Hey guys! When do you plan to do the next Coffee chat? Love this format:)

lena88: July 25

Thanks @sgp_!

xmrscott[m]: yeah we immediately went in and revoked access for people that hadn't used it in a while, and revoked apps etc.

we took as many precautions as possible

but if it was internal to Twitter then we would have been popped either way if they wanted to

re: deleting, they changed the email and password and logged you out

so there's no way to delete unless you still retained access somehow or were working with Twitter directly

Yeah to me it's kind of crazy that they seem to freely have a god mod for anyone policy or at least no dual+ sign off or whatever after the POTUS account deletion incident. From what it sounds like the only thing that changed is they may have limited access to POTUS to just jack and one or two others or something

Otherwise you can have abusive ex's or whatever abusing their powers w/o notice :/

yep

changing comms. should i go signal or wire?

Wire

ty. ill check it out

Signal made another misstep with SVR

I don't know how they think that not listening to infosec people is a good way to build a security-focused product

The forced PIN is kind of annoying

At some point you couldn't use the app unless you set up a PIN

huh

i was rooting for moxie

sslstrip was the shit

lza_menace: his obsession with SGX is his downfall

SGX is a total clustertruck

and Mobilecoin is obsessed with it too, which is unsurprising as Moxie is an advisor

this intel thing?

yeah the thing that gets critically broken every few months

maybe the corporate ic got to him

word

fluffypony: but Wire stores so much info in plain text :(

and they can't get their Android app to not completely suck dick

half the time I click on a push notification for a message I get, and get taken to the wrong conversation (with a different person).

Many times I don't receive the notifications at all for quite some time.

rehrar: you can run your own Wire server if you want, and they're working on federation

ye but that doesn't solve their app being ass problem

Yeah, for context for anyone reading: vice.com/en_us/article/gvzw5x/secur…-youve-ever-contacted-in-plain-text

Not sure if GNU Jami is similar levels of bad as I haven't done any deep dives, but it's what I use for the time being

I feel like if they solve their awful app problem, I'd be much happier to use it more consistently again. But for now it's too laggy, it takes me to the wrong conversations, it freezes up, it doesn't give me notifications or messages sometimes, it doesn't clear the number (indicating unseen messages) after I've already viewed messages (sometimes for a week or more)

and I feel like these are basic things.

software sucks

lza_menace: this is true, but why does literally every other messenger take me to the correct conversation when I click a push notification except Wire?

I feel like this is a new level of suckage.

I feel like Signal should suck it up and move to mnemonic seed based stuff for their encryption of our data on their servers.

rehrar: have you opened an issue on GitHub for it?

fluffypony: I haven't. Let me see if someone has complained about the same thing.

I'm also not fond of their UX. Who do I talk with about that? (serious)

open issues on the repos

the more specificity the better

are they fairly attentive?

if so, I'll do this.

I think so

Hmmm....

Hmmmmmmmmm

<lza_menace "changing comms. should i go sign"> Element/Matrix (former Riot)

From yesterday

Awesome to see Germany join France. The nice thing about the EU nations is that they tend to have a philosophy of financially investing/donating some of the savings to the teams that develop FOSS they use compared to say for profit enterprises

Also OMG, finally, alphabetic ordering coming soon

<lza_menace "changing comms. should i go sign"> signal

Lol I'm doing an AMA for Monero with a group based in Asia and they introduced me as the "Community Lead"

BOW TO YOUR NEW LEADER

-___-

I've told them many times but they really wanted a clear title

"Community Member" wasn't enough I guess

sigh

Everybody's gotta have a title

Contributor?

They also wanted to know how many offices we have and how many employees

I don't think they're used to hosting actually decentralized projects

I often open talks by specifically mentioning that Monero is an open-source project, and that there's no company, foundation, or ICO

It has many contributing developers, community members, researchers, translators, and so on

Can help set the stage

Yeah I made sure to re-iterate that a few times in different questions so far

Because it's obvious thats not common in this audience

Great; helps the audience know that open-source development is still a thing :)

For sure!

This seems to have a pretty broad/large audience so I'm glad it worked out

1200 members in their Telegram and apparently they have 6 much larger WeChat groups

wow

That they're livestreaming this too/translating

no pressure

lol

Right now its a prepared set of questions they sent me last night

Next is the actual AMA which should be interesting

Even more important to reiterate the nature of the project, so people don't think you represent anyone else's views

But I'm the community lead now

I am *the* authority

:P

Someone call IRC for op privileges, stat

heh

Of course someone brought this up:

There is news that terrorists take advantages on anonymous coins. ISIS is using Monero to raise funds, what do you think about this? How to avoid being used improperly?

- cointelegraph.com/news/isis-affilia…te-to-collect-donations-with-monero

Sigh...

