Latest / Monero Talk / The Future of Zano and the CryptoNote Protocol w/ Andrey Sabelnikov aka Zoidberg PT1 | EPI 306
Transcript
- Doug Alright, Andre, how's it going man? How are you? Zoidberg Good, good, how are you? Doug Good, good, good. So, I guess a lot of big news with Zano, right? I mean, you guys just got over a major, major upgrade. That must feel good that you've... Zoidberg Yeah, I don't think it's in use because we've been speaking about this for quite some time, but this finally happened, the hard work happened. Yeah, that's happened. Doug How would you say it went? I know I was listening live. I participated in the spaces when it was happening with Roger Ver and I knew there was perhaps some unexpected bumps in the road in terms of initializing it, right? Doug You want to give us your overall take on that and how things went down? Zoidberg Yeah, we faced the, the day we did the hard fork, we faced a few issues. It wasn't, we could avoid this. The first problem we hit is mining pools wasn't ready for the hard fork. I mean, they're supposed to be ready, they did some basic testing, but we didn't do the reporting of the full hotels that use native code. Zoidberg So yeah, for that reason, we stuck for one hour and a half, I think. Then we fixed this, and then we had another issue that we didn't expect at all, that with the hard fork, the transaction format was changed. Zoidberg So after the hard fork, the transaction is supposed to be absolutely different. And the few seconds before the hard fork, the hard fork block hit the network, someone sent transaction with the old format. Zoidberg And this transaction related over the network and stuck. And then because of this transaction, unexpected transaction, we also had issues that we, we did the test networks, like a lot of test networks, I think. Zoidberg Even the last week before we released the Zarkanon build, I restarted the testnet with like five or eight times. And we did a lot of tests with the test network, but we didn't do this particular small test and the transaction of old format coming from a very few seconds before the hard fork. Zoidberg So yeah, that was kind of funny and stressful. And then we faced a few minor things that we didn't test. So we had a core test, like a tomato test that covered a lot of, a lot of situations, but we didn't, of course, we couldn't cover everything. Zoidberg So we had a few issues for the different, for different users with some specific setups. And also there was a bunch of users who didn't make update in time because we had a quite short notice. We did the hard fork in one month after updates, after release of the binaries and the hard fork. Zoidberg So it was quite short in the term of cryptocurrencies. And yeah, but the rest, everything else is pretty, pretty, pretty good. I was, I was worried about backwards capability with API and exchanges because in that case we would have, might have a, like a real troubles. Zoidberg This went smooth and also, yeah. So the most things that we worried didn't happen. So we're good to go. Doug It's not that we have. Zoidberg Yeah, I just say that we had a quite stressful week after the hard work because we were fixing stuff, we were doing the fixes, fixes, hot -fix, not hot -fix, and then we asked everyone to update, please update, and then we asked exchanges to please update once again and once again, and then even when we saw this, everything is good and we were like calm in like two weeks, and then we have also running the test network that was launched like two weeks before the hard work in this test happened like two weeks before the hard work in the mainnet, so and then we in this testnet we faced hit another problem, but luckily because we investigated this problem before, this problem has like a delayed effect, so we knew that we will hit the mainnet network of this problem like in two weeks, so we had the time to make another hot -fix, so we upgraded all the mobile wallets and did another exchange, another ask exchanges to update once again, so yeah, that's pretty much it, but I think that's today, I mean this Monday was the first first day like two days ago that we were like kind of calm. Doug All right. Well, cheers to that, man. You made it. You're relaxing a little bit. Zoidberg Yeah, yeah. Doug Okay, so overall, it went well in the end. There were a few bumps in the road, nothing major, just things that you didn't anticipate. How often do you see Zano upgrading in the future? I mean, this was obviously a tremendous upgrade. Doug I guess you don't anticipate upgrades being nearly as tremendous as this one as you move forward, or maybe you do. But yeah, give us some insight into that. How often do you foresee upgrades like this happening on the Zano protocol? Zoidberg We will have another hard fork in a few months because we, I think, I believe we figured out how to improve consensus, that's a really important thing, but I still want a few guys to review my ideas and make sure that I didn't just lost my own thoughts and after that we will make another hard fork and also this hard fork will include one little tweak for the future ecosystem building, but for now I think that's kind of, like we have a confidential tokens right now, but this is not the goal itself, it's just apart from now we have to build things on top of that, so I think the team with improving Xana itself will be helping other teams to build some stuff on top of this, because having tokens itself isolated from outer world doesn't bring much value, yeah, so we will be working on a few projects including