Firo (formerly Zcoin) - Reading Assignment

Privacy Coins - Ultimate Course
#101
  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?

He mentored Poramin Insom and suggested using RSA UFO’s. He was also an investor.

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

By picking the parameter in the RSA factoring challenge making sure the keys were destroyed and putting out a large bounty to try to break it.

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

No, when he tried to follow the paper when implementing it he found it to be slow and there were performance issues.

  1. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?

He was unable to find investors so he’d be rewarded for his work. Also the Vertcoin community didn’t like his idea of implementing Zerocoin and merged mining.

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#102

  1. He is one of the inventors of Zerocoin, and Zcoin is based on Zerocoin.

  2. From 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 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, since Zerocoin has several performance issues.

  4. Zerovert was abandoned due to lack of funds.

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#103

  1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol and helped Poramin with the development of Zcoin by providing recommendations to use RSA UFOs, to generate trusted parameters.

  2. RSA UFOs had several drawbacks and some issues with its implementation. So, instead, Poramin picked the parameters used in the RSA factoring challenge to mitigate the risk of relying on trusted parties.

  3. Zcoin is not a direct implementation of the Zerocoin protocol because due to its performance drawbacks. It includes a lack of proof space and the need for a trusted setup.

  4. The Zerovert project was discontinued due to rejection from the Vertcoin community, unable to opensource until rewards were ensured, and lack of funding from investors.

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#104

  1. Matthew Green was one of the inventors ZeroCoin.

  2. RSA factoring challenge.

  3. No, direct implementation had perfomance issued and was very slow.

  4. Vertcoin community was not supportive and there weren’t investors.

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#105

  1. “Matthew Green was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol”

“Poramin Insom, Zcoin’s lead developer and founder”

Zcoin is an implementation of Zerocoin, hence the connection.

  1. 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 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”

This solution was chosen over RSA UFOs. Here’s what Poramin had to say about the neglected alternative:

"…I ran into issues while implementing it and saw several drawbacks. The author of the RSA-UFO paper was also at the time uncommunicative. Of course I could generate my own RSA parameters but this would raise endless questions about whether the p and q were destroyed which would have allowed forged Zerocoin spends. "

  1. Reading between the lines - but not the code! - it seems that Zcoin is not a direct implementation of the Zerocoin protocol. Poramin says the initial Zerocoin implementation was “really slow and there were tons of performance issues”.

  2. He abandoned Zerovert for Zerocoin because he “wanted to tie it [Zerovert] with Vertcoin via merged mining. but the Vertcoin community did not like the idea”. He also put in a lot of effort into implementing Zcoin “without any ICO”, and wanted to make sure he was rewarded for his efforts in Zerovert despite no initial backing, so without any investors in Zerovert he could not open its source code and had to discontinue the project instead.

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#106
  1. He was the profesor and investior of Zerocoin protocol and that inspired Zcoin.

2.By using RSA factoring challange , where keys are destroyed.

  1. no it is nt, too many performance issues and too slow.

  2. The community wasnt supportive

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#107

Zcoin - Reading Assignment.

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

  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    The 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?
    Yes.
    It’s seem to have similar performance issue as Zerocoin have.

  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    He didn’t have enough funding and the community was also not interested in his idea to integrate the Zerocoin protocol by tie it with Vertcoin via merged mining.

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#108

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
    A= He was Poramin’s Faculty mentor.
    Q: How was it like having Matthew Green as your faculty mentor?
    To be honest, I rarely had the opportunity to talk to him due to his research, teaching and speaking. He did however had some recommendations on RSA UFOs when I was stuck at that point.

  2. 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 "

  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    " Performance is the main problem in the Zerocoin protocol. 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. If you think the initial load of the Zcoin wallet is slow now, you should have seen Zerovert (my first attempt at implementing Zerocoin). "

  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    " 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. "

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#109

  1. He was one of the investors

  2. RSA factoring challenge

  3. Nope, performance issues

  4. The Vertcoin community did not like the idea

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#110
  1. Matthew Green was Poramin’s Faculty mentor
  2. They mitigated the risk to RSA factoring challenge
  3. No, The Zerocoins implementation according to the whitepaper had too many performance issues
  4. He had no investors for zerovert.
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#111
  1. He was one of the inventors of the Zercoin protocol.
  2. He picked the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge.
  3. No because its performance issues were too slow.
  4. The Vertcoin community was not supportive, and there were no investors.
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#112
  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

. He invented the underlying protocol.

. He used an established technology… the RSA challenge.

. No. During implementation performance issues were discovered. Too much computation was required.

. Mostly due to lack of funding. Without investors, ICO or any other way to get some money, development could not be pursued.

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#113
  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)? — Not much, but he invented Zerocoin, simply supervised Zcoin development by Paramin, and his original work with Zerocoin inspired Zcoin
  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem? — Mitigate risk to third party by picking parameter used in RSA factoring challenge which took special care to destroy keys
  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not? No, due to performance issues
  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin? Due to the community not liking the idea of tying with Vertcoin via merged mining, as well as obligation to investors without help of an ICO
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#114

  1. Matthew was one of the inventors of the Zerocoin protocol and inspired to improve it with Zcoin.

  2. 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

    1. 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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#115

1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
He helped Poramin on occasional technical issues, such as the RSA UFO implementation.
2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
RSA UFOs. He basically outsourced the security to RSA to act as the trusted party.
3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
Zcoin uses the Zerocoin protocol, but with some performance tweaks.
4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
Vertcoin wasn’t interested, and he didn’t have any investors.

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#116

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
    Helped with the RSA UFO execution.

  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    To use RSA UFO’s however no such progress was made due to lack of communication from the author.
    His idea was to pick the parameter used in the RSA factoring challenge which took special care in destroying the keys.

  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    No, due to performance reasons

  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    didn’t have the community backing

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#117

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)? Zcoin is based on Zerocoin protocol which was created y Matthew Green. Zcoin is intended to focus on anonymity and privacy for bit coin.

  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem? The solution was to use RSA Factoring challenge to use as the trusted parameter.

  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not? Yes, Zcoin is built on the zerocoin protocol.

  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin? There were more investors that allowed for the continued development of zerocoin.

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#118

Not really, as stated in the interview, the original protocol had bad performance. :slight_smile:

#119
  1. He served as a mentor for the creator of Zcoin.
  2. He decided to use the RSA factoring that would destroy the keys.
  3. No, because it was too slow and overall had too many problems.
    4.The Vertcoin community did not want to merge with Zerovert, so Zerocoin allowed for better implementation of Zcoin.
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#120

  1. What was Matthew Green’s involvement in Zcoin (not Zerocoin)?
    Matthew Green mentored Poramin and suggested using RSA UFO’s. He was also an investor.

  2. What was Poramin’s solution to the ‘trusted setup’ problem?
    By picking the parameter in the RSA factoring challenge making sure the keys were destroyed and putting out a large bounty to try to break it.

  3. Is Zcoin direct implementation of the protocol described in the Zerocoin whitepaper? Why / why not?
    Poramin says the initial Zerocoin implementation was really slow and there were tons of performance issues

  4. Why did he abandon Zerovert for Zerocoin?
    The Vertcoin community did not want to merge with Zerovert, so Zerocoin allowed for better implementation of Zcoin.

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