Monero

**

SimpleX is under attack by the magazine Wired,

But what surprises me is the reaction of the developer Evgeny Poberezkin,

https://simplifiedprivacy.com/wired-attacks-simplex/evgeny.html

I am looking at haveno-reto and it has the exact same problem I had with bisq. in order to buy monero on haveno, you have to already have some monero, so you can do a security deposit. so haveno helps to reduce the number of times you have to interact with a CEX or KYC yourself, but it doesn't completely eliminate it. you may still have to do it at least once, like buying some litecoin on a CEX and changing it to some monero. I'd rather start clean with no KYC and it's very important to me.

what I am still trying to wrap my head around is, on localmonero and even localbitcoins it was possible for a person to buy coins without already having any. there were always some sellers who would let you send maybe a couple hundred bux even if you had no account history or anything, and there was never a deposit or collateral. they would still send you coins in return as long as they got the cash.

someone told me that bisq and haveno can't have this because then people will just initiate orders they have no desire to fulfill, as a form of spam attack that locks the seller's coins for a time, and that this is insurmountable without making the security deposit mandatory. but if localbitcoins and localmonero ran fine for years without this being a breaking problem, why isn't it possible on bisq and haveno? and why can't there be some other way to prevent spam like forcing the user to submit shares to a mining pool to prove that they are earnest? proof of work was invented to prevent spam.

An overview of how it works first. On BTC, miners work to create blocks using a proof of work. The miners keep each other in check so that if some tiny miner decides to produce bad blocks, the rest of the network will just ignore the rogue miner.

The trouble is that when the majority of the network becomes rogue, and you can have a 51% attack.

What could a 51% attack look like?

Imagine that you sell your motorbike and receive some coins in exchange. You check the blockchain, coins received, and all is well. As soon as the buyer is gone with your bike, you check the blockchain again, and oops! Your coin is gone! 80% of the miners decided to collude, re-mine the latest blocks, remove the transaction where you received the coins, and replace that with a bribe from the motorbike thief. You are left there, bamboozled, with no bike and no coin...

This attack would be catastrophic for the network and erode the trust people place in it. It is fortunately hard to pull off because you need a majority of the hashrate for that.

You could buy 10 million USD or 20 million USD of equipment to mine, but that still wouldn't get you to 51% of the BTC hash rate.

Of course, if you had unlimited resources like a magician, you could print out mining rigs like there is no tomorrow and then overtake the network. But you are not that rich.

So, it's the economic cost of overtaking the network that protects it from the collusion of bad miners.

It would be so much cheaper and simpler for bad actors to attack if more and more miners just stopped mining!

Why do the miners keep mining anyway?

For the money! They buy cheap equipment, use cheap energy to produce blocks, and receive mining rewards. With the rewards, they pay back the equipment and the energy and then keep a profit.

As long as this business is profitable, the hashrate of the miners stays the same or increases.

What happens when the block reward is reduced? Nothing at first, but if it is reduced too much, the reward is no longer enough to cover the energy and equipment costs, and then the miners start shutting down some of their units. They are not in it for the tech; remember, they want to make money. They will shut down mining rigs unless the price of the coin has increased and the new price is enough to cover their costs.

On BTC, every 4 years, the block reward is divided by 2. If the price of BTC stays the same during that time, it means that mining brings half as much revenue every 4 years, so it's rapidly going to zero.

For example, if the miners are at break-even in a given year, 4 years later they will receive half as much money for their work, so they will have a 50% loss.

If somehow the price of BTC managed to double by that time, the miners would be back at break-even, but they might fear what will happen after 4 more years.

As the block reward keeps dropping and there are not nearly enough transaction fees to compensate, the BTC hashrate is going to drop more and more, and at some point the bad actors will be able to pull off their motorbike heist.

This was my understanding of the troubles of the BTC security model until very recently. That is, until I read "Highjacking Bitcoin" by Roger Ver.

The book explains how bitcoin was captured by the bitcoin core developers and their company, Blockstream. It's an interesting read, and I highly suggest you give it a look.

Why does it matter? My understanding of the book is that now that Blockstream controls the code of the project, the main discussion spaces of its community, the BTC ticker, the 'Bitcoin' brand, and it is no longer challenged as to how to update the BTC protocol. They have effectively become the masters of BTC. They can steer it how they see fit. Roger gives the example of the Liquid Network as their proprietary alternative to the troubled bitcoin network.