something that's called confidential layer, it's a part of the bigger picture, the goal of this project will be to link different chains between each other and especially to bring liquidity into Xana or other privacy coins, for example Phyra, if they will be willing to be part of this, and we want to build some sort of ecosystem around this idea, around the idea of tokenization, so it's going to be a lot of work besides Xana itself, as a core technology, we'll be doing a lot of things around it, so that's my direction as I see it now. Doug Okay, so there will be more upgrades coming in the not -so -distant future. One of the criticisms that, you know, Monero sometimes gets is that we do upgrade in Monero. I think less and less often as time has gone by. Doug But that's one of the criticisms that's kind of, you know, obviously the Monero people make the argument that it's a good thing and it's necessary, especially given that privacy is a constant battle. Doug But the argument against is often that that's an indication that the project is centralized, right? That it can be upgraded, that the community can so easily come to consensus on doing that. I'm just curious what your response to that is in general and then how you view things from the perspective of the Zano project and how you would, you know, talk about it from the perspective of XANO. Zoidberg I think it's a good point. Even Tom Monero, I think Monero is one of the most decentralized projects, as far as I know. You have a quite big community and you have a few generations of developers who are running the project. Zoidberg I think basically it's a good point, but on the other hand, I don't know, is there any other way to improve technology? Because I don't think that, I mean, Bitcoin itself is an iconic project. They can let themselves to stay without much of improvement, right? Zoidberg But other projects has to improve. It's just a challenge that we, especially privacy points, we always face challenges with the deanimization, we always face changes with the performance, with like a lot of different things and constant improvements, it's just a must -have. Zoidberg I understand this point of view, but I think that those projects who do innovation, those projects who innovate, I don't know any other way to improve projects and build projects without half -forking it. Zoidberg Yeah, that's my point. Doug Yeah, I agree with you, especially with regards to, like you said, privacy projects, right? Where privacy is a constant battle, constant cat and mouse game, so there is that continuous need to stay ahead of the enemy, for lack of a better word. Doug Maybe in the wrong Zoidberg Maybe I'm the wrong person who asked, but for me, it's the fact that the project doing hard work constantly is a healthy thing. Not much projects are doing that much innovation in the hard work. We have like 90% of the projects in the industry, which do nothing. Zoidberg They literally copy commits of other projects or just doesn't even bother to do this. So for me, but okay, again, I'm probably not the right person to ask. I'm a developer, I'm running the project. So probably I'm, no, no, yeah. Doug that you are the right person to ask you we want to get your opinion from from that standpoint before I forget because now you have me thinking to what what is your kind of current take on Bitcoin itself right we've we've reached a new level with Bitcoin in terms of you know it's it's maturity right where now it's actually fully integrated into the fiat fiat banking system we have ETFs for Bitcoin yeah it feels like we're kind of nearing the final phases just curious what you what your current take is on the project itself on Bitcoin Zoidberg I'm not really following what they do from technology perspective in Bitcoin as developers because I mean it's not really interesting, they don't innovate much but it's not a bad thing. Bitcoin is a very unique project and I was actually wondering recently that Bitcoin itself, I mean, I admire the project and the project is a symbol of crypto and I wish Bitcoin to dominate on the market because probably because I'm old schooler and for me it means more than it is in reality but I was thinking why would people actually need Bitcoin these days because nobody pay in Bitcoin, it's that the price is very dynamic so you cannot do actual payments for business with this and yeah, we know the Bitcoin is an idea and now it's a store of value, right? Zoidberg But I feel and I fear a little bit fear of this dynamic but I feel that the market and the crypto industry a little bit changed and a lot of people have a very utility use for crypto these days, a lot of people use stablecoins for cross -border payments and that kind of weaken Bitcoin itself as a tool, as a original idea, as a currency, right? Zoidberg So that's my controversial opinion about this so from one perspective I admire the project because I call it project, for me it represents the idea of crypto in the best form, in the best shape, right? Zoidberg But from other perspective I'm a little bit fear that practically it's useless, it's becoming useless and it's what is left for Bitcoin to be like some sort of speculative tool for a pumping and dumping price so people who didn't get rich early days of crypto will try to jump on this train. Zoidberg I don't know, I fear of this, I really fear that this speculative nature of Bitcoin this day may kind of hurt it and hurt the idea of crypto itself so that's what my thoughts about it. Doug No, I tend to agree with you on that as well, and I guess in your