Author Topic: STEALTH Status Update  (Read 36230 times)

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Offline Thom

How disappointing. I was hoping stealth would be approached more carefully than previous UI dev efforts but it appears that wasn't to be. I contributed my perspective, tho limited, early on but it was not considered or discussed. Ultimately it was Once's call to decide if he accepted the design spec. He pushed back at several points, but mostly on the business aspects not much on the UI design.

I wished there were more design discussions before the work began, however as usual there is always pressure to finalize the design and get on with implementation.

Just today I was using the wallet and thinking to myself it is finally (6 months after initial release) looking very good now. There is always room for improvement and unless you have set specific design goals development will never end. Its setting the goals / milestones that provide a way to measure progress and know when objectives are complete. There is a definite lack of such planning by CNX. What is the right balance between agility to react to market forces and the stability of establishing a plan to guide the trajectory of progress? I don't know but I know they haven't found it yet!

Good UI design takes a great deal of planning. Cut that short and the results will not be optimal.

I also agree with abit's comments. CNX can implement a blind transfer feature, but it should not be up to CNX if that feature is deployed into the BitShares. Expectations have already been set and blind transfers were not among them. Rather than giving up and implementing some other privacy feature (and why should we expect that will be implemented any better than the attempt to implement stealth?), why not take some time to see what went wrong and make an attempt to correct those things and go at it again with a better approach? Why divert resources in another direction?

@bytemaster - what is it about the UI / UX you don't like? What is so bad it can't be fixed with less effort than implementing a blind transaction feature? I don't see how blind transfers could be done without changes to both frontend AND backend.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2016, 04:06:51 am by Thom »
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Online Brekyrself

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@bytemaster

You mention our account balance can be hidden, how so?  If Account A has 100 bts and blind transfers to account B 100bts with the blind feature, we can still see Account A HAD 100bts and now has 0?  We can easily assume Account B now has 100bts.  What am I missing here?  Is the only way to gain true stealth still through a mixing service?  This appears to be similar to 0.93?

Once a balance is hidden, how will it effect voting?

Can additional features be added to hide things like who we are voting for?  Our white/black lists?  Assets?  Permissions?

Another example is when we browse a user's ID, why does the membership option even appear?  Perhaps removing things like this could minimize data usage and lower latency?
« Last Edit: April 05, 2016, 02:25:23 am by Brekyrself »

Offline abit

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Different voices here:

Who decided that one can add whatever feature to BitShares at will, even it's "for free"?

Why should any new feature split 80% to Mr. Once or the STEALTH asset holder, and let them decide the fee rate beyond the committee (read: stake holders)?
That has been approved by shareholders by means of a voted worker for the corresponding BSIP ... IIRC

1. Details of the approval? it includes adding any new feature?

2. BSIP10 hasn't been approved? Apparently this feature will reduce the value of BSIP10, which is designed to feed the referral program.

3. All balances hidden? So how will it affect the "rate limited free transaction" feature?

4. This feature is one of the "stable core features of BitShares" mentioned in last week?
Doing STEALTH or not is a client side decision and thus depends on the wallet implementation. Not on the backend code.

Also, not all assets allow blinded transfers for legal and technical reasons .. there are plenty of usecases that cant makt use of stealth.

That said, i understand your frustration that BM again again takes the lead and makes decisions without prior discussion.
As long as changes are not made on the back end, I'm fine.
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Offline xeroc

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Different voices here:

Who decided that one can add whatever feature to BitShares at will, even it's "for free"?

Why should any new feature split 80% to Mr. Once or the STEALTH asset holder, and let them decide the fee rate beyond the committee (read: stake holders)?
That has been approved by shareholders by means of a voted worker for the corresponding BSIP ... IIRC

1. Details of the approval? it includes adding any new feature?

2. BSIP10 hasn't been approved? Apparently this feature will reduce the value of BSIP10, which is designed to feed the referral program.

3. All balances hidden? So how will it affect the "rate limited free transaction" feature?

4. This feature is one of the "stable core features of BitShares" mentioned in last week?
Doing STEALTH or not is a client side decision and thus depends on the wallet implementation. Not on the backend code.

Also, not all assets allow blinded transfers for legal and technical reasons .. there are plenty of usecases that cant makt use of stealth.

That said, i understand your frustration that BM again again takes the lead and makes decisions without prior discussion.

Offline abit

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Different voices here:

Who decided that one can add whatever feature to BitShares at will, even it's "for free"?

