Bytecoin is a ground up rewrite (for better or worse) blockchain cryptocurrency which uses a pretty boring schnorr-like ring signature in an _very_ clever way to achieve strong privacy. The ring signature its using has been peer reviewed, though the partial uncloaking technique they use to prevent double spending is a novel application.
(And come on, I'm not usually one to lean on authority— but you ought to believe /me/ when I say it's not copying Bitcoin and that it's doing something very useful and interesting for cryptographic privacy)
The privacy achieved by Bytecoin is better than any existing-in-production privacy tools (e.g. CoinJoin) and also as good as or better than every theoretical system I've heard proposed except for Zerocash. Relative to ZeroCash, Bytecoin exists today and has simpler cryptographic assumptions, better performance for signers, and no requirement for trusted initialization. Because it doesn't mask values its anonymity set is potentially smaller, though the implementation does some clever denomination tricks to reduce the harm of value transparency.
The reason I included a hyperlink instead of just speaking comparatively was so that you wouldn't have to suffer from any confusion on the matter. :)
Kinda sad that with all the worthless clonecoin and whitepapercoin pumping people are missing the few bits of real innovation that are getting created, enh? Don't you agree, sir_doge_alot? :P
> See here for proof of calling out curve225519 vs scrypt http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=curve25519%2C%20scryp.... (when scrypt isn't even really an improvement upon bitcoin).
I have no idea why you're comparing an elliptic curve group with a crappy proof of work algorithm, so here is a bunny with a pancake on its head: http://www.upsidedownguild.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/pa...