Here's what I'm going to say, any quick feedback?

o There is no source for this news, and it appears to be entirely false.

o If it is true, I’m saddened that something like Monero is being used for this purpose, and Monero in no way supports terrorism. Many other existing currencies (like USD) are used for funding terrorism, but that doesn’t invalidate the value they bring to the world.

o As mentioned above, Monero has no power or ability to control or monitor the way that Monero is used, as it is a censorship-resistant and permissionless currency, similar to cash.

Bad actors use whatever tools are available to them

That news was reported by several entities

They all sourced from the same unsourced article though

but it's not clear what the specific nature of the fundraising entity is

Yeah

Then again, I don't have any information beyond what I read in those articles

Yeah thats why I went with "its probably false, but if not..."

I don't know how to build math that only works when certain types of people use it

Anyway, all the research I've seen indicates that the use of distributed digital assets for illicit purposes is extremely low compared to fiat

I suspect media tends to cover "bad" uses of newer technology much more than of older technology, which can make it seem more prevalent than it is

Yeah I harped ont hat with a few of these questions

USD is still used for far more illicit actions than all of cryptocurrency combined

Anyway, that question seems to be basically asking "how do we get rid of crimes" which I don't think any society has solved, unfortunately :/

Yeah unfortunately the answer to that question goes far deeper than money

And there are plenty of good reasons to want to use a privacy-preserving digital asset

Using something transparent could expose a user to risk

If companies can do analysis to link transactions to individuals and companies, it's no major leap to assume that nefarious actors can do the same

Any other questions of note that were asked?

I have a whole list I'll share after, still working through the prepared questions

Most were pretty straightforward

May I recommend avoiding wording like "Monero supports..." and such

That seems to assign views to individuals

ah, absolutely true

SHould have just said "I in no way support terrorism" I guess

I would hope that every contributor does not support that

for sure

But the beauty (and pain) of a permissionless network is you're free to support whatever you like

(and do whatever you like on the network as long as you pay your fees)

I like the Zcash FAQ answer on illicit use: z.cash/support/faq/#bad-people

It's short and to the point

I like that

If people only developed beneficial tools that could never be used by bad actors, the world would have no tools of any kind

and as far as we know, privacy-focused distributed digital assets can be used completely in line with compliance policies and regulations that are in common use around the world

Supporting privacy and opposing crime are not mutually exclusive, and I think it's important not to fall into the trap of assuming they are

Preach :D

Full AMA, hope I did Monero justice 0.0

The community didn't have any more questions than the prepared ones apparently, but there is a summit at the end of September they'd like us to be a part of

Would love any feedback on answers you all have as well, always want to be improving on phrasing or technical details :)

Now time to get to work on my day job :P

Monero did initially use the CrypotoNote protocol, but it's evolved significantly over time

I've started just using the term "Monero protocol" to describe the transaction protocol, and say that it has roots in CryptoNote

Heh, I'm surprised you said what assets you hold

"The whole point is that's nobody's business!"

Heh, valid point :P At least I know in Monero I don

't have to worry about anyone figuring out how much I have ;)

I don't even know how much I have B)

sarang: as much as I understand the "bad guys will use anything" argument, I try to make sure to be careful not to put off people who are against gun ownership as I make that point. If people aren't careful, they can sound like an NRA lobbyist lol

good point

Just use the drug war as an analogy for people who you assume are against gun ownership.

"Many other existing currencies (like USD) are used for funding terrorism, but that doesn’t invalidate the value they bring to the world." <- I like this sentence

:)

^

typically I also stress that the community does its damnedest to make sure that illicit activities remain an extremely small portion of the overall activities

(for example: the Monero Malware Response Workgroup assists victims of Monero-related malware)

Get internet personalities who accept bitcoin in their donations to accept monero. Recently got a fairly well known person to include it

Ah, that workgroup is a great example of members of the community fighting against illicit usage!

Good point.

final comment: it's probably worth another sentence explaining why RandomX isn't just another "look we added another thing to the algo to kill ASICs for 2 seconds" algo

however this really is a set of 10/10 responses

Thanks for the high praise :D

you need to do more of these

I figured it wasn't a technical enough audience for them to worry about the possibility of ASIC-resistance/know about previous failed attempts in this style of AMA

<sgp_> you need to do more of these <- I think this is a great way I can contribute to Monero, so I'm always happy to do this kind of thing/looking for opportunities

"this isn't just another supposed ASIC-resistant algorithm; it was built from the ground up and audited four times"

Great wording!

I think I'll go through and edit this doc a bit and share it on Reddit/Twitter as a FAQ

Obviously without the personal QA :P

Direct link to the "FAQ": github.com/fort3hlulz/Miscellaneous…Monero/blob/master/Monero%20FAQ.pdf

oyos

howdy rehrar

hi

fort3hlulz: do you know if Google can index the text in the GitHub PDF?

