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Author Topic: [ANN] Zcoin (XZC) - Implementing Zerocoin technology for financial privacy  (Read 13832 times)

zcoinofficial

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Zcoin (zcoin.io)




Zerocoin Implementation

In Bitcoin, all transactions are broadcasted on a public ledger. Research has shown that external information, such as publicly announced addresses, can be used to link individual identities and organizations to transactions. Furthermore, the same type of mechanism used to break privacy in social networks, such as the analysis of social network topology, can be used to break privacy in the Bitcoin network.

Zcoin ( https://zcoin.io ) guarantees complete financial privacy through the Zerocoin Protocol. The Zerocoin Protocol ( http://spar.isi.jhu.edu/~mgreen/ZerocoinOakland.pdf ) uses Zero-Knowledge proofs to ensure zero leakage of information about senders and recipients of financial transactions.

A zero-knowledge proof is a method in which one person can prove to another person that a given statement is true, without conveying any information apart from the fact that the statement is indeed true.

Zcoin uses zero-knowledge proofs by making a zero-knowledge cryptographic statement. When someone is sent Zerocoin, the person only knows that X amount of money was sent to their wallet. Unlike Bitcoin and all previous cryptocurrencies, there is no other unintended identifying information about the sender and receiver, or any attached transaction history. With Zerocoin, transactional history is completely removed.

Zcoin is different from Zcash and uses different cryptographic implementations. Zcoin uses the proven cryptographic schemes of the Zerocoin protocol, which was one of the most cited cryptography papers in the past 3 years. Zcash uses the more experimental Zerocash protocol.

We believe that Zcoin offers much of the privacy advantages of zero knowledge proofs without the drawbacks that Zcash introduces. Minting a coin in Zcoin only take a few seconds of computational power compared to Zcash which requires several minutes on an average computer making mobile adoption problematic. Our total coin supply is also auditable meaning any security flaws are much easier to detect especially when dealing with trusted setups.

For a more detailed description of differences, please see here: https://zcoin.io/zcoin-and-zcash/

MTP

We are also looking to be the first cryptocurrency to implement the MTP protocol which promotes egalitarian computing and allows memory hard proof of work with efficient and fast verification. Read more about MTP and why it is important here.

Announcements

17 October 2017
New wallet version 0.13.2.9 released.

19 September 2017

New wallet version 0.13.2.4 released.
https://zcoin.io/zcoin-core-upgrade-to-0-13-is-here/

13 August 2017

Core Upgrade to 0.13 and MTP Update

Zcoin is almost ready to be deployed on Bitcoin Core 0.13 and will be released soon.

We are currently holding off the MTP deployment on mainnet in light of new academic developments.

https://zcoin.io/core-upgrade-to-0-13-and-mtp-update/

21 July 2017

Bounty for MTP Audit ($10,000) and MTP Implementation ($2,500)

To further encourage research and scrutiny into MTP, we are sponsoring two bounties.

MTP Audit Bounty: 10,000 USD Total
MTP Implementation Bounty : 2,500 USD TOTAL

Further information about rules and bounty distribution can be found in our blog post:
https://zcoin.io/bounty-mtp-audit-10000-mtp-implementation-2500/

9 July 2017

MTP Open-source Miner Bounty Challenge

Zcoin is sponsoring a prize fund of $21,000 for the development of open source miners for the MTP protocol as implemented in Zcoin.

Details available here: https://zcoin.io/mtp-open-source-miner-bounty-challenge/

8 July 2017

We are happy to announce that Litebit.eu, Coinex.ir and Coinexchange.io has listed Zcoin! Thank you to our community for making this possible.

26 June 2017

MTP with final specifications on Testnet

MTP is now set to go live at block 47,500 which is in about 1.5 months' time.

Miner bounty program with a total of USD 21,000 will be awarded to the best open source miners for CPU and GPU. If you are interested, please drop by our Slack and join the #minerdevcompetition channel.

Those who are interested in participating in the test and wallet mining on the testnet can use the pre-release version (Windows version coming soon). Reference CPU and GPU miners will be released in a few days.

