[Discussion / poll] Does NuBits have a role as privacy enhanced digital cash?

[Cybnate]

I believe there’s no freedom without privacy.I believe there’s no privacy if financial transactions can’t be made anonymously.

Such a direction of development would worry me anyhow.

Agree to a great extent with it. But how would you deal with terrorists or mental health patients in such a system? Do we not have the obligation to make life difficult or remove those people abusing and destroying the systems we think are important for our social fabric or economy? Do we accept or ignore that as part of life and that we can’t do anything about it because 100% privacy guarantees our freedom? I’m struggling with that as the obvious solution, reducing privacy, appears to reduce freedom. But makes freedom alone life safe enough?

Exceptions and cost
Is there a middle ground or is it black and white? Our society had always a way to trace and correct people behaving badly which always comes at a cost for that same society. I’m looking for an acceptable cost to privacy in order to retain maximum freedom and safety.

Therefore I would grudgingly support a system which guarantees privacy for all by default, but allows a majority of people part of that system (like a Jury) vote to specifically remove the privacy from a person in case there is strong evidence that they are abusing or destroying the system by their actions. The Jury could be the Shareholders or appointed by them. The network/blockchain would release/decrypt the specific key only when the majority votes for it. As I dislike unlimited storage of data I would also limit the ability to remove the privacy of transactions older than e.g. 12 months. The keys required can be auto destroyed by the network after a year.

Requirements
With this discussion I’m trying to identify the requirements for the technology Nu needs. Whether that is Cryptonote, Coinjoin or another way to implement stealth addresses is I believe a secondary and technical discussion. Assuming Nu want to be mainstream, any choices regarding an implementation we make should appeal to the majority of the potential users of Nu, even when the importance of privacy is under scrutiny and unpopular or not well understood by many like now with the Paris attacks OR during periods of relative peace when it all appears to be not that important.

I think the blockchain and in particular Nu enables us with new possibilities, however we have to make the right choices on how to use it or it can be used against us all in adverse ways as we have seen with a number of new technologies with two faces in the past.

[jooize]

Therefore I would grudgingly support a system which guarantees privacy for all by default, but allows a majority of people part of that system (like a Jury) vote to specifically remove the privacy from a person in case there is strong evidence that they are abusing or destroying the system by their actions. The Jury could be the Shareholders or appointed by them. The network/blockchain would release/decrypt the specific key only when the majority votes for it. As I dislike unlimited storage of data I would also limit the ability to remove the privacy of transactions older than e.g. 12 months. The keys required can be auto destroyed by the network after a year.

Very cool idea. Is that possible to timelimit? Struggling with understanding how the key is hidden until requested. How/when is the key generated/released?

Perhaps I must reevaluate what is possible with this technology. I’ll have to think through the meaning of Nu in my zen garden. I may be getting ‘too’ comfortable on this board.

Assuming Nu want to be mainstream, any choices regarding an implementation we make should appeal to the majority of the potential users of Nu, even when the importance of privacy is under scrutiny and unpopular or not well understood by many like now with the Paris attacks OR during periods of relative peace when it all appears to be not that important.

Concur, but[/and?] I also think we shouldn’t necessarily go by what the masses think. I guess I’ll find out what Nu thinks.

[Cybnate]

Very cool idea. Is that possible to timelimit? Struggling with understanding how the key is hidden until requested. How/when is the key generated/released?

Don’t have all the technology answers here, but I assumed that it would be possible to create a third private key for every transaction. That third key can be used to decrypt the transaction details only. This key would be ‘locked’ by the network for e.g. a year and then deleted (pruned). This may prove difficult, but with a system like parking I think it should be possible to include the time mechanism coupled with voting. But maybe I’m thinking too simplistic and too much conceptual.

[masterOfDisaster]

Without trying to dive into technical aspects, I want to vote for avoiding the possibility to remove privacy from certain addresses or transactions.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who watches the watchmen?

is the motto of this post.

I agree that it’s unfortunate to face situations in which evil people profit from the privacy created by transferring value in a future version of Nu that protects privacy.
I think it’s a burden to realize that money laundering and funding illegal activities can be made by transferring NBT.

But it’s also a burden to decide which address or which transaction is rightfully removed from the protection.
Do NSR holders want to decide? Base on what evidence? Shall governments be allowed to request that? On what way (I mean, they can’t just send a judicial decree)? How to verify the authenticity of such a request?
And even if it were authentic: the same governments Nu wants to “unburden” from responsibility could trigger the process, seriously?
What crimes and what evidence are required to disguise people?
Does Nu need to monitor and investigate international criminal activities to make sure they don’t reveal the wrong people?
How easy will NSR holders fall victim to propaganda?