This centralization of power could be very 'useful' if the miners have a problem (the mining rewards are too low) or if the miners ever become a problem. During the civil war, the miners had the power to choose the new King. At that time, everyone agreed that bitcoin was the chain with the most POW, starting from the genesis block of Satoshi. If Bitcoin Cash had been able to divert enough miners to it, it would have won the BTC ticker and the Bitcoin brand. Bitcoin Cash didn't win, and nowadays, the consensus is changing to "Bitcoin is what the Bitcoin core developers are working on". The subtle difference is that if there is a problem, the core developers could decide to update the protocol and sideline the miners that don't fit their vision.

What happens if the block reward and transaction fees are systemically too low for too long? Let's imagine a scenario where the number of miners decreases and the hashrate fluctuates violently. The core developers then decide to protect the network by updating the protocol rules so that only serious miners can continue mining. The result would be that only the ones aligned with the core developers will remain. This is drastically different from a few years ago, where the miners were still the kingmakers.

How does this change the security model of BTC? BTC now has a king, and its name is Blockstream. The king does not want to die, and it will take actions to avoid that. BlockStream will never let the miners close shop en masse if it endangers the whole network they control. The network will survive, with or without miners, because it's the foundation of the power of the king.

Granted, for me and you peasants and humble farmers, getting value out of it will probably involve a fair bit of grovelling, frantic begging and pleading for mercy to our new overlords,

but hey! The Number will Go Up!

PS: I would love to get opinions on the topic. What do you think of Roger's book?
PS: Justin Bons often has very interesting posts about the BTC security model and crypto projects: https://x.com/Justin_Bons
PS: Here are my socials: https://links.arseneoaa.me. If you find this post interesting, I think you will also like the Chronicles of Degendaland.

cross-posted from: https://monero.town/post/4529359

Video @ Youtube

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0cRu98XSap0

SimpleX Chat - Next Level Private Messaging

There are still people who do not yet use SimpleX chat. It really is time to install SimpleX.chat

The Future of Decentralization - 1 year on w/ Dr. Kapil of BasicSwap & Particl (MT 327)

TODAY'S 🎙SHOW:Douglas Tuman interviews Dr. Kapil from BasicSwap and Particl to discuss advancements in decentralized exchanges, specifically focusing on Basicswap being the first and currently only bidirectional atomic swap dex involving Monero and other privacy coins.

He highlights BasicSwap's unique approach, which eliminates centralized intermediaries, allowing for fully decentralized, non-custodial swaps between cryptocurrencies.

Dr. Kapil also touches on the challenges of atomic swap adoption, including the need to run full nodes and the complexities of decentralized exchange setups, while teasing upcoming solutions that will make the process more user-friendly.

Watch Here (YouTube)➡️ https://youtube.com/live/Kl87WxXli0M Watch Here (Odysee) ➡️ https://odysee.com/@MoneroTalk:8/the-future-of-decentralization-1-year-on:a Listen Here: https://www.monerotalk.live/monerotalk-327

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We are excited to announce the beta release of the Haveno app on Windows, Mac, and Android! Haveno is a decentralized peer-to-peer exchange platform for Monero, providing users with a secure and private way to trade. This beta release marks a significant milestone in our journey to delivering a robust, user-friendly experience across multiple platforms.

Haveno App Downloads & Guides

I've perceived an increase in the number of newborn nodes syncing the blockchain from my nodes. Maybe after the Chainalysis video showed the privacy risks of using remote nodes over clearnet, more people are setting up their own nodes.

If you run your own node, you can make a get_connections call to monerod's unrestricted RPC port (18081 by default) to get data on the sync status of your peer nodes. I wrote a little script to display this info if anyone is interested.

Sent by email :

Kraken continuously reviews listed tokens to determine the impact from regulatory changes on our offerings.

As one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency platforms, we are constantly working to support the most comprehensive set of digital assets possible in alignment with applicable regulatory and compliance obligations.

What’s changing?

After thorough consideration, and exploration of all viable alternatives, we concluded we have no choice but to delist Monero (XMR) in the European Economic Area (EEA) due to regulatory changes.

We did not take this decision lightly and remain committed to providing our European clients with an exceptional trading experience.

What’s next?