mind you also see that as opportunity for other projects such as Monero and Zano itself, right? Because where Bitcoin is failing, perhaps that's where other protocols can succeed. Zoidberg Yeah, kind of, but another problem that probably right now, these days also, in crypto industry, give chances not to protocols, but the company with big pockets. So even though some projects don't bring innovation, because they have a big marketing budget, they absorb most of the people, and those people who are new in crypto, they got confused with this overly marketed project. Zoidberg So yeah, I think it's kind of creating new opportunities, but unfortunately, not for those projects that I wish would get more attention. I mean, from my perspective, innovation is the key thing in crypto, I mean, at least at this moment. Doug Where do you see Monero and Zano fitting in in the, you know, crypto sphere? What are your takes on those? So, you know, we kind of thought we talked about Bitcoin. Where do you see Monero and Zano? What roles do you see them playing each playing in the crypto sphere? Zoidberg Monero direction is very clear, I think it's very simple and clear and that's what I felt when I met Monero community and Monero developers, they want to keep Monero pure according to their vision and have a direction to keep it pure and give it maximum privacy and that's because of this direction is very articulated, very clear, I think that's the future of Monero, it's going to be private token focused on privacy, right? Zoidberg Probably Monero would face, the same problem as Zana would face, probably it will be deleted from some centralised exchanges and we will be building together, we will be building tools that create liquidity and cross chain, tools for the cross chain transactions, right? Zoidberg But that's how I see the future of Monero. Zana has a little bit different direction, we're also aiming to privacy but we are building some sort of platform and yeah, we will see how it goes. For now we see this idea that we can be like a very simplifying, like a super simplifying, we want to be like Ethereum in the privacy world, right? Zoidberg But it's not that easy, of course from technology perspective, of course we are not at least in this phase, we cannot build technology like Ethereum with virtual machines but that's what we're trying to do, we're trying to build the platform and make this platform useful and private, that's what I see. Doug i think it's a nice simple way of looking at it big big Monero is you know that the private untraceable version of the coin let's say and zano is yeah yeah private version of the period right is uh... Doug this is the simple way of looking at things Zoidberg Yeah, yeah, we discussed this perception that's pretty much close. I just didn't want to put it that simple, because I think Monero is a very interesting project. It's way more sophisticated and way more innovative than Bitcoin. Zoidberg So I didn't want to compare it with Bitcoin from that perspective, because the number of innovations that have been done by Monero Lab is absolutely amazing in the privacy area. So yeah, I think it will have a pretty interesting future. Doug Now both Zano and Monero use the CryptoNote protocol, which you're obviously very familiar with. Do you see a lot of changes that are going to need to happen on the protocol level itself for CryptoNote projects to succeed? Doug Will the CryptoNote projects of the future look quite different from what they started as? Bitcoin hasn't changed much, but CryptoNote itself, are you seeing the need for some big updated protocol itself? Zoidberg Yeah, we're all waiting for the full membership proof Yeah, we met with a look Parker on the on the Prague last year and we were like quite impressed by the theoretical work that he he's done and We actually We wanted to be part of this research, but was crazy busy with their Canon but Yeah, I think this this this upgrade will be Absolutely game -changing for all crypto node projects Doug That's looking forward to it. Yeah, that's probably the biggest upgrade you can kind of imagine right is terms. Yeah necessary for for crypto note Yeah, I mean give us some some more more thoughts on that we see I don't I assume you've you've seen what's happening on Monero. Doug The transaction count has gone through the roof And it's maintained that for quite some time It's been some dips, but it appears to be that that something is going on. Somebody is adding transactions to the network potentially a flood attack And it's showing weakness in Monero's ring signatures weaknesses that were that were were known But it's it's kind of bringing it to the forefront Curious if you have any thoughts on that and if you've been if you've been watching that at all Zoidberg I actually didn't know about that and do you know the Doug You've been head down in the trenches like that. Zoidberg Yeah, but you don't know the nature of these transactions, right? You just see the volume. Doug Yeah, I mean, there's been analysis on them, people trying to determine if there's something significant about them. I think the overall viewpoint is that it is some type of spam. It's not organic transactions. Doug It doesn't appear to be the case. But they are typical transactions. There's nothing atypical about them. Zoidberg Burn money for making this transaction in the burn fee Doug Yeah, they're paying the fees for the transactions. They're paying the minimal fee. They're paying the minimal fee. Monero, they're handling it pretty well. We saw dynamic flax size go into