11 June 2017

Leandro Reinaux joins the Zcoin team

We are happy to welcome Leandro Reinaux to the Zcoin team! Although new to cryptocurrency development,, Leandro has learnt quickly and contributed a lot in upgrading our code and will be an immense help in accelerating our development.

Leandro  has 8 years of experience as a fullstack developer, in a wide range of programming languages (C#, C++, Java, Ruby).  He is the founder of Even3, Brazilian leading platform for academics and scientific events. He also believes that the cryptocurrencies will be the new standard for financial and transaction systems.

He is on our Slack as @leoreinaux. Give him a shout of welcome!

7 June 2017

Pre-release is out

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/releases/tag/v0.8.7.8

Quote
Sync fixes with ported code from Bitcoin Core 0.13
Added precomputed accumulator for improved loading speed.
Compilation fixes on libzerocoin library

SHA256 Checksums:

zcoin-qt-v0.8.7.8-windows.zip
6040DBFE1100A7055D4509DF1AECF8A1C47064A641AAFC59FE1A346B0CC3ADBF

zcoin-qt-v0.8.7.8-osx.dmg
7BEC88B2BE8D403D7C2C779A45796382E9DF5D71BC0F4676CE780D39DA000A44

zcoin-qt-v0.8.7.8-linux64.tar.gz
1383114F3B23445FBBDFC8FAF64D7DC4BBF3479386510CAF672C0FCEAA4E3B8B

We recommend starting with a new installation altogether without any wallet.dat though if you wish you can download the chain data from http://znode.io/ that will speed it up a little bit. First sync still take a while but it shouldn't get stuck anymore. Make sure to backup your old wallet.dat just in case.

If you have an old wallet with existing funds and wish to port it over, you can export your private key from your old wallet addresses by going to Help > Debug Window > Console and typing the following:
If wallet is encrypted type the following into the console. Sometimes it can take a while for console to respond if it's currently syncing.

Quote
walletpassphrase passphrase 120
dumpprivkey address

Once your new wallet is synced u can import the private keys into it by:

Quote
walletpassphrase passphrase 120
importprivkey address

Tested on Linux and Windows but not yet on Mac. Do give feedback. We're actively testing it in Slack in #developers

4 June 2017

We are pleased to welcome Tadhg Riordan to the team as a Solidity developer to work on integration of Zerocoin technology on Ethereum. Tadhg has previously worked on a system of confidential transactions using zkSNARKs which was built into a smart contract and made use of the precompiled contracts which are to be added to the Metropolis update. He hopes to achieve the same with Zerocoin technology as detailed in our previous post. We are confident this will brings greater awareness of Zerocoin tech and its potential uses and its continued relevance and advantages in providing privacy and also eventually allow greater cooperation and collaboration between the Ethereum and Zcoin community.

Tadhg Riordan is a 24 year old Software Developer from Wexford, Ireland. He recently completed my MSc from Trinity College Dublin, where he worked with Blockchain privacy mechanisms, focusing particularly on Zero-Knowledge Proofs and the Ethereum platform. He is a strong advocate for the adoption of crypto-currency and for complete financial privacy.

3 June 2017

Coinomi mobile wallet adds Zcoin (XZC) Support

Coinomi a free, secure open source wallet has added Zcoin (XZC) support. Coinomi is an excellent way to hold your Zcoins given that it uses recovery seeds and you are in control of your own private keys. It is also a light wallet meaning you don't have to wait for any syncing and is an easy way to get started with Zcoin.

Coinomi is currently only available for Android for the moment but an IOS option and a desktop wallet is coming soon.

You can grab it from the Android Playstore or directly from their website.

19 May 2017

We are excited to announce that Tim Ruffing has joined Zcoin as a Cryptography Advisor.

Tim is a cryptographer and blockchain researcher pursuing his PhD in computer science at Saarland University in Germany and has contributed substantially to the field of privacy enhancing technologies in cryptocurrencies. Some of his notable works are CoinShuffle and ValueShuffle that were proposals to add privacy to Bitcoin in a decentralized manner.

