Firo (formerly Zcoin) - Reading Assignment

Privacy Coins - Ultimate Course
#41
  1. Matthew Green as a professor at Johns Hopkins become a mentor and coach to Poramin Insom as he worked on his Master of Security Informatics paper. He helped Poramin when he was stuck on RSA UFOs.
  2. The solution 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, 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. It is not a direct implementation due to performance issues.
  4. The Vertcoin community did not like the idea and he couldn’t ensure funding of the project.
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#42

1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
He was the faculty mentor Poramin Insom, Zcoin’s lead developer and founder, and assisted him with some RSA UFOs when he was stuck.

2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
His idea was to mitigate 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 it was not - Performance is the main problem in the Zerocoin protocol. When Poramin tried to follow the Zerocoin paper exactly as it was stated in the paper, he found it really slow and there were tons of performance issues.

4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
The Vertcoin community did not like the idea, and Zerovert also had major performance issues.

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#43

  • What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
    He was one of the original investors in zerocoin on which zcoin builds.

  • What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    He used the parameters in the RSA factoring challange so that it would be clear that the keys were destroyed.

  • Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    No there were too many performance issues.

  • Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    He couldnt opensource it as he wanted investors onboard, if the tech was opensource then the valu proposition would have been much smaller.

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#44

  1. Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin is he was one of the inventors of the protocol.

  2. Poramins’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem 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.

  3. Zcoin is not direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper because there was too many performance issues and it was too slow.

  4. Poramins abandoned Zerovert for Zerocoin because he first attempted to integrate the Zerocoin protocol into an actual cryptocurrency, he wanted to tie it with Vertcoin via merged mining. but the Vertcoin community did not like the idea. At the same time, as he had put in a lot of effort in making it the first cryptocurrency to implement Zcoin without any ICO, he could not opensource it until he could be ensured that his work was rewarded. Without investors this was impossible.

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#45

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
    Involved in the creation of Zerocoin Protocol

  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    Used RSA in the trusted setup parameter picking

  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    No, because the contact he had was unresponsive and he hit performance issues.

  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    the Vertcoin community did not like the idea of merged mining. - Also he did not get rewarded for his efforts.

#46
  1. He was one of the inventors of the Zercoin protocol.
  2. He used the RSA factoring challenge.
  3. No, direct implementation had performance issues and was very 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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#47
  1. Matthew Green designed the Zerocoin protocol which inspired and is used in Zcoin.
  2. Poramin’s 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.
  3. No, it’s not because of the performance issues and it was too slow.
  4. Poramin wanted to integrate Zerocoin protocol Into Vertcoin via merged mining, but the Vertcoin community didn’t like the idea & he had no investors so he discontinued the project.
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#48

1: Mathew Green was the inventor of Zerocoin Protocol and a supervisor of Poramin
2: Using a third party to ensure destruction of P and Q preventing creation of fake coins
3: No > Many performance issues made it unusable slow speed being one issue
4: Lack of funding ,lack ou support From Verticoin community family and Thai food

#49

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
    Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol

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

his dea 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, 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.

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

When I 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

  1. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    there is alot of reason for this which was stated in this paragraph :As you can see, even with my first attempt to integrate the Zerocoin protocol into an actual cryptocurrency, I wanted to tie it with Vertcoin via merged mining. but the Vertcoin community did not like the idea. At the same time, as I had put in a lot of effort in making it the first cryptocurrency to implement Zcoin without any ICO, I could not opensource it until I could be ensured that my work was rewarded. Without investors this was impossible. This was why I had discontinued the project at that point.
#50

What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?

Matthew Greens was one of the inventors of the ZeroCoin Protocols.

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

To quote the Article “My 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, had a sizable 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”

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

Zcoin is not a direct implementation of the protocol. the reason stated, was that performance was the main problem in zerocoin protocol. he tried to follow the paper exactly, but he found it very slow and there were tons of performance issues.

Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?

Zerovert was abandoned because he wanted to tie it into vertcoin via merged mining, but the community did not like his idea. Also he put in a lot of work into trying to make it the 1st cryptocurrency to implement Zcoin without any ICO. He couldn’t open source the project until he could be insured he was going to be rewarded for his work. without investors it was impossible.