effect. That's been working. Doug What we were seeing was issue with nodes, particularly, for example, companies like Cake that run large remote nodes that people rely on. We saw some issues with that. But overall, and I think changes are already made to alleviate that problem, but overall, the network has handled it pretty well. Doug But it's led to a lot of discussion about the weaknesses of ring signatures and the fact that somebody might potentially be doing a flood attack and obviously... Ah, I see it. Zoidberg ...for... ...to... ...Germany Meyers! Doug Mm -hmm Zoidberg Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it could be, could be true. Well, yeah, I'm, well, this is sad to hear this. I don't know. But I think the transaction fees already raised, right? Or they just use some minimal and nothing you can do with this. Doug Yeah, I mean, they were using whatever fee they can get away with, but I mean, it's like I said, the network's been been handling it. You know, it's, it's something that we have to expect, right? I mean, people are going to can do whatever they want with Monero, right? Doug So, yeah, nothing, nothing to feel bad about, right? I mean, it is what it is. And I think Monero is handling it quite well. And if anything, it's just maybe pushing the community forward faster towards full membership proofs. Doug So yeah, that's. Zoidberg yeah of course full membership proofs would solve this problem and make it won't make any sense to make this attack after you will introduce full membership proof but so far I mean if it's if it's attacker they can like a put a basement for the future analysis for themselves so they as soon as they have it a lot of spam in the blockchain they could do something about it is there any chance you can you can is there any chance you can make a difference between this organic transactions and non -organic transactions you cannot Doug is there a way to determine if it yeah I think people are trying to make that determination based on like statistical analysis but I don't think it's you know Zoidberg use if they if they use for example the very minimum fee so you can you can in the future you can tweak decoy selection algorithm that will be avoiding those outputs for which are part of this super cheap transactions for example that's the first thought that hit my mind but yeah I mean probably your developers know how to solve it better than I think Doug that was thrown out there as a potential, obviously they're talking about increasing the ring size, and then there's talk of perhaps speeding up the implementation of full membership proofs and trying to get that in Monero faster than originally planned, having it being part of the Serafis upgrade, but kind of trying to move things ahead faster. Doug That is a discussion that's going on right now. In terms of Zano, obviously XANO would also be looking to upgrade to full membership proofs once projects are doing it. I think Firo might be first in line to get it done, it seems like. Doug Maybe I'm wrong, but that's kind of my take on it. It looks like they might have the advantage there of being able to add it first, but I'm curious, like where would Zano look or when would XANO look to add full membership proofs? Zoidberg I honestly don't know. The last thing I knew about it was when we were in Prague, in the conference. I know that Wal is following the chat where the cryptography guys are chatting about this, but yeah, we were so deep in our problem, so we didn't follow it. Zoidberg We know that research is going there, and I think if they need a hand, we can let Wal to work on this. If they need more hands on that, if we can help somehow with this research, of course. I told Luke this even when we were in Prague, that we would be happy to help this. Zoidberg Yeah, but I understand this work requires quite a strong theoretical background, and Wal was reading a few research about that, so he needed to educate himself to be useful for that. So it may take some time for him to catch up with a technical part. Zoidberg Of course. Doug Of course. Well, it's exciting that we're moving in that direction and hopefully the next Monerotopia, I know you guys will be coming down and hopefully we get Luke down there again because I do feel like a lot of things do get done when people are face -to -face, right? Doug Like when you guys are all hanging out together, that's exciting to hear and know. It makes the conferences that much more important. Zoidberg Yeah, definitely. We are looking forward to get to Monero Tokyo. Last time was amazing. I was a little bit stressed before the conference because I didn't know what to expect. I wasn't close to the Monero community and yeah, it was an absolutely welcoming community and we are glad to be there and we are happy to participate in the next event. Doug Yeah, you guys are a big part of that you were it was fantastic Yeah, we might as well put it out here because we haven't really talked about it in public yet We're thinking of moving the conference from Buenos Aires Back to Mexico City where we had it last year. Doug It was a great venue We're just running into some issues in Buenos Aires and we're realizing it's not the most convenient location for people people are telling us that and we're running into issues with the marketplace and we don't want to You know take a risk without the conference being as good as it could possibly be so we might pivot back to Mexico I know we had talked offline and you said you guys are on board either way. Doug So very yeah, of course Zoidberg Yeah, definitely. Last