Tim’s research areas in cryptocurrencies and privacy enhancing technologies are particularly relevant to Zcoin’s core technologies such as Zerocoin and the upcoming Sigma protocol and we are confident that his input will assist us in implementing strong and sound cryptography in Zcoin. Welcome Tim!

21 April 2017

We believe we have found a way to remove the need for a trusted setup in our Zerocoin implementation through the use of the Sigma protocol combined with elliptic curve groups. This also has a benefit of reducing proof sizes from 25 kb to around 1 kb granting greater scalability.

Further reading here.

10 April 2017

Zcoin (XZC) is proud to be the first coin to have a working implementation of the MTP proof of work! MTP has been launched on our testnet and there will be a period of testing where we fix bugs and tweak the parameters to ensure a smooth roll out on mainnet soon.

Solo mining already works through the inbuilt miner (setgenerate true) and djm34 is working on a GPU implementation of the miner.

For those of you who code, you can participate in the test through our Github on the MTP branch here: https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/tree/mtp. We are aware of some bugs and are working to fix them so the code will still be rapidly changing. Note that there may be numerous restarts on the testnet. Remember after compiling to run it with the -testnet flag or define it within zcoin.conf!

Getting the Wallet

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/releases
https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/Installation

How to Mine

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/Pool-Mining-Guide

FAQ

What is the distribution for Zcoin?

There will be 21 million Zcoins. Zcoin follows the same halving cycle as Bitcoin (every 4 years). 10% of the total Zcoin supply will be distributed to the Founders Reward as time passes. In the first 4 years, 20% of Zcoins will be distributed to the Founders Reward. In other words, during the first 4 years, 40 Zcoins will go to the miners and 10 Zcoins will go towards the Founders reward. After the first 4 years, the block reward goes completely towards the miners.

What will Zcoin's Founders Reward be used for?

The Founders Reward will be given to early investors, developers, and Zcoin community members. We also have bounties for various tasks, such as Zcoin core development, web development, graphic design, marketing, ect. If you'd like to help out, please email or message us on Slack.

Is Zcoin a fork of Zcash? What are the primary differences?

Zcoin is not a fork of Zcash in anyway. First of all Zerocoin is the tech, Zcoin is the coin, similarly to how Zerocash is the tech and, Zcash the coin.

Zcoin uses Zerocoin technology from the Zerocoin paper. This is a very well peer reviewed paper with over 200 citations.

Zcash instead uses the Zerocash paper.

Although Zerocash is a development from Zerocoin meant to address certain perceived shortcomings of Zerocoin, they are not simple forks of each other and rely on different protocols.

Zerocash was meant to improve on Zerocoin on these issues:

a) Zerocash's proofs are much more smaller than Zerocoin's
b) Zerocoin uses fixed denominations to mint (1, 25, 50, 100) while Zerocash is not subject to such limitations
c) Greater anonymity with Zerocash since sender/receiver/amount are all obscured.

However Zerocoin's advantage over Zerocash are as follows:
a) Although Zerocoin's proofs are larger and occupies more storage space, the computational requirements to generate a private transaction are many times faster. Zcash requires large amounts of RAM and minutes of computational time. Zerocoin requires seconds to use and is not memory intensive. Basically Zerocoin uses more storage space but is computationally much less intensive.
b) Parameter generation for both Zcoin and Zcash requires a trusted setup but Zcoin's parameters are arguably less controversial. (https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/Parameters-in-set-up-phase-for-Zerocoin-in-ZCoin). A zero trust parameter setup is also within our roadmap.
c) Most importantly is that in Zcoin, total supply is still visible so if there's a flaw and someone is secretly creating coins for themselves, this can be much more easily detected. With Zcash, if a flaw is exploited, it may be almost impossible to detect as someone can mint coins for themselves without being detected.
d) Zerocoin's tech is much more reviewed and better understood than Zcash's. Zcash's use of zero knowledge proofs uses ZK-Snarks is much more experimental and only a handful of people understand it.