• On October 31st 2024 at 15:00 PM UTC, we will halt trading and deposits of all XMR markets (XMR/USD, XMR/EUR, XMR/BTC, XMR/USDT) for clients registered in the EEA. Any open XMR orders will also be automatically closed at this time. Note: Clients will remain able to withdraw XMR on Kraken until December 31st, 2024.
• December 31st 2024 at 15:00 PM UTC is the deadline for withdrawing XMR. Any clients still holding an XMR balance after this date will have their XMR automatically converted to BTC by Kraken at the going market rate.
• By January 6th 2025 23:59 PM UTC, we will distribute the converted XMR as BTC back to any clients who held XMR at the withdrawal deadline.

Any clients who hold an XMR balance at the time of the withdrawal deadline will be automatically included in the conversion of XMR to BTC.

As a leading cryptocurrency exchange, Kraken remains mission-driven and committed to supporting the most comprehensive set of digital assets possible, in alignment with our regulatory and compliance obligations.

We appreciate your understanding and ongoing support as we navigate the evolving regulatory landscape.

Link found on r/Monero - posted by u/MoneroFox : https://support.kraken.com/hc/en-us/articles/support-for-monero-xmr-in-europe

There's many political offices. I think lower level is better for influence and effectiveness and less selling out. Less awful.

What I'm here to try to figure out is how much support would I get? I know this isn't a perfect indicator. Everything is with salt.

I promise I won't make things in life worse. I will make things better for monero.

SPECIAL SALE: As Monero is delisted from Kraken (for the EU),

Simplified Privacy jumps into the fray, to buy XMR, by selling discounted hardware & services

We’re offering $10 off your Phone or VPS combo purchase, to offer stability to the market and defy oppression.

First, if new exchanges aren't listing it, then basic logic would tell us that there's only so many times they can delist XMR to cause a price-propaganda event, and eventually the bad news is priced in. So just hold and ignore it for a week.

And the Kraken insiders sold prior to the announcement, that’s why XMR fell more than other coins in the general market. So if you sell now, you’re essentially letting them urinate on your wallet and manipulate your emotions.

Second, to prove my first point, if you don't want to hold your XMR, I will accept it right now today for a Phone or Email setups at a discount. You want to get rid of it? Come on down, and get a completely off-the-radar DeGoogled Pixel or an awesome VPS setup to be self-sovereign with all your communications (email, xmpp, docs, ect)

The invasion of your privacy is only first beginning, if you do nothing and sit by, it’s only getting worse. Stop just liking memes and complaining, and start taking action.

I’m here to hold your hand through the process,

Email, XMPP, Cryptpad: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/email-cloud-combo/index.html

DeGoogled Phones: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/they-see-everything/index.html

The Future of Decentralization - 1 year on - w/ Dr Kapil Amarasinghe of BasicSwapDEX, ParticlProject ! Tune-in to a LIVE #MoneroTalk EPI TMRW 10/01 at 7AM-EDT!

Watch here YT➡️: https://www.youtube.com/live/Kl87WxXli0M?si=Y5bT5plvnvp4Qsjn

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Hey folks, I finally got around to setting up [an extremely ugly, but nevertheless working] pipeline to automatically build Mysu (it only builds arm64 images for now, so they might not work if you have a very old phone. This probably shouldn't affect many people, but if it does affect you and you would like to test Mysu - please let me know).
Testing and feedback is welcome :)

Don't be a one trick pony in your opt-out strategy. Diversify!

Why hasn't someone built an XMR web-miner that is first & foremost made to replace captchas & reduce spam while also generating revenue?

I imagine the profit potential would be quite high for anyone who could implement their own solution & maybe like XMRig have a default donation value to get paid for creating thing.

It would be amazing if as a website owner I could have set difficulties to preform certain tasks & the server could send users work units for users to complete, obviously at a much lower difficulty but if they manage to actually complete the work or get a correct hash then it could be designed to automatically send that back. Increased revenue (maybe enough to replace ads), less spam, & no captchas for users, everyone would win & all this extra mining would increase the security of the Monero network.

Is there an obvious reason I'm not seeing as to why this hasn't been done?

maybe with her just lying on the bed with knees a bit bent and her moving her upper foot up and down casually?

or something else.

Achieving a thriving Monero Circular Economy with Alaskanon! Tune-in to a LIVE MoneroTalk EPI TMRW 9/26 at 6:30PM-EDT!

Watch here YT➡️: https://www.youtube.com/live/m_VMSovBh4g?si=pAUIL7RkBEmA4Hib

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