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blake Blake @monero.town

A sign of the times

Posts 6
Comments 91
Read: An Analysis of "Resistance Money, The Philosophical Case for Bitcoin" - Libereco's latest blogo
  • Dynamic Intelligent Currency Encryption (DICE) is a technological concept designed to enhance the security of paper currency. The system tracks and monitors banknotes in circulation using identifiable characteristics, allowing for the remote devaluation of banknotes involved in fraudulent activities or criminal transactions

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_intelligent_currency_encryption

  • Monero darknet market Archetyp gets clearnet domain blocked & removed
  • lol

    heavy

    again with the vague definitions

    methadone good, heroin bad. you get your morals from the govt? lame

  • Monero black marble 0day attack guide? Real or nah?
  • hi antidarknet

    cool site and nice job stresstesting XMR. look forward to seeing more of your projects in the future!

    Makes me wonder about other vulnerabilities there could be - particularly regarding dark markets, xmr escrow services etc.

    regarding your point

    Unless you’re criminal you shouldn’t be worried in any way.

    A criminal is someone defined by the state as having broken a law. Likewise a legal action is one which happens to coincide with a state's edict (law). but libertarian maximalists or anarchists wouldn't agree. hence why you were called a bootlicker.

    whilst it's perfectly righteous to fight what you see as harmful, there's an argument for freedom, particularly in the case of drugs where it is usually the user who is the only one at risk of harm (if we follow the harm principle rather than legal/illegal). yes the drug trade can harm too - but that could also be because it is 'illegal' and has to take place in a non-ideal marketplace.

    that being said, I have my own limits as to what is moral so I agree that you should pursue yours. but I will do things that are illegal, and I encourage you to do so too. perhaps one day using monero will be 'illegal'! </end philosophical sidebar>

  • Adopt /r/Monero community traditions in the Town
  • i'm skeptical of this plan

  • Debunking Myths about Ross Ulbricht with Sterlin Lujan, Kenny Palentano, and Dan O’Neil (MT 318)
  • good ep. will be interesting to see how this develops

    and lol @ libertarians saying, "I never vote but I'll vote trump if he promises to free ross"

  • Von der Leyen gets 2nd term despite privacy invasions and corruption allegations
  • good post

    I was reading today that her husband is CEO of a big pharma corp. that corp is owned by pfizer...

    and yes she approved the buying of millions of vax doses and approved of mandates...

  • Monero.Town is back online!
  • thanks based admin

    lol, just days after this post about coralling rebels onto cloudflare: https://monero.town/post/3622853/5036178

    is there a wider attempt at stymying monero's grassroots ecosystem?

    if so it seems to be mid-tier, not state-level. and it has been piecemeal, an exchange here and there, and the flood attack last month.

    but the use of tor exploits is above the average schmo and as @gogr8 says someone was comitted. we must be doing something right!

  • Campaign to Discredit Monero
  • also ddos attacks on multiple remaining exchanges - wizardswap, trocador among others in the last week.

    some have suggested this corrals sites + services onto cloudflare as a chokepoint for future censorship.

    however xmr keeps on ticking even despite mempool flooding last month.

  • Julian Assange is free!
  • wikileaks tweet

  • Julian Assange is free!
  • after a long time as a grassroots campaigner

    this is welcome news. kind of hard to believe.

    as we speak, Assange is on US soil, not out of the woods yet.

    but the Aussie PM is pro-assange, at least in word. we'll see.

    waiting to see if wikileaks will accept monero (or crypto) for the assange rehabilitation fund and will donate there :)

    an historic day

  • WARNING: Reto-Haveno
  • I regularly run Haveno Reto, it's max userbase is 10 but the average is about 8 online at any one time.