Why should any new feature split 80% to Mr. Once or the STEALTH asset holder, and let them decide the fee rate beyond the committee (read: stake holders)?
That has been approved by shareholders by means of a voted worker for the corresponding BSIP ... IIRC

1. Details of the approval? it includes adding any new feature?

2. BSIP10 hasn't been approved? Apparently this feature will reduce the value of BSIP10, which is designed to feed the referral program.

3. All balances hidden? So how will it affect the "rate limited free transaction" feature?

4. This feature is one of the "stable core features of BitShares" mentioned in last week?
« Last Edit: April 04, 2016, 08:16:46 pm by abit »
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Offline xeroc

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Different voices here:

Who decided that one can add whatever feature to BitShares at will, even it's "for free"?

Why should any new feature split 80% to Mr. Once or the STEALTH asset holder, and let them decide the fee rate beyond the committee (read: stake holders)?
That has been approved by shareholders by means of a voted worker for the corresponding BSIP ... IIRC

Offline abit

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Different voices here:

Who decided that one can add whatever feature to BitShares at will, even it's "for free"?

Why should any new feature split 80% to Mr. Once or the STEALTH asset holder, and let them decide the fee rate beyond the committee (read: stake holders)?
BitShares committee member: abit
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Offline Tuck Fheman

Making transactions default blinded sounds like a great idea, IMO. Currently I think transactions are a little "too public".

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Offline CLains

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Perhaps @onceuponatime will consider immediately selling some of the stealth asset in order to not only recoup a chunk of his investment, but also to raise some funds to speed up implementation of stealth transfers / private balances.  This is a critical feature.  The sooner it gets implemented, the faster the Bitshares adoption rate will increase, and the sooner @onceuponatime will be in the black on his investment.

Yes, let's do the stealth token sale. If I was onceuponatime i'd give 5% to someone for organizing and outlining properly what needs to be done, including a crowd-sale and an independent stealth wallet with unique branding and marketing. This project needs more than some devs and an investor, it needs a savvy entrepreneur who can take it to the next level. Now that you have the basic tech in place and a token to represent the value of the project, there's nothing stopping you from making this project as big as you want. /2 cents

Offline mike623317

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I think that's a good approach BM
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Offline tbone

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Perhaps @onceuponatime will consider immediately selling some of the stealth asset in order to not only recoup a chunk of his investment, but also to raise some funds to speed up implementation of stealth transfers / private balances.  This is a critical feature.  The sooner it gets implemented, the faster the Bitshares adoption rate will increase, and the sooner @onceuponatime will be in the black on his investment.

Offline dannotestein

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Making transactions default blinded sounds like a great idea, IMO. Currently I think transactions are a little "too public".
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Offline bytemaster

I want to take a moment to give everyone an update on where we are with STEALTH.

The hardfork today will allow us to transfer the STEALTH asset to @onceuponatime and the blockchain will be fully functional from that perspective.

The GUI release here: https://github.com/bitshares/bitshares-2/releases/tag/2.0.160323-stealth-beta implements an interface and set of functionality that we outlined in the proposal. 

The server-side wallet storage was not part of the proposal, but something we felt was necessary to backup/secure user funds. We do not yet have confidence in the reliability of server-side storage to enable this feature. There is a significant about of liability associated in offering to host/backup user wallets.  We don't want to be responsible for the loss of funds.

With todays hardfork and enabling of the fee-backed-asset along with the windows binaries we will release the STEALTH worker will technically be completed to spec. We were late and over budget so have actually lost money on this worker.

That said, I am not happy with the resulting product and user experience. It is still too hard to use for most people and therefore, it is reasonable to expect few will use it. 

In an effort to make things right for everyone, especially @onceuponatime, we intend to implement an alternative in the months ahead:

Blind Transfers with Public Accounts

In this mode everyone will be able to tell which accounts are transacting with each other, but be unable to know the amounts involved. The impact is that you would be able to tell if someone sent money to an exchange, but would be unable to know how much. Furthemore, your
account balance would be completely private.

With this mode of operation it is possible to make blind transfers the default mode of operation while maintaining the same interface we have for normal transactions.  A simple checkbox can be used to enable public/free transfers.

This interface will generate many more STEALTH transfers and improve everyone's privacy while at the same time enabling the holders of the STEALTH asset to make more revenue.

We cannot promise a particular schedule for this enhancement, but will state that we intend to work toward it. We want to make sure that people can actually use privacy enhancing features and that @onceuponatime has a reasonable chance to recoup his investment.







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