. Firo.org (which I don't like the design of) has an example of the dark theme with bolder/slightly off white smaller bolder text and a white theme for subsequent pages with a gray tone rose background and dark gray text (although it should be a bit darker gray).
(3) I assume this is for https://www.getmonero.org/. IMO, a good replacement should be easy to read the first time and be a good resource that you to return to and want to return to again and again. Here's how I evaluate some of the competitors: (short version, I think that firo, bitcoin cash, and the current monero web site all have good ideas that would help the new design once you eliminate the problems in each).
- Cons: It's childish and doesn't onboard new users well.
- Pros: It prominently promotes community and merchants along side exchanges.
https://imgur.com/a/monero-redesign-homepage-d1-PcoYHcs
- Cons: It's harder to read and makes it look like just another exchange payment token and not a community driven project. It also makes "Get coins" look like the only way to get Monero is through exchanges (which is not) and the only way to use Monero is to send it to someone else (which it isn't).
- Pros: It attempt to onboard Monero users and looks professional.
- Cons: The front "slide" takes up way to much space. While it is good for first time visitors, repeat visitors will get annoyed skipping to the content they want. The subsequent slides are also way too spaced out sit it is harder to find what you need.
- Pros: Clean design that is relatively easy and pleasant to read. Making the first section different looks nice.
- Cons: It puts too much content directly on the front page. If it wanted to have this, it should make it list 4 to 8 popular choices along with a "see more" bar which presents all the choices. There is very little mention of the community. There are too many FAQ questions. If they have to be on the front page, at least make them progressive disclosing (i.e. click to see the answer to each question).
- Pros: A very clean and design with some use of an off white background and gray text. Once progressive disclosing is put in place and community is added, it can be a very good website.
- Cons: Looks both plain, uninteresting, and not useful.
- Pros: Nothing significant
- Cons: Looks both plain, uninteresting, and is not made for people who have trouble with contrast. The top page takes up way too much space for little value.
- Pros: It gives the basic information that's needed and mentions a community.
- Cons: Way too complicated, unpleasant to navigate, and hard to find what you need.
- Pros: It has a lot of information....it just needs to be organised and presented much better and the community should be emphasised more.
Notice that Signal isn't attacked (at least not yet). Telegram is optionally end to end encrypted and it is a for profit company. Those are two vectors that Durov was attacked on. It's the same reason Samurai Wallet was attacked on and Tornado Cash. Going after Monero would be much harder. It is not a for profit company (or even DAO). It's privacy is part of the protocol, like SSH and when ring signatures are gone the final legal potential weakness will be gone. Legally, there is no clear way to attack Monero since if Monero is attacked, any privacy technology like VPNs and SSH and HTTPS could also be attacked and that would have a major industry backlash. It is far more likely that if an attack happens, the infrastructure would be attacked (e.g. getting Monero off github, etc) by putting pressure on the web hosts, but there are already several projects that work on GIT over TOR so this is more an inconvenience than a threat. At the moment, I'm not worried. If Signal and ZCash are attacked, then I'd start to be more worried.
Both socialism and capitalism are real. Socialism itself on the large scale is undesirable and impossible. It can be approximated on the small scale (say less than 20 people) in a very tight nit community (e.g. family or tribe) where there is strong social pressure and environmental pressures to pool resources and help each other, but the moment the community grows so large that you do not know and interact with every single person and do not have a strong bond with every single person, the community fractures into factions, with some factions dominating over other factions and eventually become the elites with special privileges ruling over the plebes which have privileges at the mercy of those in power.
Capitalism, OTOH is simply a system where there is a free exchange of capital which is anything of value. The main critique he has is that because there is no absolute free exchange change of independent value, there is no capitalism. This is the same mistake people who don't believe in free will make. Yes, there is no absolute free will. I cannot will myself to be on the sun drinking ice tea with Socrates. But that's not what free will in finite entities means. It means, given the limitations of your circumstances, you can make a choice. If someone paralyses you and puts you in a sensory deprivation tank, you can still have more free will than your captors since you can choose how you react to your circumstances.
Similarly, most hard assets depreciate in some sense. Rice is a classic store of value, but pests can get to it. Gold and silver wear out with time and their value changes dependant on availability and speculation. Fiat deflates. Properties depend on the ability of you to protect it and environmental factors. Yet all can be considered assets despite their imperfection. Similarly, all trade has restrictions. I can't send some property in the Sahara to the Caribbean. I might transfer "the title" between people of these countries but I cannot guarantee that anyone accepts such transfer as legitimate. I can't easily transport a large quantity of gold or silver or any commodity including fiat with there being a risk of confiscation by either thieves or governments. But to the extent that I can have and transfer value, there is capitalism.
Fortunately, you're reading the numbers wrong. Yes, some projects have 1-3 projects. Those projects tend to be side projects (e.g. Revuo, web site maintenance, etc) and are likely founded mostly from wallet providers and Monero service providers since it helps spread information that helps the ecosystem. I know Cakewallet has funded a few of these. The really important projects have 5-70 contributors. If donations stop, then some people would keep working on it because Monero is important, but they wouldn't be able to spend very much time on it so progress would be incredibly slow.
Granted, but searching bank records requires a warrant and you'd have to have one for all possible banks. Donations might be tracked (if not made in person), but distribution of donations are a whole another story since the people involved were already debanked...they could only spend the cash and they would likely mostly spend the cash in places that didn't scan bills. Even if they directly deposited the money into the bank, there would be no record of who got the donated money (remember, the people involved were debanked so the only way for them to get the cash if it were directly given to them). With Bitcoin, there's a clear trace from donator to donation collector to debanked person stored in the blockchain so it can be retrieved for analysis at leisure. With AI it's possible to greatly narrow down the path to the extent that standard police leg work and warrants can find the path with a high degree of accuracy.