Here at Zcoin, we believe that multiple zero-knowledge cryptocurrency implementations is a blessing to society. Like Zcoin, Zcash is also enabling individual freedom and open commerce to the world by increasing financial privacy. We applaud the work that the Zcash team is doing. With that in mind, it is important to understand the inherent tradeoffs between the Zerocoin and Zerocash protocols. Zcoin has some major advantages over Zcash, as well as significant disadvantages. By increasing awareness of these tradeoffs, privacy-centric users can more effectively use either coin tailored to their concerns and specific use cases.

You may also read more at our blog post.

ROADMAP


More info:


Resources

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Exchanges (Use at your own risk!)

« Last Edit: October 24, 2017, 10:12:46 AM by zcoinofficial »

zcoinofficial

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Zcoin is looking for additional core developers join the team to accelerate our development!

Requirements:

  • Experience with C++
  • Understanding of the cryptographic principles underpinning of Bitcoin 2.0 and Blockchain technologies
  • Have a collaborative mind set and enjoy sharing Blockchain knowledge with other developers
  • Have good communication skills and a passion for Blockchain development

Plus points:
  • Have practical experience developing on Blockchain platforms such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.
  • Have good communication skills and a passion for Blockchain development
  • Extensive experience working with cryptographic protocols
  • Understanding of the Zerocoin protocol

Remuneration will be commensurate to skill set and experience. We are also open to starting with project-based fees.

If you are interested, please do drop an e-mail to [email protected] or drop by our Slack and message @reuben with the following:

  • A description of your skill set and work/programming experience
  • Whether you are seeking a full time/part time or project based position.
  • Your expected remuneration
  • The timezone that you work in

zcoinofficial

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Please find our updated roadmap for the next 3 years.

https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/Roadmap

zcoinofficial

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We have released the updated graphical roadmap.


zcoinofficial

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We are excited to announce that Tim Ruffing has joined Zcoin as a Cryptography Advisor.

Quote
We are excited to announce that Tim Ruffing has joined Zcoin as a Cryptography Advisor.

Tim is a cryptographer and blockchain researcher pursuing his PhD in computer science at Saarland University in Germany and has contributed substantially to the field of privacy enhancing technologies in cryptocurrencies. Some of his notable works are CoinShuffle and ValueShuffle that were proposals to add privacy to Bitcoin in a decentralized manner.

Tim’s research areas in cryptocurrencies and privacy enhancing technologies are particularly relevant to Zcoin’s core technologies such as Zerocoin and the upcoming Sigma protocol and we are confident that his input will assist us in implementing strong and sound cryptography in Zcoin. Welcome Tim!
https://zcoin.io/tim-ruffing-joins-zcoin-as-a-cryptography-advisor/

zcoinofficial

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Coinomi mobile wallet adds Zcoin (XZC) Support

Coinomi a free, secure open source wallet has added Zcoin (XZC) support. Coinomi is an excellent way to hold your Zcoins given that it uses recovery seeds and you are in control of your own private keys. It is also a light wallet meaning you don't have to wait for any syncing and is an easy way to get started with Zcoin.

Coinomi is currently only available for Android for the moment but an IOS option and a desktop wallet is coming soon.

You can grab it from the Android Playstore or directly from their website.








mia

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  • Very Interesting but unfotunately too much information i missed.

    zcoinofficial

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    MTP with final specifications on Testnet

    MTP is now set to go live at block 47,500 which is in about 1.5 months' time.

    Miner bounty program with a total of USD 21,000 will be awarded to the best open source miners for CPU and GPU. If you are interested, please drop by our Slack and join the #minerdevcompetition channel.

    Those who are interested in participating in the test and wallet mining on the testnet can use the pre-release version (Windows version coming soon). Reference CPU and GPU miners will be released in a few days.