time was amazing and we were happy with everything. That's cool. Doug Fantastic. So yeah, for those of you listening, more info coming soon on all that. We'll figure that out in the next day or so, probably by the time we air this, but very good chance we move it back to that same venue. Doug We have the marketplace going full steam ahead. We work with the same person we worked with last year, so we're excited about that. But let's jump back to the topic at hand, Zano itself. This is a tremendous upgrade. Doug Tell us what some of the most important things were that happened with the big recent upgrade on Zano. Zoidberg What is on the surface is confidential assets. I think it's going to be, in the future, it's going to be very useful right now. Probably people don't see much changes. They can see at the wallet that you can add assets, but they don't see much of assets interpolating in XANA right now because, I mean, we have some test assets. Zoidberg People are experimenting. They're trying. They do the funny names for the assets, but we don't quite list, yet the whitelisting is another subject for discussion about centralization. I know it, but we want to be very careful because these assets could be a point where people will be scummed. Zoidberg So we are, we're trying to use, right now we use the practices that are common in MetaMask. So they have some sort of whitelists or well -known assets. But basically we don't limit anyone. So anyone can create their own assets and share their asset ID so everybody can use it and add it to the wallet. Zoidberg We just, by default, we don't list unknown projects. But we will list, definitely we will list unknown and respected projects as soon as they appear. Right now we just have this idea of assets that you can create, but it will take some time to build something on top of XANA, something that makes sense, something usable. Zoidberg Also something that lies under the surface is, of course, it's privacy, hidden amounts, proof of stake with hidden amounts. It's important from a privacy perspective, but it doesn't lie on the surface. Zoidberg It's some technology that hardens consensus and gives users the privacy. And because of this, we can finally hide the amounts. Because before XANA was having open amounts and that was kind of very big from a privacy perspective, of course, especially in the modern days. Zoidberg Most of the crypto project was having hidden amounts. Yeah, that's the big thing. And that's it. That's pretty much it. We have a lot of minor things that we fixed with this hard fork, but I don't know if it was mentioning we fixed the coin selection algorithm twice. Zoidberg We fixed some well -known issues that we had before. And also right now, Pavel is working on a new mobile wallet that will be with a whole new, rebranded interface with support of assets, confidential assets. Zoidberg Also, we're working with integration on the cake wallet. Thanks to WIC for letting us to be part of the project. Doug When do we expect that to happen? When do we expect to see Zano on cake? Do we know? Zoidberg I think it's going to be pretty much soon we because of we had a like a very hard weeks last two weeks We were busy with stuff Right now we running the test Cake wallet on the test network that was integrated Zana, but this still has a few issues So we are fixing it before we do the pull request though to the to cake wallet report, but we are in touch with their developers the Supporting us. Zoidberg So I think it's gonna be in a few weeks. It's gonna be on Doug cool cool that's exciting do you foresee a day where people are because now you guys have added uh private proof a way to uh do proof of stake privately which is the first crypto to do it i mean my understanding is you guys invented that with co the ability Zoidberg call yeah of course it's we can consider a collaboration with Monero Doug It's exciting, definitely in that regard. The concept itself, we had a great talk out on the last Monerotopia with that debate of proof of stake versus proof of work. Just a quick question to that concept. Doug Do you foresee a day where people are staking their ZANO on their mobile phone, on their cake wallet, on their ZANO wallet? Is that something that you foresee happening? Zoidberg Yeah, it's actually it's possible to implement it to stake. Yeah, you can, I mean, theoretically, you can say we didn't enable it just to avoid miss commit, like, because if we can make it working, there will be expectations from staking people always when they, for example, invested something they expect in return and mobile mobile application, they can work a different way from desktop, they can sometimes can be offline, sometimes they can be sleeping. Zoidberg For that reason, we don't enable staking from mobile one, but technically, it doesn't have any problems. I mean, some people can probably quickly tweak the Android wallet and do the staking from mobile wallet even even this way. Zoidberg But we don't, we just a kind of artificially disabled this yet, because we don't want to have a multiple users complaining about, hey, my wallet is not staking, because from part of the users have the perception that the staking is some sort of just like, like a profit motivation for people to buy coins. Zoidberg So as they experienced, for example, from a terrible network, some tokens have a staking, but it's taking doesn't secure a consensus staking, just do the calculations and the contract to people expect staking, even if they have some application on mobile, they have a staking going on in