Firo (formerly Zcoin) - Reading Assignment

[MarcisB]

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

• He was the mentor of Poramin Insom, the founder of Zcoin. At that time, Poramin didn’t work on Zcoin yet, but the education must have led to how Zcoin was developed later.

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

• He chose a third party to handle it. The offered incentive, according to Poramin, was enough so that there was no point to compromise the setup.

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

• No, because it was slow and had also other issues (he doesn’t specify).

4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?

• Zerovert would mean merge-mining Zerocoin with Vertcoin, but the Vertcoin community didn’t like it.
• Poramin wanted to implement Zcoin without ICO, and didn’t want to open-source until his work would be rewarded. That didn’t happen at the time.

[Ongdanhchet]

1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol, which Zcoin uses.

2. Poramin’s solution to the trusted setup problem was the RSA factoring challenge.

3. Zcoin is not a direct implementation of the protocol described in the whitepaper because it was very slow and there were lots of performance issues.

4. He abandoned Zerovert for Zerocoin because the Vertcoin community didn’t want to merge-mine with Zerocoin. Poramin also put a lot of hard work into making it the first cryptocurrency to implement Zcoin without an ICO, so he didn’t want to make it open source until his work was rewarded.

[matty.t]

1. Matthew Green’s was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol which inspired him to create Zcoin.

2. He initially chosed RSA UFO’s but had issues. Therefore he decided to mitigate the risk to a third party by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge which destroyed the keys.

3. No, because the main problem of the Zerocoin protocol was performance issues and it was slow.

4. The Vertcoin community did not like the idea, no investors as he wanted to be awarded for his work and it was slow.

[linlin00]

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

3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
No, they used to follow exactly the implementation of Zerocoin as it was described in the paper, but when they did that they were facing a lot of performance problems.

4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
Because of a lack of money.

[Alko89]

You missed the first question

@linlin00

Awaiting the trustless setup solution.

His solution was to manually pick the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge and took special care to destroy the keys.

@linlin00

Because of a lack of money.

It was actually a lack of support for the project

[looperdave]

Paramin Insom, a Thai developer who studied at John’s Hopkins University, who became interested in the zerocoin whitepaper and set out to create a cryptocurrency from it. His first project was zerovert, which was difficult to perfect for implementation, He then got interstd in ZCOIN, of who a professor mentor of his, Matt Green, was an investor. The main issue with the zerocoin coding seemed to be with high bloat creating future storage issues and slow transactions. A coding issue revolving around the need for a trusted setup for the accumulator pool for valid spends became a major roadblock. Seeking to solve this he found a way to use RSA with a new type of factoring challenge that would burn the keys to the main acculutaor, thereby prevent fake or double spends. With ZCoin, the code was a direct implementation of Zerocoin protocol because it was proven tech that had been highly audited and was well understood. Zerovert now sits on the sidelines, as Insom has obligations to investors at Zerocoin, and there will be much work to be done if he chooses to delve back into developing the code.

[mr_nv]

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

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

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

He used the RSA factoring challenge

3. 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.

4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?

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

[Emmerich]

1. He was the mentor of Poramin Insom, Zcoin’s lead developer and founder.

2. Initially RSA UFO, but this created problems during implementation and no help was offered by the original author. Then he considered writing his own RSA, but that would have caused a lot of drama concerning the destruction of the p and q (two large prime factors), which if abused can create spend transactions without their corresponding mint transactions - this would have to be trusted. Eventually he settled on something called the “RSA factoring challenge” which is a third party that takes great care in destroying these keys - I’m assuming they are refering to the p and q keys?

3. No, it was too slow and there were performance issues.

4. He had no money (no investors).

[Alko89]

@Emmerich

I’m assuming they are refering to the p and q keys?

Its a private/public keypair used when bootstraping the system.

[Petr_Krulis]

1. he was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol which contributed to inspire the development of ZCoin.
   2.idea was to mitigate this risk to a third party by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge
   3.it is not, he abandon it for performance issues and was very slow.
   4.z vertcoin community didnt like the ida of merging with zerovert therefore there was no support nor funding.

[Olivier]

1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol and as Poramin’s teacher he gave some recommendation on his work.

2. His idea was to mitigate this risk to a third party by picking the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge.

3. Yes because the Zerocoin protocol is considered a proven technology.

4. Lack of funding and a lack of support from the Vertcoin community.

[JRSmith88]

1. he was one of the inventors of zerocoin protocol. Poramin worked under his supervision at John Hopkins University.

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 organisation that strongly valued privacy, even exposing the government’s attempts to install the Clipper chip.

3. no, because of too many performance issues

4. his first attempt of integration involved shared mining between zerovert and zerocoin. the vertcoin community did not support it. investors were needed for funding.

[enrico]

1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
   one of zerocoin which is the protocol that zcoin uses

2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
   he used rsa parameters

3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
   no, the original had a lot of performances issues

4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
   no sufficient funding and no consensus with the community

[leemac]

1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol. Zcoin is an implementation of the protocol by Poramin Insom. Matthew Green was also Poramin Insom’s supervisor.

2. Poramin’s solution was to use RSA factoring challenge

3. Zcoin is not an exact implementation of the Zerocoin whitepaper due to performance issues

4. He wanted to tie it with Vertcoin via merged mining but the Vertcoin community did not agree and he didn’t have funding

[Ross-mathews]

1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol witch inspired the development of ZCoin.
2. Poramin’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.
3. No it isnt as there were performance issues ans was too slow.
4. He abandoned Zerovert for Zerocoin as there wasnt enough support from the community therfore lack of investment.

[philibiza]

1.) What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
Matthew Green was Poramins mentor at faculty and one of the investors of Zerocoin protocol which contributed to inspire the development of ZCoin.

2.) What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
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, 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 is not, when trying to follow the paper exactly he ran into performance issues.

4.) Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
The Vertcoin community did not liked his idea to integreate the Zerocoin protocol into an actual cryptocurrency. At the same time, he put a lot of effort in making first cryptocurrency to implement Zcoin without any ICO. Without investors this was impossible. This was why he had discontinued the project at that point.

[BERGLUND]

1 MG was one of the minds behind Zerocoin, the technological idea behind Zcoin.
2 PI’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, had a sizeable bounty to break.
3 No, one of the issues with the original implementation was a very slow wallet.
4 PI wanted to tie Zerocoin to Verycoin by merged mining, but the Vertcoin community did not approve. PI also wanted do benefit from being the one who was the first to implement the protocol without any ICO.

[Obi]

1.)
Matthew Green was Poramin Insom Mentor on the John Hopkins University.

2.)
His idea was to mitigate this risk to third parties by choosing the parameter that was used in
the RSA factoring challenge which took special care to destroy the keys.

3.)
Nope, the performance is the main problem in the Zerocoin protocol.
When he 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.)
PI wanted to link the Zercoin protocol to Vertcoin via merged mining without an ICO.
But the Community didn’t like the idea and it wasn’t also possible either without investors.
For this reason he had stopped the project at that time.

[carolb]

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

2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
   A) RSA Factor.

3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
   A) No. There was performance issues. Implementation too slow.

4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
   A) Insufficient funding. No ICO and lack of support from the Vertcoin community.

[massam78]

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.