    Full blog post.

    zcoinofficial

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    Interview with Tadhg Riordan on Zcoin's Ethereum Mixer.

    zcoinofficial

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    We are happy to announce that Litebit.eu, Coinex.ir and Coinexchange.io has listed Zcoin! Thank you to our community for making this possible.

    zcoinofficial

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    MTP Open-source Miner Bounty Challenge

    We are sponsoring a prize fund of USD 21,000 for the development of open source miners for the upcoming MTP protocol as implemented in Zcoin. There are three categories for the miner bounty: CPU miner, AMD GPU miner, and nVidia GPU miner.

    The prizes shall be paid in Bitcoin equivalent (Bitstamp pricing) or Zcoin equivalent (Bittrex pricing) at the respective winner’s choice. The price will be determined on the time and date the winners are announced.

    Eligibility
    Anyone who can speak English and has reached the age of majority in their country of residence. Teams can be formed however one person shall be designated as the contact person and shall be the sole recipient of any prize money. All contestants must have a Github account.

    Deadline: 9 August 2017 6.00PM GMT+8

    For requirements, criteria and technical details, visit the bounty challenge blog post.
    « Last Edit: July 12, 2017, 12:25:00 PM by zcoinofficial »

    zcoinofficial

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    Interview with Tadhg Riordan on Zcoin's Ethereum Mixer.

    We have added two new interview videos to the playlist. You can follow the link above or view them individually here:

    Zcoin's ZEth: Implementing Zerocoin on Eth
    https://youtu.be/nS1A3VdJFmM

    Zcoin's ZEth: Optimizing Zerocoin further for ZEth
    https://youtu.be/8eVk7QKxtLg

    zcoinofficial

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    A quick dev update:

    Aizensou's Bitcoin Core upgrade to 0.13 is progressing smoothly. Still on track to complete by end of the month. Fingers crossed. Took a bit longer than originally foreseen due to one of the functions used by the Zerocoin code being deprecated in 0.13.

    Adapted Bitcoin paper wallet generator for Zcoin. To be released soon.

    MTP debate and analysis still ongoing. Poramin to release one more minor patch. Looking into extension of miner bounty competition deadline. For the moment still aiming to go on mainnet at Block 47500.

    Reference GPU miner development taking longer than expected. This is because of the proof size being put in the header being large that's causing some issues with adapting existing miner code. djm34 believes he knows how to work around this now.

    Tim Ruffing has completed a bunch of fixes to libzerocoin. Will integrate and publish them during core upgrade period. Tim Ruffing beginning benchmark work on Sigma to explore performance times as compared to Zerocoin.

    Riordant has commenced work into coding for Ethereum mixer. Previous efforts were into examining/calculating the gas costs for the various functions and optimizations that can be done to reduce gas costs.

    zcoinofficial

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    We are happy to announce that Torphop Korgtadam has been appointed to be a consultant for Zcoin in IT Security matters.

    Torphop Korgtadam is Co-Founder of Creden and MHCON (Meet the Hackers). He has experience in the banking industry and has been appointed as Global Subject Matter Experts (GSME) for Cyber Security, End-Point Security, and Web Application Security. He consults and advises on matters in relation to IT audit and control and the management strategy of internal audits.

    https://zcoin.io/team/
    « Last Edit: July 17, 2017, 07:26:07 PM by zcoinofficial »

    zcoinofficial

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    Quick Development Updates

    From our testing, Zcoin's updated Bitcoin core 0.13 sync speed from scratch is about 6 hours which is a huge improvement. Testing Zerocoin functions at the moment.

    Dev team decided that despite the benefits of 0.13, MTP migration will happen first before core upgrade improvements are deployed. The same goes with our libzerocoin upgrades and fixes. This is because MTP has a totally new block header structure so migration from the old block header structure needs some planning and we want to make sure that happens smoothly first before deploying too many fundamental changes especially one as big as Bitcoin core and libzerocoin. Migration to 0.13 will then open the way for deployment of Znodes.

    Final MTP patch is in place. Will announce separate MTP bounty (not the same as a MTP miner dev competition) in the next few days to encourage scrutiny into MTP.

     

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