CMV: XMR + view-keys = ZEC

@bulletbill22
On the one hand, xmr and zec are leagues apart. Only xmr has asic resistant mining which protects us from regulation whereas large asic miners are vulnerable to regulation because they're big business with an industrial footprint. The xmr markets are driven by actual demand for privacy in high stakes spaces whereas the zec markets appear driven by contrived corporate interest and therefore the risk is much less quantifiable unless you are a corporate insider. You can actually buy weed with xmr.

On the other hand, yes optional transparency is a possible risk to fungibility in the long term. I've had this argument many times and nobody has managed to disprove this. I personally don't think this will be a problem because the traditional meta was never to hoard xmr. We use it to make a private transaction, and save in something else, probably btc or gold or acupuncture shops.

Obviously this is an xmr forum so nobody is gonna defend zec; have a look at their forums and decide for yourself. Don't be tempted to pick a tribe.

Coin with mandatory privacy: paper cash.

@bulletbill22 zec is super cringe

So Monero has always been the same as Zcash forever then

@xmr_is_goated Wrong.

@bulletbill22 Delusional.

@bulletbill22 >frame it as optional transparency, if you prefer

No, I'm not gonna "frame it" this way, this is how it is and framing it any other way is wrong.

You always have had optional transparency. You can post screenshots or screen recordings of your wallet activity. Private by default with optional transparency is not going to compromise a good privacy tool.

A bad privacy tool, like ZCash or Telegram, is transparent by default and then allows making it private(let's not debate whether they actually are, it's just an example). This is problematic because the default behavior is always going to be the most popular one. I bet very few people use secret chats on Telegram and we know only 30% of Zcash is shielded(last i heard).

SimpleX, on the contrary, a fantastic private messenger, is super private by default. SimpleX understands the importance of defaults and their power in affecting user behavior when using their app. It doesn't make it a less private messenger because you can export your chats and send them to the feds or post them online. Because that's not the default behavior.

Defaults are what matter, not optional features that change the default. The view key update will not harm Monero's privacy because it doesn't change the default behaviors, it just gives the users more choice.

@Stylus1063
Defaults are malleable because they depend on the UI. The common scenario presented by opponents of OVK is a CEX that allows xmr withdrawals only if the user inputs their private view keys. This could be framed in some positive way and incentivized by convenience or some other nudge. Consequently, the protocol default is not the same as the default actually experienced by users. I wouldn't want to guess at how realistic this is or anything like that, but its surely a real possibility.

Also this does actually represent a significant change because an OVK provides full cryptographic proof of accounts at all times whereas screen recordings can be hacked. To cryptographically prove your full accounts at the moment you would have to provide IVK and all key images to prove an upper bound on your wallets funds, and use proof of reserves to prove the lower bound. This is still much weaker because it is a proof of reserves applies to a moment in time, or a single block; it does not guarantee that the funds were not spent on the very next block! So love em or hate em, the fact remains that OVKs provide a much stronger onchain optional transparency than was ever possible before.

@Nebuchadnezzar_II You make good points but even if every CEX starts doing the worst case scenario, it's still not even close to the same as the optional privacy of ZCash.

@Stylus1063 That's right

This would be a threat to a few unscrupulous valuable targets, not to the monetary value of the coin. Its more tolerable than poison outputs and doesn't make the system so watertight as to waste an opportunity. That's how I'm starting to see it anyway.

@Stylus1063

As soon as it becomes the default (or legally mandated) to transact with your view-key, the default is transparent and the option is privacy. You're just too myopic to see that inevitability.