And even if NSR holders were 100% reliable (which they aren’t): governments could just buy sufficient shares to remove privacy protection from all addresses and transactions they want.

While it would be an economical paradise for NSR holders to have a government desperately buy enough NSR to uncloak people, it would undermine an ideological paradigm of Nu: to help making the world a better place.
Nu fails if it doesn’t stay reliable and trustworthy.
Removing privacy later poses attack vectors which must be avoided. If Nu is going to offer privacy it should be unconditional after it was applied.
Providing the option to have no privacy protection by user choice is a different topic.

Under no circumstance I’d approve removal of privacy by Nu or any other instance.
NBT and future products are only a tool. They will be used to do bad things. But it’s not in control of Nu and not in the responsibility of Nu.
Should a vendor of kitchen knives be held responsible for people being stabbed with them?

Fiat can be used to fund evil things as well. Fiat can’t be traced - at least not that I’m aware of it. If people doing bad things with fiat, it’s the people that need to be target of surveillance, not the fiat.

Would you want to have backdoors included in each cryptographic solution? You can be sure that cryptography is used by bad guys.
That’s the price you have to pay for freedom.
Life isn’t safe.
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

[Mark]

I’ll be happy with any solution that does not reveal who sent or received coins and how much was sent, but I’m strongly against advertising this. We are not ready yet to survive targeted government attack. Even Bitcoin is not ready enough.

[zoro]

I have the same opinion as Mark!
Remember the first steps of internet, it was mostly used by drug and weapon dealers and other bad doings.
But then internet started to be used by everyday simple people and now the most traffic is videos of cats and dogs
Back then it could be far more easy for goverments to shut down internet, but now it is nearly imposible.
Lets follow internet’s steps

[tomjoad]

But how would you deal with terrorists or mental health patients in such a system? Do we not have the obligation to make life difficult or remove those people abusing and destroying the systems we think are important for our social fabric or economy? Do we accept or ignore that as part of life and that we can’t do anything about it because 100% privacy guarantees our freedom? I’m struggling with that as the obvious solution, reducing privacy, appears to reduce freedom. But makes freedom alone life safe enough?

I say this as someone who despises Daesh and the religious extremism it represents: money needs to be agnostic to its users’ ideologies to maintain maximum utility. Compromising privacy will just lead to innocent users being targeted, while criminals and terrorists find new technologies to use. There may be users in the future who want to use NBT to fund freedom efforts against oppressive governments, but would be scared off because of the possibility of NuShareholders identifying and confiscating their funds if the efforts are deemed immoral. If we create systems that can arbitrate intent, criminals will just use cryptocurrencies with more privacy, and perhaps even target the users we expose.

Every great technology (cars, internet, mobile phones) all make it easier for bad people to do bad things, but we embrace those technologies because they result in a net positive for society. Digital currencies like NuBits will be no different.

I favor maximum privacy for NuBits transactions in the future, although I think it should not be an immediate development goal.

Relevant: “Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook warn weaker encryption makes the bad guys stronger”

[woodstockmerkle]

Nu’s approach to stability is on the radar of the Monero team.

Why not implement a Nubits price control mechanism and make Monero both private...

And @jordanlee has articulated that enhanced transactional privacy is one of his goals with Nu.

[masterOfDisaster]

Maybe Monero and Nu could profit by leaning on each other’s achievements?

[GrandMasterNu]

Hello, am new to the forum here, go easy on me

I’m here from the dash forums. I was thinking dash and nu would compliment each other well. I haven’t won them over yet but maybe some of you would like to come over and discuss things?

General Discussion

I’m going to post some idea on this forum, stay tuned.

[cryptog]

Tks for your proposal.

But

• rebrand Nubits to DashUSD and Nushares to DashShares

is not going to happen unless Nu is bought out by Dash, which not going to happen either with all dues respect.

I would suggest you fork Nu or become a NuShareholder.

[Cybnate]

I still think collaboration is the way to go in the long term for altcoin communities with a useful and valued functionality and not being a scam. However at this stage it is really hard to find synergy in communities let alone the merging of blockchains and communities.

Even though the merging of a privacy coin and a stable coin is a very interesting prospective, the question is whether it might be easier for both communities to just develop that themselves and compete until the best wins OR to develop a model where both coins/communities still exist on their own but have some smart cross-chain integration at near zero additional cost per transaction outside the fees for each coin.

I’m not an expert in this but I can imagine some automated contract which burns and creates coins on either side. Nubits can already do that on its own chain, but it won’t be easy in Dash I suspect. But even if possible, we will need a cross chain contract/transaction which would require a lot of development work on both sides imo as I’m not aware of any working examples of this.

