On Mon, 15 Oct 2018 19:42:38 +0000 (UTC) jim bell <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Now, Chaum has a new cryptocoin : > > > https://elixxir.io/ > > > Looks quite promising. Given that it is occurring after nearly 10 years of > the experience of Bitcoin and, subsequently, hundreds of other crypto coins, > it would have to be much advanced. For what it's worth, a couple of bitcoin people I talked to were not impressed. Apparently Chaum's coin is "proof of stake" and PoS isn't robust enough. But I'm just repeating what they said. But what caught my attention like I said is the use of a mixnet. > No doubt David Chaum wishes he'd managed to bring DigiCash to a world-wide > fruition, but he had the big disadvantage that the Internet didn't really > exist, to the average person. Well digicash had good anonimity properties, so that probably was an incentive for banks to *not* use it. And it was based on government pseudo 'money' so that was an incentive for users to avoid it. I think it was also patented? > Somebody (probably not myself) should talk to Chaum about the use of Elixxir > in Dark-market applications. heh =) > > > I don't know how good it is, or if it's even working (seems not), but if > >you take a look at their 'technical brief' you'll see they use a mixnet. My > >half educated guess is that only high latency mixnets may provide good > >enough anonimity. > > So, I was wondering, maybe it would make sense to get some bitcoin > >millonaire to fund some sort of mixnet? Such a project seems like a good fit > >for somebody like Roger Ver? What do you think Jim? Maybe you could sell the > >idea to him? > > Like Zenaan, I don't think this will be very expensive. It will be > intricate, but there will be plenty of money in Dark market insurance > payments. Everybody (except those trying to enforce drug laws, for example) > would want to see this occur. The operators of the Dark markets, as well as > the sellers, would love to see some guarantee of non-prosecution, > And, I hesitate to approach anyone on this, 1-to-1. Oh sorry, my bad. I didn't mean to suggest that you talk to Ver about the whole idea. My line of thinking was : Your insurance system requires good anonimity. Mixnets apparently can provide it. So the first step would be to set up a mixnet. And *that* first step is something that Ver might like to fund. > Can I sell the idea directly to the operators of a Dark market? Not likely, >in large part because nobody knows who they are, and they like it that way. >B^) Well I haven't checked lately but dark markets usually have forums and the operators pay attention to them, to varying degrees. > I think there needs to be further discussion, for example on CP, as to this > idea. What additional features? Would it work? But we should be cautious, > as usual: Maybe the people doing the discussion should state that we have no > intention of actually, personally, implementing this idea. Oh of course. We would never do anything 'illegal' ^-^ > I should mention that such a fund should probably cover, with the permission > and funding of the new funders, all prior people prosecuted for Dark-market > related violations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_(marketplace) > Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Onymous They > didn't pay into the system, of course, but nevertheless they should be > rescued. One big reason is that the supporters of the DMIF system won't want > to wait to see the enforcement aspect of that system until the next Dark > market is taken down. Yeah that's a good point. > But there needs to be more research and discussion. How many Dark markets > have existed? How many went down, and why? I think all the big ones were either succesfully attacked by govt criminals, or the operators quit while they were ahead. Agora being the best example I know. As to how they went down, my first guess is network surveillance. Here's a gem from the Tor-US-navy 'project' "The longer an onion service is online, the higher the risk that its location is discovered. " https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-onion-service.html.en >How many are currently operating? What are their approximate gross sales? >Would operators and sellers generally like the kind of system that DMIF could >provide? What do they think the cost/coverage should be? > And, while I don't know how to arrange a survey, how about a 'test-market' > for potential predictors, at least the subset that don't expect to survive: > Poll a random selection of people have have been given "medical death > sentences", a/k/a victims of terminal illness diagnoses. Somebody could ask > them, purely as a hypothetical question, "What amount of money should be > offered to people like you, those with terminal illnesses, to be paid to you > or your relatives, if you manage to kill a person who has participated in the > prosecution of a Dark market case". I think we'd all be curious as to what > their answers would be. Yeah that would be interesting. > Jim Bell > > > >