    I don't think that it's a honeypot as it doesn't make sense. The author argues that the main vulnerability is the manipulation of node selection - but users are free to self-host nodes and use any node, it's not baked into the program. Anyone can set up a 'malicious'' Monero node anyhow. As others have mentioned it seems like the kid who wrote the diss track doesn't really know what's going on (was it Majestic?). Lastly, they end by saying they are a competitor - but they just stopped their work on a localmonero clone - and are leaving the community forever - but please share this post around. Something smells off. But we have to take each anonymous opinion semi-seriously in the internet apparently.

    Besides all that, Haveno's not used very much (yet?). There are a few trades offered but none in my jurisdiction. Perhaps this will grow with time, but as yet we aren't seeing 'mass adoption' despite delisting and shutdowns of other p2p exchanges.

    I'm more up for posting crypto > XMR trades but it's not quite clear to me how 'Instant' crypto trades are settled, and there was a recent warning about unfulfilled instant crypto-xmr trades being punished. It would be nice to just post up liquidity with a small margin and have it be able to autocomplete trades whilst afk. A boy can dream!


    If I were to make the case against Haveno it would be thus:

    1. There is no account reputation, like localmonero, to identify users who have regularly fulfilled contracts and are more trustworthy.

    1.a. This means that I personally would want 100% backing of the deal in Haveno, which locks away someone's xmr, an unappealing offer.

    1.b. Even then we would depend on the fair arbitration to ensure the deal was finished. Fine for crypto trades within Haveno but cash by mail trades? It took localmonero/agora a long time to establish its reputation, and it is a tough job to arbitrate even with 2 benign actors.

    1. I have not seen enough evidence that the Arbitrators are fair, non-malicious actors. This is not to say they are bad actors - just there isn't evidence either way.

    2.b. The first username I saw of an arbitrator was on the aforementioned warning notice which (no shade) wasn't written in the best English, I suspect English as 2nd language bu. Hopefully this improves.

    1. When it was released upon the public, people talked about multiple Haveno instances in competition, muh free market. However, it quickly dwindled to one - I see this as a vulnerability. Even if the diss track's critique is not valid, it could still be compromised in some unknown way and we wouldn't have another instance of Haveno viable as an alternative. There was HardenedSteel but it was quickly deprecated. Does anyone know of another instance? I'd happily run both.

    tl;dr : despite being a decentralised p2p facility, Haveno Reto depends on good-faith in arbitrators and whilst it's in beta it's an easy target for fud.

  • Eyes open: Some accounts on Dread and Twitter are (I can only deduce) being paid to bring down competing exchanges, a dangerous trend
  • must have mixed up your site with another that had online privacy guides

    sounds a bit paranoid to be fair

    once again i don't know majestic and have no interest.

    but I know Tux is a solid guy, I trust his opinion. he's also a busy guy - I don't think there's an international conspiracy paying random small-time accounts to occasionally bash the reputation of a dodgy exchange. or that the exchange is so good and unique that it attracts the ire of bigger powers, it seems very unlikely to me.

    are you pro-majestic? if so, can you make an iron man case for the exchange?

    once again, I don't actually care about majestic but I'm interested that good info is being passed around the community - particularly at this pivotal era where exchanges are key

  • Eyes open: Some accounts on Dread and Twitter are (I can only deduce) being paid to bring down competing exchanges, a dangerous trend
  • hey freedomtools. I'm a fan of your site btw.

    just seemed funny.

    what do you mean by

    corruption ?

    surely it's fine to question players in the space, nay, interrogate to get a better idea of whats going on

    I called out allark previously. tbh I don't know majestic

  • Libertarian Convention quick recap [Anti-CBDC]
  • don't forget to vote!

    you're more free that way

  • Is Monero currently un-useable?

    As we all know, the tx pool is very full - being flooded with thousands of transactions, peaking at over 100,000 tx in the mempool.

    However, not only are transactions slow at this bottleneck, but it looks like wallets are unable to sync well.

    I found this when trying out a micro transaction on MyMonero wallet, receiving error 504 - historically this error has occurred when too many users were querying the MyMonero scanning service.