GitHub will automatically render markdown

might be a good option for this

also likely better for accessibility

As in it would better to put it in MD instead of PDF?

I can duplicate it to that later

If you use a .md extension, github will try to render as markdown

but then the underlying text is still available, and still pretty darn readable

easier to copy/paste, probably better for things like screen readers, etc.

and reddit understands markdown too (if you switch to that editor format) if that's useful to you

Idk if I remember enough MD to edit this into a proper doc lmao

None of the subpoints get broken out

Its just each question and a block of text

ah yeah double space after line

"Monero aims to provide real privacy, by default, enabling the future of digital cash while protecting each users right to financial privacy." ... :( Monero aims to be money, and money needs to be fungible, and things that are fungible inherently need privacy

<sgp_> typically I also stress that the community does its damnedest to make sure that illicit activities remain an extremely small portion of the overall activities

Subreddit also forbids any talk of utilizing Monero to break the law

Or association

I'm talking on this panel on privacy

for DeFi

gingeropolous I definitely agree with you, but think that privacy is a more approachable selling point than fungibility for most

But I think your wording is also true

i guess. but it pegs monero as a privacy coin.

monero. means. money . :)

monono is fungusable

<xmrscott[m] "Awesome to see Germany join Fran"> It is true, plus I think the USA hacking European politicians, the most famous one Obama spying on Merkel phone, has made European bureocrats realize they can not trust USA companies and have to find solutions where they have full control of the data, and federated options like Element/Matrix are an obvious choice

I don't know how this is going to be. I don't have high hopes for DeFi stuff so I wonder how they'll take it.

rehrar: I'm watching

great ama though fort3hlulz

Thanks for the feedback!

I agree the ultimate aim is simply money that works as money

Could probably clarify that while emphasizing its achieved through privacy (which is necessary for money)

well, i'd argue its necessary for decentralized money

government sanctioned money can get away with traceable money because they can make laws that make it fungible

but extralaw money doesn't have that luxury

Initial markdown version: github.com/fort3hlulz/Miscellaneous…-Monero/blob/master/Monero%20FAQ.md

exalaw?

never heard that term 0.o

no i think i made it up

because its not outlaw, it just doesn't have laws

well, it has code laws

Then extralaw or extra-law I guess haha

If anyone wants a link to the I. s 1 s site I can give it. It took all of 3 minutes to find after I saw news about it when d s c(?) started aubtweeting it

TBH I was surprised Google returned the site

That sounds like a bad idea

xmrscott[m]: d s c ? is that me? :P

dsc_: what are you doing outside of #monero-gui!?

my bad

eww Incognito

I think Incognito has their heart (minus premine) in the right place, but.....

it gets a huge eeeeeeeehhhhhhh from me

I suppose I should probably report it to Google to blacklist at some point

Yeah, I didn't want to highlight you cuz I couldn't remember who actually first asked in a subtweet / rt for sou rceif it was you or jt or something

sgp_: thoughts?

do you think I'm way off base?

idk, depends on what your goals in the interview are

maybe from here on out I'll try to be a bit more positive.

idk what my goals are, they invited me on and told me to just be honest

it's okay to be critical, just... make sure not to scare people away lol

Reuben came out and played the skeptic card in a way that doesn't close him off

I hope that helped. :P

I think it did a bit

we need to inspire people. doesn't need to be with false hopes tho like many others :p

but if you know the reality, then there often isn't much to inspire with

going back to the 'time travel' example. If you know the reality that we are nowhere close to time technology, then how can the truth inspire people?

LOL!

well that happened

ok. done.

you're a community lead in my book, fort3hlulz....you hang out in irc :P

XD

rehrar: I didn't catch the end. How was it?

Aight

rehrar etc: repo.getmonero.org/monero-project/ccs-front/-/merge_requests/31

Removes JS analytics from CCS

Code isn't even functional

Ye. Aight.

There's a similar PR in #monero-site too

I'm confused: reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/hsavjr…sed_on_some_questions_i_got/fy9vuwd

Isn't that exactly what I said?

Or am I missing something?

sarang maybe you can clarify

I always thought RingCT was used to describe both ring sigs and CT, and how the combination is used in Monero

The terminology is a bit wishy-washy

but generally, I take "RingCT" to refer to the use of multidimensional ring signatures for signer and amount commitment purposes

I don't really like the term, or "CT" to refer to amount commitments

So the best way to describe the combination of ring sigs and confidential transactions is to describe them separately, not together as RingCT?