#51
  1. Matthew had some recommendations on RSA UFOs.
  2. He mitigated that risk to a third-party by choosing parameters from RSA Factoring Challenge. This challenge was an effort to learn about actual difficulty of factoring large numbers. Factoring a composite number means finding all its prime factors. That composite number (665) can be written as a product of primes (5, 7, 19). It was found that factoring 100-digits numbers is easy with today’s hardware and algorithms, but there were no successful effort of factoring 200-digits numbers.
    As it is written on RSA Laboratories FAQ: “The RSA challenge numbers were generated using a secure process that guarantees that the factors of each number cannot be obtained by any method other than factoring the published value. No one, not even RSA Laboratories, knows the factors of any of the challenge numbers.” (https://web.archive.org/web/20130921043454/http://www.emc.com/emc-plus/rsa-labs/historical/the-rsa-factoring-challenge-faq.htm)
  3. No. When Poramin tried to implement the protocol the way it was described in the white paper he found out that this implementation was really slow in performance.
  4. As I understood there were 2 reasons: 1) community of Vertcoin did not want these changes introduced; 2) Poramin wanted to be rewarded for his work and did not want to open source his work until he is compensated.
#52
  1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors of Zerocoin protocol which is used by Zcoin.
  2. Poramn’s solution to the trusted set up problem was to use the RSA factoring challenge. RSA issued a challenge to find the two prime number factors when given only their product as a starting point. This purpose of this challenge was to track progress in integer factorization which is important to consider when developing the key length of cryptographic keys. The RSA computers used were not connected to any network and the hard drives subsequently destroyed so that there was no record anywhere of the solution. In the article he says the risk was mitigated, but it might be more accurate to say the risk was transfered.
  3. Poramin did not use the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper due to performance issues.
  4. Poramin originally wanted to tie Zerocoin with Vercoin via merged mining however, the Vercoin community was not open to the idea. He also was not able to get funding.
#53
  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?He was one of the inventors
  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem? He used the RSA factoring challenge as the trusted parameter
  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not? No it is not; because it is slow and not secure.
  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
  5. Because there was no funding for Zerovert opposed to ZeroCoin.
#54
  1. He was a mentor to Zcoins lead developer.
  2. He choose to pick the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge and took special care to destroy the keys.
  3. No, Zerocoin had performance issues.
  4. Lack of support for the project.
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#55
  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
  • Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol. His Zcoin involvement was indirect because the invention of Zerocoin inspired the creation of Zcoin.
  1. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
  • My 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, 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.
  1. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
  • Zcoin uses the Zerocoin protocol which is considered proven technology.
  1. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
  • He wanted to tie it with Vertcoin via merged mining. but the Vertcoin community did not like the idea and he had no investment to back his idea.
#56
  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)? Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol. Poramin worked under Green’s supervision at John Hopkin’s university.
  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem? The trusted setup problem was mitigated with RSA while awaiting a better trustless setup solution.
  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not? Zcoin was not a direct white paper implementation as Zcoin improved on Zerocoin’s protocol with Zcoin’s greater anonymity and usability and being based on Bitcoin’s core code, it was easier to integrate and utilize Bitcoin’s ecosystem and code development.
  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin? Poramin’s first attempt to integrate Zerocoin’s protocol into a cryptocurrency involved shared mining between Zerocoin and ZeroVert with merged mining. Vertcoin’s community did not like the idea. Because there were no investors, he did not want to open source the project without some sort of financial reward for his work and discontinued the project at that point.
#57

1 he was one of the inventors of Zerocoin protocol

2 RSA factoring challenge

3 No. Too many performance issues

4 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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#58

What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
He was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin Protocol which Zcoin uses

What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
RSA factoring challenge

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

Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
Because of lack of support from the Vertcoin community and from unsufficient funding

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#59
  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)? Zcoin uses the Zerocoin protocol. It was Matthew Green’s invention of Zerocoin protocol.
  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem? By picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge which took special care to destroy the key’s p and q.
  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not? Yes, Zcoin uses the Zerocoin protocol which is considered proven technology. It was examined by many renowned cryptographers in the world and while there are many other anonymity coins that claim to be secure, such claims were not backed by academic or peer reviews or are less well peer reviewed compared with the Zerocoin protocol.
    But Zerocoin protocol has drawbacks in term of proof space, but at the current stage, storing space is not much problem for users. Trusted setup phase also can be seen as a drawback, but we have already mitigated that risk to RSA while awaiting a trustless setup solution.
  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin? He wanted to open source it to ensure his work was rewarded, but because without investors this was impossible. This was why he had discontinued the project at that point.
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#60

Its not a direct implementation, Zerocoin had some performance issues. :slight_smile:

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