Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Chain dust mitigation: Demurrage based Chain Vacuuming

From: Alan Reiner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2012 11:29:49 -0500

These are all valid points.  I hadn't really thought much about this point
until you all just brought it up.  The reason I so quickly spout off that
phrase, is that I endlessly get requests from Armory users to implement
more anonymity-based features.  When I say there are bigger priorities,
they suggest that "anonymity" is a core benefit of Bitcoin and I should be
supporting it.  I'm not against anonymity, and I most certainly favor
privacy, but my goal was to produce a versatile client, not one focused on
any one aspect -- there are plenty of people who use it for other reasons
than anonymity.

However, I do like Greg's comment about "attacks" against a
blind-dust-inclusion algorithm, and suggestion to maintain a clustering of
already-linked addresses.  That's not terribly difficult to do with the
transaction history in hand, and it could increase how often the logic
triggers.  I suppose these hardcore SD players probably have a lot of
one-satoshi outputs that could use vacuuming...

On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 11:18 AM, Stephen Pair <[email-masked]> wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 10:30 AM, Mike Hearn <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> Second thing, it's best to carefully separate "anonymity" from
>> "privacy". Privacy is supposed to be a feature of the system (it says
>> so in Satoshis paper) because people demand it. If I loan a tenner to
>> my friend and he is able to find out what I earned last month, then
>> that trade was neither anonymous nor private. In this case I want
>> privacy but anonymity isn't useful. Mixing up anonymity with privacy
>> is not only a public relations problem, but can lead to confusion from
>> users when they, eg, try and buy Bitcoins from an exchange and are
>> asked to provide ID proofs.
>
>
> I would like to second this point...privacy is essential because the
> market demands it.  If Bitcoin doesn't do it well (and I would argue that
> it doesn't today), then eventually a competitor to Bitcoin will do it
> better and that would be the beginning of the end for Bitcoin.  Debates
> about whether it was or wasn't a core feature are pointless.
>