The implication on Reddit is that RingCT is ONLY the amount hiding portion

In my mind RingCT = Ring Signatures (Ring) + Confidential Transactions (CT)

I replied to the comment

Thus RingCT

thanks

I don't think it's a big deal at all

The Monero protocol uses a multidimensional ring signature construction to obfuscate both the transaction signer (which is itself a one-time address) and the committed amount

I don't think it really matters what you call it in this particular case

sweet

Wanted to be sure I wasn't confusing people by using RingCT to describe both ring sigs and CT

You can't do committed amounts in the protocol (as currently implemented) without the use of multidimensional ring signatures

it just doesn't work like that; they're deeply intertwined

Maybe this is clearer to break them out:

b. Ring Signatures: this technology hides which output is being spent among (currently) 10 others. This requires no coordination (unlike CoinJoin) and happens entirely via the protocol itself.

c. Confidential Transactions: this technology hides all amounts sent and received on-chain using special commitments that verify amounts when creating a transaction.

I disagree

They aren't separable in the way the protocol implements them

The amount commitments are literally part of the ring signature construction

Oh

so then is the original a better description:

b. RingCT: this technology hides all amounts sent and received on-chain, as well as hides which output is actually being spent among (currently) 10 others. This requires no coordination (unlike CoinJoin) and happens entirely via the protocol itself.

Every input to the ring signature is both a signing public key and an amount commitment, with some extra algebra applied to make the amount balancing work properly

That's a reasonable description, sure

FWIW the person replying to you appears to be trying to separate them

Which is not how the Monero protocol works

That being said, the result _is_ that you get both signer ambiguity and amount hiding

yeah that was my understanding, although I didn't know they were technically so intertwined

Just thought it was a combinatory name for simplicity

Yeah, consistent terminology is not a strong suit of this project by any means

But good to know theres even more reason they go together :)

:(

Nope, tightly intertwined

It's made learning technical terminology... interesting lol

ikr

I've tried pushing for some changes, but so many things are "baked in" historically at this point

it might just cause more confusion :/

e.g. I _hate_ the term "output"

hate it hate it hate it

I think it would be fine if there was a clear notice of the change/editing of old docs etc

heh why do you hate output?

Instead of Key Image?

no

key images are different

The problem is that outputs become possible inputs etc.

Zcash uses the term "note" which I like much better

but this is not the hill to die on =p

If you had to choose one term to change in Monero what would it be

I'm curious

s/had to/could

piconero --> tacoshi

lol

I've just started referring to every amount as general "monero"

I don't like "output" or "RingCT" or "CT" or "key images"

e.g. #StackMonero etc.

<sarang> I don't like "output" or "RingCT" or "CT" or "key images" <- I said one XD

But I also don't want to confuse the everloving hell out of everyone

"linking tags" is more commonly used in the literature

IIRC I did use that in the Triptych and Arcturus papers

maybe in CLSAG

literally never heard that term

too many papers, heh

It's moreso in academic papers

TIL

But again, there's a real cost to trying to change commonly-understood terms

It'd need to be offset by an increase in clarity etc.

I agree most of these terms SUCK

"outputs" is stupid

even "container" is better

I'm using "note" in a new Arcturus security model

It makes the security model much more clear

I wish there was a single word that meant disposable or single-use container

though even that's sorta confusing, since are they really only single-use with decoy selection?

Yeah, problem is there's not a great analogy for how this stuff works

They're all approximations of some sort

and even the literature isn't terribly consistent on this stuff

why is output bad?

I think it doesn't do a good job of capturing how it's used

fort3hlulz: FWIW this is one reason I like referring to "the Monero protocol"

I guess it doesn't really work as well as it does with bitcoin

right

but again, it's a pretty established term now

I tried to change it with one of the MRL preprints, but it was not well received :D

I do try to use "linking tag" instead of "key image" in papers

because nobody knows what "key images" is supposed to mean

whereas "linking tag" is waaaaay more clear

Even the use of "ring" for "anonymity set" is a poor choice of wording

"ring" refers to the particular structure of LSAG-type signatures

"anonymity set" is far more descriptive and useful

fort3hlulz: the Monero protocol uses cryptographic constructions like linkable ring signatures, one-time addresses, and Pedersen commitments together in a way that provides signer ambiguity, recipient privacy, and amount hiding

bam

I don't think there's a particularly good reason to keep using the "stealth addresses + ring sigs + CT" nomenclature

it's the Monero protocol

Heck, Triptych keeps _exactly_ the same stuff for one-time addresses and Pedersen commitments, but replaces the existing LRS with a ZKP-based LRS construction, to the same effect

So I assure you, the terminology can get as crazy as we like =p

Notably, I want to stop this idea that "ring signature vs ZKP" is the same as "limited vs full anonymity set"

Arcturus uses a ZKP construction for limited anonymity, for example (as do other constructions too)

Thank you for listening to this episode of "Sarang Complains About Terminology"

tune in next time