So maybe integrating privacy functionality in NuBits and adding stablecoin functionality into Dash is the ‘cheaper’ and easier way to go. However I have to admit that I’m still intrigued by a cross chain solution between the two coins, we might just be too early with it. Maybe the B&C exchange could add such functionality/contract in time?

Edit: Nu would certainly benefit from this: https://www.dash.org/news/announcing-dash-evolution-and-the-worlds-first-decentralized-application-programming-interface-open-source/

[tomjoad]

is not going to happen unless Nu is bought out by Dash, which not going to happen either with all dues respect.

Agreed. Nu has the proper economic design (an equity asset, and a stable asset) and can begin to add “features” (like privacy) to its protocol over time. It will be far easier for Nu to add privacy than it would be for Dash to re-structure its economics, and so I doubt you’ll find much support for a rebranding of Nu.

That being said, we’re very interested in learning more about proposals to develop privacy features for Nu, and I bet shareholders would appreciate learning more.

[masterOfDisaster]

This is an opinion on a quite abstract level and not even remotely on a technical level.

I think Nu and Dash should continue doing that what they are good at:

• Nu is good at releasing stable crypto currency products (currently only NBT, pegged to USD; others might follow).
• Dash is good at privacy (any maybe at other things that I’m not aware of).

Maybe the both are better off doing good at what they are made for and find or develop some intersection that allows both of them to profit from the other, without giving up what they are extraordinarily good at.

Blocks & Chains Exchange (below BCE) might become a platform which can create that kind of intersection.
It allows Dash (users) access to a stable currency and NBT (users) access to a currency with privacy features.

Wouldn’t it make sense to prepare this kind of cooperation instead of trying to incorporate source code (and unnecessary dependencies)?
I’m a firm believer of the Unix philosophy, especially the DOTADIW aspect.

BCE needs reputed signers, marketing, coins that are traded, which require some support, etc.
It won’t be very long until BCE is hopefully at least in alpha state.

How does a cooperation on that level sound?

[jooize]

Wouldn’t it make sense to prepare this kind of cooperation instead of trying to incorporate source code (and unnecessary dependencies)?

Private transactions should be a core Nu feature. Using another coin doesn’t seem elegant at all. I see only extra risks and inconveniences, even with BCE.

I don’t see what kind of cooperation could make sense, unfortunately. Other than Nu paying for help with integration of a technology (as CryptoNote).

[Mark]

Ring Signature Confidential Transactions for Monero

1098.pdf

The author (Shen Noether) claims that The Ring Confidential Transactions protocol provides a strongly decentralized cryptocurrency (i.e. there is no privileged party) which has provable security estimates regarding the hiding of amounts, origins and destinations. In addition, coin generation in the Ring Confidential Transactions protocol is trustless and verifiably secure.

[nuclits]

The feasibility and best methods of including CryptoNote features in Nu needs research, but it is likely practical.

Id greatly look forward to this, keep in mind however that cyptonote blockchains grow at about 5x the normal rate, you may have to look into blockchain pruning or other tricks to help mitigate this.

Our rising market cap is beginning to give us some additional options for speeding up development. Perhaps the best way to get it done would be to bring in a CryptoNote/Monero/Bytecoin developer specifically for this purpose.

Good luck with that, its been brought up to the monero developers to implement a nubits style system to achieve the same ends and they were opposed to it, citing that a currency shouldnt be pegged to anything and that stability doesnt matter.

Why not implement a Nubits price control mechanism and make Monero both private...

[nuclits]

So maybe integrating privacy functionality in NuBits and adding
stablecoin functionality into Dash is the ‘cheaper’ and easier way to
go.

Ive tried dash, bought like $2 worth, tried to mix it, it took several days, i gave up and sold it. The whole coinjoin scheme has been proven time and time again to be flawed and it requires too much participation to use and it suffers from having all transactions posted on-chain. Even the masternodes system is just another layer to be gamed and broken. The only viable mixing solutions are either 3rd party mixers, or cryptonote, which unlike zerocoin is vetted by decades of research into ring-signatures.

[PinkyAndTheBrain]

So if I understand this https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/the-power-of-schnorr-the-signature-algorithm-to-increase-bitcoin-s-scale-and-privacy-1460642496 correctly, with the introduction of versioning and schnorr signatures, it opens the door to privacy in bitcoin with coinjoin?

this is so cool

maybe nubits should merge that in their fork once it is released

[Financisto]

Those “Schnorr signatures” seems to be a Big deal, especially when talking about multisig purposes (a tool so used by Nu to provide NBT liquidity).

Before that happens, stealth addresses is the short term solution imo…