There's been a long going feud between Zcash and Monero holders, we all know that maximalist from all communities exist, but that doesn't mean we can't maximize our privacy.
History
The history of privacy coins Monero and Zcash, has more in common than one might at first think. They both started as GPU minable coins, that were dominated by private ASIC usage. I have heard the words out of the snakes mouth, Bitmain blackmailed the Zcash developers. If they didn't adopt ASIC for equihash, they would be able to produce a private ASIC within 4 months, for any mineable coin. Obviously they have many of those being "tested"... why would you test on a testnet blockchains when you can go live to see if your hardware beats the competition in the Luck equation in mining.
This is all very sensitive to debate with people who were investing as commercial and institutional people's in the free market surrounding mineable coins, privacy coins were a big bet, and both Monero and Zcash followed in DASH's near fatal footsteps of allowing ASIC mining. In fact Zcash was popular because it was outspoken against ASIC RESISTANCE.
What I have noticed since this drama started, for both Zcash and Monero, is the time spent critiquing the other privacy coins has taken up a good sum of time. Perhaps there is better uses for all of our time and common interest?
Wouldn't it be a shame if we couldn't mediate our concerns about privacy across both chains.
I certainly don't want to be shaking my head in 5 years when Zcash and Monero communities start the real hacking and exploit the flaws on each other's chain to promote their preferred coin. Monero has already has a
Bug that could reveal secret keys to the recipient of a transaction. This is synonymous with "if you send someone money, they can own your crypto." So if you use the same address twice with Monero, you are at a SEVERE RISK, but the attack vector is very difficult as it requires 24/7 surveillance of the target to perform the hack, so the hacker isn't sleeping once he penetrates your IP range.
Address randomization will protect you as you won't need the old wallet anymore. This defeats all practicality of having XMR in savings btw. Your account goes from Anon, to stolen on first tx if the recipient knows how to exploit the flashlight attack on your address. Cough cough, you could rob the exchange and make a claim against them too and see if they give you the money back. Know that would kill the value of your coin, is strictly for profit and not something holders would want, unless they were cashing out to another coin.
At Zcon0,,in Montreal in 2018, we debated this flashlight attack being a risk to the Monero network and if we should promote zcash with this, or alternatively if it would effect the prices of the coins. More than socially effect the holders.
It appears the coin holders don't care and likely use a exchange address while trading vs, holding the currency for practical use in a hot wallet or a cold wallet that you can send from. Then the memes on Twitter get real confusing, why meme if you don't even hold monero and just trade it for profit? The volume and the social consensus don't align, it would take days for me to get a chart for that, maybe a future deep dive on this topic.
The correspondence in the zcash community was not very friendly either, even myself I caught smirking and making quips about their loss... That's when it hit me, someone is driving this narrative that there is a superior form of privacy, when in fact it could be true that multiple chains have complete financial privacy.
A Better World with Many Chains
** Best Buy Teaches the Free Market a Valuable Lesson **
Best Buy discovered early in its business & entrepreneurial Pursuits, that having a lot of front-facing product on the shelf that customers can see, led to an increased amount of big box items being sold.
The company was facing bankruptcy and running clearance sales to stay in business, when they realized one day putting all the product on the floor after a rainstorm had damaged it made them the most money in a single day that the company had ever profited.
This was the rise and fall of brick and mortar stores, that Best Buy arguable started the biggest boom within. All of these brick-and-mortar stores are now being replaced by the storefront we see on Amazon, it's a lot more convenient to browse all those floor items from the comfort of your home and be assured you have next day or 48 hour delivery in the majority of locations in North America. Planning a trip to the store usually doesn't happen spontaneously unless you are careless with your money, but that type of person wouldn't make it this far into a blog like this 🤣 You could give your gf a private wallet to protect her while she binge shops though...
** I have this same vision for privacy coins. A diverse marketplace full of options superior to bitcoin and other depreciated forms of privately transacting.**
Anon Banker: "I can't work with privacy coins because it terrifies my bosses (major Canadian bank) and I don't want to risk not being promoted because I support that." ... "I could even loose my CRA license for making a social media post about bitcoin, not to mention crypto that is not traceable."
What This Means
I'm not sure if any of you realize these things, that's why I shared that information with you. A powerful banking organization in Canada that I won't name out of privacy for my friend, is terrified of cryptocurrency and worries that they will be ganged up on by the authorities that be, for simple endorsing cryptocurrency not even promoting it or allowing people to buy it through them OTC.
I'm suspicious that it is someone in a banking circle like this who has a bias towards cash transactions, keep in mind and make a lot of money to print bills, and someone working at the FED is social engineering a war between privacy alts.
I noticed these articles that will speculate about privacy coins, and you'll notice that they always leave Z cash out of their criticism because they don't understand the ZK-SNARKS or what the Halo does.
This type of transaction utilizing the most advanced features of the zcash blockchain, that are not available on any of the zcash Clones in the full utility they are on the main Zcash blockchain. This is mainly due to technical requirements for implementation of the Halo, but don't quote me on that.
How to Make the Future I am Talking About
We need to establish a firm precedent for privacy coins, and potentially a format or standard to debate the privacy functions on different blockchains.
Although all coding is not compatible, the blockchains can be interoperated by a skilled middleman. We can see small examples of this taking place on a lot of DEX (Decentralized Exchanges). The use of a native currency like the Thor RUNE, then add the privacy of the zcash wallet so when you are holding zcash you have as much privacy as possible on an exchange, which is increased over other chains with the shielded transaction.
Monero has a bug that needs to be resolved, but I am sure it is possible to fix. The main issue is that the tx leaks data. In an ideal world, monero would innovate the ZK-Snark shielded transaction to mediate that problem.
Why has this solution not be resolved
I think these memes show the issues plain as day. You can find them all on https://zeme.team
(although zcash isn't easy to use, educating the analysts would go a long way)
(Is this even monero holders or just banking shills trying to divide the 2 great communities?)
I have more and I laugh always at the zemes, but it got me thinking that there is something better to do with my time than meme. So I made this post about ground work for this awesome new privacy union I will be chairman of if people want a real bull you will have to kill to stop preaching about the interoperability of privacy coins.
Somethings to consider,
Who would maintain the middle man code bases for interoperability of privacy coins?
Is DASH even qualified to be called private?
Is Monero's bug fatal, or could it be saved with shielded transactions?
What would privacy coins standard be know as?
How would we grade the privacy coins? (Thinking https://www.securemessagingapps.com/ is a good example of an in depth review style like I imagine)
Would a wallet that offers to randomize the currency you send, then only uses a pool of select privacy coins to complete the TX, regardless of what coin is transfered, the Liquidity could be Paired too
Who would provide liquidity for the Privacy Coin mixing service?
That last point is where I'll leave this. I will say if you started mixing privacy coins and used full triple chain interoperability with DASH, Monero & Zcash, some heads would turn, maybe even the dyke with Grey hair who has the initials EW and likes to run her 85 year old mouth about technology she doesn't understand. (Is Elizabeth Warren the one who wants to divide privacy coin holders to prevent us from forming a private currency union?)
Remember, although they appear to be enemies, Goku and Vegeta perform the PHUSION (Where my name is partially derived). The Fusion leads them to be one of the most powerful Super Saiyan's EVER.