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Comment by elif | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but proof that (Beyond the 10% pre-mine) more ZEC are not being secretly generated for the creators relies upon trust in a cabal of six individuals based upon a "public" exhibition of genesis involving theatrical destruction of computers (whose video was supposed to be published but I can't find?)

Even if they are 100% legitimate actors, the lack of absolute proof undermines the provenance. From my perspective, Zcash is technically a Fiat currency without the clout of a state backer.

I'm sticking to bitcoin and ethereum :)

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> whose video was supposed to be published but I can't find?

Keep in mind that while videos of the destruction are entertaining - and and possibly useful for education and peer review - they prove nothing. You shouldn't trust Zcash significantly less because they haven't been released yet - if that'd make you trust Zcash more, you're probably not thinking carefully about how fundamentally based on trust the whole process was. I'm one of those six individuals, and the simple fact is it would have been trivial for me collude with the other five to backdoor the process undetectably; if we did that you would never know. End of story. (and sorry, but the video footage of the ceremony that some stations apparently kept doesn't change that either)

Also remember that everyone ran the exact same software - a bootage DVD image - and that software was produced by one guy the day prior to the ceremony. I hear Andrew Miller successfully reproduced the build of that DVD image, but there's a lot more independent auditing work that needs to be done on that software. Until that work is done by multiple independent people, the entire multi-party aspect of the ceremony is just a bunch of crypto hocus pocus that means nothing.

One of the six is Peter Todd. Bitcoin expert and Zcash skeptic. He posted about his participation here: https://petertodd.org/2016/cypherpunk-desert-bus-zcash-trust...

The trusted setup only requires one person to not collude. Given how skeptical Peter Todd has been about this entire business, I'd be t that at the very minimum he was honest in his role.

As someone entirely unfamiliar, why only six? If the weakness is all of them colluding, then wouldn't adding anybody in the world (let's say, me) as a seventh make it strictly better?

> why only six

The protocol is expensive; it took 2 days with 6 people. After a certain point, it's not practical to add more participants without increasing risk. It requires gigabytes worth of communication per participant and many millions of curve operations.

>I'm sticking to bitcoin and ethereum

You don't trust ZCash but you trust Ethereum? The coin that's had it's network hard forked and invalidated... what 4 times now?

Actually the fork is when I diversified from only bitcoin. It gives me more confidence than the perpetual ideological wanking behind the btc size bump. I don't usually take a fundamentalist perspective, especially when it requires siding with thieves who stole enough to become an existential threat to the currency.

Bounded rationality.

What would you have done differently to solve the same problem they did?

If I could come up with something better, they would have done that. Absence of a better solution does not imply any fitness of the proposed solution. Until such time that someone comes up with a better idea, I am sticking to public blockchains.

> If I could come up with something better, they would have done that.

Don't give up so easily! If you're going to make a stance borne out of principle, why not follow through to outperform the suboptimal solution that you dislike so much?

Innovate. Put some skin in the game. That's what I would do, anyway.

As it stands: If any of the folks involved in the trusted setup was honest, then it's secure. It takes a 100% corruption to make it insecure. I think that's acceptable until a better solution is proposed.

Why such a small group of people though?

ewillbefull explains in another comment that the protocol is really expensive per participant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12979677

Then rushing the launch in the absence of a superior MPC protocol is just a bad idea.

Except that they had to rush the launch because they're a for-profit, centralised company, with investors that are demanding return on their investment. Thus they went with a shoddy, half-baked attempt at a trusted setup, with a whole lot of hand-waving to make it seem like it was done securely.

I don't have access to the answer to that question. I wasn't involved at all.

Have you heard of Monero?

> Beyond the 10% pre-mine

It's 20% for the next few years, not 10%

2.1 million total for the Founder's Reward out of 21 million total that will ever be minted = 10%

That's why I said "for the next few years"

I know, but you're both talking about different things.

It may be 20% for the next few years, but it's also 10% overall. You're both right, why even try to nitpick over these details or correct anyone?

Since this is an investment we're talking about, I think we should strongly lean towards the interpretation of the facts that more conservative rather than less; 20% vs. 10% is a big difference to Zcash as an investment for the first few years, which could easily be longer than the lifespan of the currency.

That's a fair point, and I don't really disagree with your priority here now that it's spelled out. I just think that people would be better served with both facts simultaneously rather than demanding one at a time.

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