The "sources" are extremely sus. Most CEXes have delisted Monero and no-KYC exchanges by definition don't have KYC. The addresses are not stored on the blockchain. If an address is known to be CSAM, it would be blocked off so no transactions would have been made and because of the previous point, you can't go back in the blockchain to find past offenders. The CSAM site likely has other non-CSAM porn so many actual purchases would be legal so usage on honeypot exchanges would not mean much. Reading between the lines, the article is basically coming up with its statistics via inference. (1) Most BTC blockchain activity is speculation, (2) CSAM makes up a significant percentage of BTC actual usage, (3) Monero's popularity is growing, (4) Criminals prefer privacy, (5) therefore Monero's growth is mostly from CSAM. The main counterpoint to this is Monero's increase use in coin cards, VPN and other privacy tool/services purchases, Shopinbit, etc where Monero's use exceeds that of BTC and lightning. So (1) does not apply to Monero, and it's likely (2) if it were ever true is increasingly not the case so (5) is absolutely false.
Two things. While you may disagree with some points, his overall analysis is well thought out. While he does acknowledge that fungeability and price stability are essential to a currency, and you could convince him that Monero has these qualities, he also has two other criteria that Monero does not currently possess, namely "being declared legal tender" and durability, i.e. will it be around with a predicable price in 100 years, so you can make contracts with it. Monero fails the "official" legal tender criteria (even if you're able to live off Monero and show it's unofficially legal tender). All crypto, including Bitcoin fails the durability criteria. Bitcoin has only been around 15 years...that's just a baby currency that has not even gone through even a single serious recession. I cannot guarantee you that Bitcoin or Monero will be around in 100 years. I can't guarantee that its price is at least the current price at that time. No-one can, even though they may believe it to be the case. The only way to show that Monero is durable, is using Monero so it will endure. Eventually, it will reach the stage where all reasonable people will trust it enough to believe that it is durable. No need to worry about influencers. They will look into Monero when the need or interest arises.
As usual, Monero is mentioned as a problem (for criminals) and not a solution (no-one knows your funds). and KYC and CEX are good since the catch criminals.
Either way, the standard rule applies, always have a decoy account with enough money to be plausible that you can give up. Unlike bank accounts or CEX accounts, decoy wallets are easy and cheap and even if you're forced to give it up access, you'll be able to convince the thief and save the rest of your money.
This is not how things worked in the past. Income tax is a modern invention and if the government or anyone who was in power wanted money, they would take it and punish you if you resisted. There was nothing voluntary about it. The key difference is that governments tend to tax you either or force "tribute" per head or per property or per trade port, and your family, religious group, guild, protector, tribe, and lord would have their own "taxes", either as a percentage of what you produce or seasonal fees. Governments tended to leave you alone and focused on roads, the military, and courts. As for the military, it tended to be forced on each land owner to supply a certain number of people when the region needed it, and there were strict penalties for both avoiding military service or trying to take advantage of unoccupied land because the owner was serving. Also, people in the military often needed to pay their own way and provide their own weapons. In modern times, everything is centralized and the government has done its best to get rid of all competitions so families, religion, guilds, tribes, and "lords" have all been dis-empowered, except those who found a way to become so powerful that they span nations. Because there's little competition, there's only one organization to pay and only one organization to plan your life because there is no competition, that organization keeps wanting to grow and take over ever more of your life. Centralization is the issue, not taxes. With competition from the local groups, you may not be freer, but you will have more flexibility on which groups to pay taxes to and services are more customized and taxes are lower since no-one group wants the other groups to grow too big and will go to war to assert this. Does monero help fix this? To some extent. It forces government to depend more on property and head taxes and user fees for government services since it's possible to hide income taxes, sales taxes, transaction taxes, etc. But it's not a solution for building up the other competing groups to supplement government as has been shown to work in all countries around the world for thousands of years.
Since you're not asking about Haveno, the key question is, what are you trying to federate and what do you mean by localmonero?
This is what I liked about localmonero: (1) It had an easy to use web site -- this can be federated over onion; (2) it had many options (especially necessary if you're not using USD or EUR) -- federation reduces liquidity per mistance; (3) It had a reputation system for sellers -- this is hard to federate; (4) The arbiters have been proven over time to be trustworthy -- this may be impossible to federate without a reputation system.
So, IMO, your first task is to come up with a federated trust system for both arbiters and sellers. Once you have that, listings and trading can happen on any platform, even lemmy or nostr or Simplex or Haveno or something like robosats.
In my simpleminded approach, a wallet public key could have multiple reputations associated with it (e.g. seller, buyer, arbiter). There would have to be a way to confirm that sellers actually "sold" and "buyers" actually bought and arbiters actually arbitrated....I'm sure this could be done in a hidden ZK way by adding transaction IDs to the reputation . Could this be abused since a person can create multiple wallets and trade with himself? Sure, but that could also be done in localmonero and it did fall apart.
No comparison, I like hammermann's the best. The only real criticism is that white text on black "burns my eyes" and is harder to read, so I'd much rather an off white font is used. The offwhite that's under the Monero coin on the side is about the right brightness. The only caution I'd give is that although the Roadmap is cool and both new and old users want to see it, it might be best to keep it off the front page since it's unlikely that it would be updated regularly and it might be easier to maintain on a different page (or offsite, e.g. github).