Firo (formerly Zcoin) - Reading Assignment

Privacy Coins - Ultimate Course
#1

Read an interview with the founder original lead developer of Zcoin. Answer the questions and post your answers below:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191106140112/https://zcoin.io/interview-poramin-insom-zcoins-lead-developer-founder/

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
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#2
  1. He was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol which contributed to inspire the development of ZCoin.
  2. He decided to avoid using RFA UFOs and mitigate the risk of forged ZCoin spending by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge, which keys were destroyed.
  3. No it is not, because there were too many performance issues and it was too slow.
  4. Vertcoin community was not supportive and Poramin needed to be sure that his work would have been rewarded once the project went live, but it was not possible without investors.
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#3
  1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol witch inspired the development of ZCoin.

2.His idea was to mitigate this risk to a third party by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge which took special care to destroy the keys.

  1. No its not because of the performance issues and it was too slow.

4.He wanted to integrate the Zerocoin protocol into an actual cryptocurrency, and he wanted to tie it with Vertcoin via merged mining. but the Vertcoin community did not like the idea. Without investors this was impossible. This was why I had discontinued the project at that point.

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#4
  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin?

He was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin Protocol which Zcoin uses.

  1. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?

He used the RSA factoring challenge

  1. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?

No it is not, when trying to follow the paper exactly he ran into performance issues.

  1. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?

The Vertcoin community did not like the idea of tieing Zerovert with Vertcoin. Lack of funding

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#5

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin?
    He was one of the inventors of the Zercoin protocol.

  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    He choosed the parameter used in the RSA factoring challange, which took special care to destroy the keys, had a seizable bounty to break it and was done back when the RSA was an organization that strongly valued privacy.

  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    No, direct implementation had perfomance issued and was very slow.

  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    He wanted to tie Zerovert with Vertcoin via merged mining, but the Vertcoin community did not like the idea. Also he wanted to be rewarded for being the first cryptocurrency to implement Zcoin.

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#6
  1. He supervised Poramin
  2. To mitigate this risk to a third party by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge which took special care to destroy the keys, had a sizeable bounty to break it and was done back when the RSA was an organization that strongly valued privacy, even exposing the government’s attempts to install the Clipper chip.
  3. No. Too many performance issues.
  4. He could not opensource it until he could be ensured that his work was rewarded. Without investors this was impossible. This was why he had discontinued the project at that point.
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#7
  1. He was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin Protocol which Zcoin uses.
  2. RSA factoring challenge.
  3. No, performance issues.
  4. Vertcoin community was not supportive. No investors.
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#8

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin?
    He was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol which is used in Coin.

  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    He used a parameter from the RSA factoring challenge. This method took care of destroying private keys.

  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    The Zcoin trusted setup solution was not part of the whitepaper, and the original Zerocoin protocol had performance issues.

  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    He tried to tie the Zerocoin protocol with Vertcoin via merged mining, but the Vertcoin community did not like this idea.

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#9
  1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol
  2. His solution was to mitigate the risk of forged Zerocoin spends to a third party by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge which took special care to destroy the keys, had a sizeable bounty to break it and was done back when the RSA was an organization that strongly valued privacy.
  3. No, because there was too many performance issues.
  4. Because of lack of support from the Vertcoin community and from unsufficient funding.
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#10
  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin?
    • Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol and inspired to improve it with zcoin.
  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    • Mitigating this risk to a third party by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge which:
      • took special care to destroy the keys,
      • had a sizeable bounty to break it
      • and was done back when the RSA was an organization that strongly valued privacy, even exposing the government’s attempts to install the Clipper chip.
  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    • No, due to performance with the implementation as state in the zerocoin paper.
  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    • Due to lack of funding and lack of support by the Vertcoin community for tying in the Zerocoin protocol with Vertcoin through merged mining
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#11
  1. Matthew Green was faculty mentor of the Masters degree of Poramin Insom, then the paper tittle suggestion probably is an own original Matthew Green suggestion at the first place: " paper on how to practically implement Zerocoin in a cryptocurrency using stealth addresses and the RSA factoring challenge" , also “He {Matthew Green} did however had some recommendations on RSA UFOs when I was stuck at that point.”
  2. use of RSA params
  3. No, because it was very slow: “When I {Poramin Insom} tried to follow the Zerocoin paper exactly as it was stated in the paper, I found it really slow and there were tons of performance issues.”
  4. He {Poramin Insom} respected the Vertcoin community opinions: “I wanted to tie it with Vertcoin via merged mining. but the Vertcoin community did not like the idea.”
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#12
  1. he was one of the inventors of zerocoin protocol which came before zcoin
    2.He decided to avoid using RFA UFOs and mitigate the risk of forged ZCoin spending by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge.
    3.no it isn’t. because there were too many performance issues and it was too slow
    4.vertcoin community was not supportive and Poramin nneded to be sure his work would be rewarded
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#13
1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin?

Helped create the Zerocoin protocol.

2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?

To use the RSA Factoring Challenge parameters.

3. Is Zcoin a direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?

No as the vanilla Zerocoin implementation was too slow.

4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?

He wanted to use merge mining to link Zerovert with Vertcoin, but the community was against it. This meant he was unable to fund the development of Zerovert so the project was abandoned.

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#14

  1. He was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin Protocol which Zcoin uses.

  2. He used the RSA factoring challenge

  3. No it is not, when trying to follow the paper exactly he ran into performance issues.

  4. The Vertcoin community did not like the idea of tieing Zerovert with Vertcoin. Lack of funding

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#15
  1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol
  2. He decided to use the RSA factoring challenge as the trusted parameter.
  3. Zcoin is not a direct implementation of Zerocoin because it was too slow to prove and not as secure as he would have liked it.
  4. He was receiving funding for ZCoin, and not for Zerovert.
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#16

  • What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin?
    was the inventor of zerocoin protocol.

  • What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    RSA refactoring challange, that destroy private keys.

  • Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    it wasn’t because of performance speed issues, if the paper would have been followed exactly how in the paper.

  • Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    the Vertcoin community was not supportive, and lacking funding.

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#17

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin?
    He is one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol, which Zcoin is based on. He was also a mentor to Poramin and helped him with recommendations on RSA UFO’s.

  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    His solution was to have this parameter chosen by the RSA factoring challenge, which destroyed the keys, and required a large cost to break. He would like to see a trustless setup and sees this as a temporary solution.

  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    No- direct Zerocoin implementation was too slow.

  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    He didn’t have investors or an ICO, and didn’t want to take the risk of open sourcing before securing a reward. Also, this required a merge mine, which the Vertcoin community did not like.

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#18

  • What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin?
    Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol.

  • What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    He used a parameter from the RSA factoring challenge.

  • Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    The Zcoin trusted setup solution was not part of the whitepaper, and the original Zerocoin protocol had performance issues.

  • Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    Due to lack of funding and lack of support by the Vertcoin community for tying in the Zerocoin protocol with Vertcoin through merged mining

1 Like
#19

1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin?
Matthew Green’s involvement with Zcoin is indirect. Zcoin uses the Zerocoin protocol, and Green was one of the inventors of Zerocoin.

2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem consisted of picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge which “took special care to destroy the keys.”

3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
No, Zcoin is not a direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper because Zcoin transferred the trusted setup phase to RSA (while they await a trustless setup solution).

4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
He abandoned Zerovert for Zerocoin because the Vertcoin community did not like the idea which made funding extremely difficult.

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#20

He was one of the inventors of the zerocoin protocol.

He mitigated the risk to a third party by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge.

No. Poramin had to deviate from the zerocoin protocol to get better performance.

Because of a lack of funding.

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