the contract. Zoidberg And because of this confusion, we don't want to make miscommunication because in Zana, in Zana staking, needed only for securing the history of transaction or only for securing consensus. And the staking means active participation in the network work. Zoidberg So because of this, we still don't put mobile devices to be part of the staking. But again, anyone who know how to code, they can tweak the wallet and do the staking from Android, even it's even possible that to run the full node in Android device, if someone will be bothering to do this. Doug Very cool, very cool. For those who aren't familiar with the pros and cons of proof of stake versus proof of work, briefly give us your take there. Why? Why did you go this route with Zano and add proof of stake? Doug Why did you then make it private proof of stake? Why is this important? What is it doing? Why not stick to proof of work? Give us your take. Zoidberg That's very easy. I was proof of work at the beginning. Originally, the first project I launched, Bitcoin itself, and Monero, as I was saying, was a pure proof of work. By this time, it's considered to be the only secure protocol because proof of stake idea was in the air, but it had some issues. Zoidberg Then I was running Bulbarits, quite a small project. Then I faced real -life challenges. I was just making quick calculations that it's obvious that an attack on a proof of work is quite cheap. That was easy to understand for any of this, we started to look into proof of stake and balancing different ideas, how to make it. Zoidberg Nicholas said, he often helped me to come up with the first consensus, proof of stake on the crypto note. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, he helped me. The creator of crypto note, for those of you who don't know. Zoidberg Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I asked him. Doug So he worked and helped on the first implementation of Proof of Stake in Kryptonite. Zoidberg Yeah, yeah, he helped me. And yeah, I was consulting with him pretty long time. He was helping me. And yeah, because of this, because we face it, the problems of double spends very easy. If you take any proof of proof of work, pure proof of work projects, and it's actually very easy to calculate the cost of attack. Zoidberg For example, on interview, I often ask people how much it costs to attack the project, they start to do the calculations, how much the hash power cost, it doesn't even matter, you just need to take a block reward and multiply it for confirmation number. Zoidberg And that's the cost of you. That's the price of cost attack on any proof of work projects. And for that reason, yeah, we started to research this subject and decided that we have some idea, we tried this, we did research, and then we come up with a consensus that we had originally. Zoidberg And yeah, then we launched it down and then some guy came to our community and showed us a weakness that we fix it with a hard fork. But then it was running pretty smooth. And yeah, the the problem that with the consensus, as it was originally, you cannot make privacy, you can, you could do the some trade offs between the privacy and hidden amounts if you make that just a part of that. Zoidberg But it's, it's half measures, it's not not going to work from technology perspective. And then we was working on a new, new consensus for a few years. We started to work with one researcher and didn't work. Zoidberg Well, then we started to work with while he switched from, like a pure coding into the research and math stuff, especially because he has a math, math degree from university. So he had a background that fitted. Zoidberg And then, yeah, then we came up with this zarkanum thing, which is pretty good right now. And we also, we also have ideas that I was saying in the beginning, how to harden this consensus, because right now, whoever has a big proof of work hash rate can leverage is a proof of stake part with this proof of work part. Zoidberg And with this, it's still quite expensive attack, but it's possible. So we want to fix it, we wanted to fix it for, for a quite long time. But now I think I have some idea how to do it. And hopefully, after some review, we'll publish some paper that described this idea. Zoidberg And with the next hard fork, it's going to be even stronger, it's still going to be proof of work and proof of stake, give it because we cannot right now we cannot get rid from proof of work for a few reasons, especially a long, long range attacks, and few other things. Zoidberg But it's going to be way, way stronger. And if we if we have a chance to have another debate in Monero Topia, this year, in Mexico, or wherever it's going to be, I will be happy to be part of part of this discussion. Zoidberg But not from perspective, as I'm trying to sell Zana as a great as a proof of stake technology, but as a solution for Monero to bring it on the table for Monero community and developers to consider it and destroy the myth myths about proof of stake being centralized proof of stake being insecure and stuff like that. Zoidberg So if we have this Doug for some great discussion. I think you had said at the last conference that you predict one day Monero will be proof of stake. Zoidberg Yeah, I'm pretty sure about this. But not that I'm trying to prove that I was right. It's just I will I will be happy today in Monero will switch to proof of sake, it's gonna be more secure consensus. Zoidberg Because if Monero would be attacked with double spend attack, that would be really sad. I mean, that's, that