Author: Gregory Maxwell 2017-11-14 10:38:33
Published on: 2017-11-14T10:38:33+00:00
In an email exchange, Peter Todd and Gregory Maxwell discuss the risks associated with privacy in cryptocurrency systems. Todd argues that privacy breaches threaten users' freedom, which is difficult to put a price on, while Maxwell questions the feasibility of implementing perfectly hiding systems in practice. They also discuss the possibility of using switch commitments to retain computational-hiding-depending-on-the-hardness-of-inverting-hashes while retaining an option to upgrade or block spending via unsound mechanisms in the event of a crypto break. The conversation then shifts to the scalability of ring-in and tree-in approaches in Monero and Zcash, with Maxwell suggesting ways to extend these approaches to a traceable 1 of N input for Monero. He also proposes using a hash tree to provide tree-in style transactions with proofs that grow with the log() of the size of the tree, although he acknowledges that this would come at the cost of larger proofs and slower verification. Despite its drawbacks, Maxwell believes that the interactive-sparse-in (CJ) approach has its own attractiveness.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T04:17:55.845729+00:00