    As pic related shows, this is happening to GUI wallet, as well as Cake Wallet, so the biggest 3 wallets are affected - is this a side-effect of mempool congestion or - assuming this is an attack not just a significant uptick in XMR fans - is there a concerted attack to block all major wallets from syncing with the XMR blockchain?

    >Side Questions:

    Does anyone running a full node have an insight, how is your node getting on and are you able to keep up?

    How could a flooded mempool affect wallet sync, is there a direct causation?

    9

    Monero Node in Space

    Inspired by this post : https://monero.town/post/2267484

    Piqued my interest, as a sci-fi nerd and Monero enthusiast. How much would it realistically cost to get a Monero node in space? Blockstream already run a Bitcoin Node in Space. So I started to throw some costs together to see if it's viable as a fundraiser. Note that this is partly a thought experiment, but it's totally possible! The latency in Orbit is like 1ms so no problem. Try and censor this, nation states!

    Launch:

    Up to 50kg payload to SSO orbit with SpaceX : $300,000 (looking to 2026 launch dates)

    https://www.spacex.com/rideshare/

    Orbit Plus pre-configured communication with groundstation with alba : 250,000 Euro https://www.albaorbital.com/launch

    NanoRacks 1U (10cmx10cmx10cm) Cubesat Piggyback on ISS launch : $90,000 https://www.satcatalog.com/insights/cubesat-launch-costs/

    Monero node:

    Fully stacked nodo : $500

    https://moneronodo.com/

    Cubesat:

    Stacked Cubesat with Solar Array, All controllers, 10Mbps laser communications, 512GB Radiation proof storage, high-power radio, up to 3 cameras etc. (1U is smaller and cheaper to send, like $100k rather than 300K if a node fits inside)

    $44,000

    https://www.cubesat.market/kratos1uplatform

    Estimated total cost: $200,000

    We could crowdfund that right?

    2

    'Free Assange' Sticker fundraiser

    I have started a fundraiser using Kuno. You can donate Monero there to get stickers printed which will be handed out at a protest on February 20th in London.

    Donate to Sticker fund here: > https://kuno.anne.media/fundraiser/i3gx/

    Julian Assange, who has been imprisoned in the UK for over ten years, faces his final court case in England. Having passed through several rounds of kangaroo courts, being faced with no legal charge, he is still held in maximum security prison in Belmarsh, London. Febrary the 20th (and 21st) will see him at the highest court in the land, pleading with the judge to not be extradited to the USA. It has already been shown that, if extradited, he would face cruel and unusual punishment at the hands of the US government and would likely be disappeared and never seen again. Read more about the campaign here: dontextraditeassange.com

    I wouldn't usually post a findraiser here but I think it intersects with Monero well. Firstly, Wikileaks were an early adopter of crypto. When they were booted off Paypal in 2011 for posting Afghan War Logs, they began accepting a bunch of cryptocurrencies. Assange has also spoken out on the dissident use of cypherpunk technology at length. I also used Kuno for the fundraiser, which only accepts Monero. The experience was good, it was simple to set up and hopefully works well. I did have to learn about secret view keys which was useful, would recommend the site to others.

    Every little helps, even a few minero. I will be getting 100 stickers printed off my own back, it costs 0.26 ish XMR for 100 stickers and the fundraiser is only open for 3 weeks. I appreciate your reading this and hopefully we can make some difference. Will post 'proof of stickers' when the first batch is printed. Will also post any good photos of the stickers in action in London. If you are in the UK and dnoate, direct message me and I will post a sticker or two in the post.

    Peace!

    9

    Monero Chan Strikes Again!

    https://nitter.net/DuchessOfDeFi/status/1668085418812665858#m

    3
    Wownero @monero.town Blake @monero.town

    lol

    Did you know wownero's unique blockchain can handle over 9000 memes per block. This poses a direct threat to the legacy meme economy.

    0

    Criminal Conspiracy

    Count me in!

    6