would be really sad. And I think I because I was speaking with a few people in Monero, at the Monero topia, I think there is, there is an understanding between technical community, they understand the cost of attack on proof of work. Zoidberg They see the problem. And then, then, if they see the problem, it's easier to come to solution. And if Monero ever decide to go this way, we will be happy to help if they need a hand with this. Doug You don't see any value in proof -of -work itself separate from proof -of -sake that has different benefits, especially for a chain like Monero that's been proof -of -work for already almost 10 years. Zoidberg I see, for me it doesn't matter actually proof of work or proof of stake from, I don't have a, how to say it, I'm not married to any of this, it's just for me consensus is just algorithms that is needed to secure the history. Zoidberg Whatever security, the history of transaction better is better, doesn't matter, for me wasn't even, the psychological reasons wasn't even for me the first one and the second one it was like somewhere at the end. Zoidberg For me the most, the biggest problem is that consensus is solving the problem of ceiling of transaction history. So whatever works best is best for me and I look at this only from this perspective and I don't have any other opinion about proof of work or proof of stake except this one. Doug But like you said, even for now, you guys are still proof of work to avoid long range attacks, but you foresee a solution being there at some point in the future where you could solve that with proof of stake. Zoidberg if we solve this we will get rid of proof of work as soon as we can because I can explain this actually we had this conversation so many so many times or I can spare it for the panel if we have this panel on next monitor but yeah basically yeah we can we can speak about this I have a lot of things to say Doug Give us a little bit on it, just give us a little bit on it, yeah. Zoidberg Yeah. And when you when someone invest in a proof of work, they are not, they are not attached to your project, they can, they can do, for example, they have a video card or in the case of Monero, they have a CPU, they can do the mining for any project they and they don't care about this, they normally how mining business is working is except like a few people who are attached to the project, but it's not majority, it's just very few people, but the mining business works very simply, they rent the hardware, it's a business, they rent the hardware to get the revenue, they rent this hardware for multiple, yeah, they doesn't even care about coins, they don't see the coins that they actually mine, they rent this to the multiple, multi currency pool and this pool actually do the mining on the most profitable coins and they don't have any attachment to the project, they don't care, whoever gives more money, I mean, in terms of the cost of the coins, that that project will get the hash power, right, so they are not attached, it's easy, way more easy to manipulate with them, also the mining hardware is, it's always related to electricity and the physical devices, they are physically on the land and the biggest supplier of electricity in the land is the government, so it's easier to control with the hash power, the big players like governments, they are easier to manipulate and control with physical stuff, while in a proof of stake, you don't see actual users, you have a, it's like a system that looked like a catched inside itself, it's really hard to get influence on this system without heavy, heavy investment, right, so I, from, again, this for me, it's more like a practical, practical observing from my experience been like running projects for a few years, yes, tomorrow will be some new way to secure a consensus, for example, with the quantum computers some, or without, with some other idea that will be securing the history of transactions without involving proof of stake or proof of work, I will be up for this, the first, I will be first on the line to implement this. Doug I get it. You just want the best thing that works. Whenever you say Nicholas Van Sabrehagen, my eyes light up, obviously. The fact that you communicate with this guy, whoever he may be, whether it's your alternate personality, I do not know. Doug It's a real guy. No, okay. That's amazing. Like you said, maybe there's some way we could get him to participate remotely at Monerotopia or something, or to answer questions, I don't know. But what does he think of proof of work versus proof of stake? Doug Obviously, you said he was helping you out with this, so I guess he sees it as being a potential positive development in the technology. Zoidberg Yeah, I think we never actually spoken about if he see it how he see it because as engineers, we don't tend to have opinions about Things I mean, I don't know how to explain it for us. It's just a calculation of cost of attack for it For me, it doesn't even make sense to speak about those things Are you proof of work or proof of stake because it doesn't make sense it? Zoidberg The only thing it makes sense what type of proof of stake you have What type of Hebrew do you have because it explains what the cost of attack? So we never had this conversation from this like a philosophical perspective. Zoidberg We always had a conversation Hey, what if we doing this how much it goes to attack from this angle or from this angle? So I think for him it's like for every engineer or researcher It's like a matter of cost of attack doesn't matter how you make