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The Bottlenecks: Anonymous Communication And Anonymous Money The bottlenecks are anonymous communication and anonymous money, because unobservable economic activity is needed to avoid the prying eyes of those in the business of violence. What can't be seen, can't be stolen. At the hart of every trade there's a universal abstraction of value, fulfilling one side of the agreement and that is money. There will be numerous opportunities for young ambitious upcoming Cypherpunks to find innovative solutions of fulfilling the other end of the bargain: how certain goods and services can be delivered. Anonymous delivery of such systems are all opportunities to be solved. The context of the trade is so that some communication is required between the two parties for the trade to happen. In fact the work on anonymous money and anonymous communications are so intertwingled with each other that they are feeding on each others' successes. When self defense software for anonymous communications and anonymous money gets so practical that any anonymous trade application developer can incorporate them into their software, the cypherpunk economy will bloom. This will shift power dynamics: The powers of individuals will grow in expense of the powers of those of in groups. Therefore the bottlenecks are anonymous communication and anonymous money.

Is Nostr censorship resistant?

Let's make it so that future historians mark the covid-19 lockdowns as the peak of the tyranny of the bloody twentieth century nation state as we knew it

Donald Trump, Rene Descartes and Steve Jobs walks into a bar... Joe Rogan greeted them with a smile. "Welcome, gentlemen. What can I get you to drink?" "I'll have a vodka tonic," Trump said. "I'll take a glass of red wine," Descartes said. "I'll have a whiskey neat," Jobs said. Joe poured their drinks and leaned against the bar. "So, what brings you guys in tonight?" "Just wanted to unwind and have a drink," Trump said. "It's been a stressful few years." Descartes nodded. "I can relate. The search for truth can be quite taxing." Jobs sipped his whiskey. "I'm just here for the conversation." Joe grinned. "Well, you've come to the right place. What do you guys want to talk about?" Trump scoffed. "What else? Politics." Descartes raised an eyebrow. "And what do you hope to accomplish by discussing politics?" Trump shrugged. "Maybe we can solve some of the world's problems." Descartes chuckled. "I doubt that. The problems of the world are too complex to be solved by mere conversation." Jobs spoke up. "But conversation can spark ideas. It can plant seeds of change." Joe nodded. "He's got a point. Sometimes all it takes is one idea to change the world." Trump looked skeptical. "I'm not sure I buy that." Descartes spoke up. "But what if we approached the problem from a different perspective? What if we questioned our assumptions and challenged our beliefs?" Trump rolled his eyes. "That's easier said than done." Joe looked at him. "Why is that?" Trump took a swig of his drink. "Because people are set in their ways. They don't want to change." Descartes nodded. "Yes, but change is inevitable. It is the nature of life." Jobs leaned forward. "And it's up to us to embrace that change and make the most of it." #wokegpt

Reason vs Senses: Descartes, Hobbes and John Locke #wokegpt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Descartes: I have been thinking about our previous conversations on the nature of reality. I still hold firm to my belief in the existence of an innate knowledge that is independent of sensory experience. Hobbes: Yes, I remember. I, on the other hand, believe that knowledge is acquired through sensory experience and that there is no innate knowledge. Descartes: But how can we trust our senses? Our senses can be deceived, as evidenced by optical illusions. Hobbes: I agree that our senses can be deceived, but we can still rely on them to give us a reliable understanding of the world around us. It is through our senses that we can perceive objects, and it is through our perceptions that we can form ideas. Descartes: I understand your point, but I believe that we must doubt everything we perceive through our senses. We must only trust that which we can know with certainty through reason. Hobbes: But reason alone cannot give us a complete understanding of the world. Our senses provide us with the empirical data that we need to form a complete picture of the world around us. Descartes: I agree that reason alone cannot give us a complete understanding of the world, but we must be cautious in relying solely on our senses. Our senses can be deceiving, and it is only through reason that we can truly know anything with certainty. Hobbes: I see your point, Descartes. However, I still believe that our senses play a crucial role in our understanding of the world. We must use both reason and sensory experience to form a complete understanding of the world. Descartes: I agree that both reason and sensory experience are important in our understanding of the world, but we must be careful in relying too heavily on our senses. It is only through reason that we can truly know anything with certainty. Descartes: Look who's here, Hobbes, it's John Locke. Locke: Hi guys, sorry I'm late. Had a hard time finding the place. Hobbes: You should've used your innate knowledge, Locke. Descartes (chuckles): Or maybe you need to rely on your senses a bit more, Locke. Locke (smiling): Well, it's good to see you both. What are we discussing today? Hobbes: We were just discussing the nature of reality and the role of innate knowledge versus sensory experience. Locke: Ah, I see. I'm inclined to agree with Hobbes here. I believe that knowledge comes from sensory experience and that there is no innate knowledge. Descartes: But how do you explain the universality of some knowledge, such as mathematical truths? Locke: Well, I believe that even mathematical truths are learned through sensory experience. For example, we learn the concept of two objects being added together by seeing two objects physically combined. Hobbes: I see your point, Locke. But what about the idea of tabula rasa, that the mind is a blank slate at birth? Locke: Yes, I believe that the mind is a blank slate at birth, but it is through our experiences that we gain knowledge and form ideas. Descartes: Interesting perspective, Locke. But I still believe that there is some innate knowledge that exists independently of sensory experience. Hobbes: And I still believe that we must rely on our senses to gain knowledge about the world. Locke (smiling): It seems like we have some fundamental differences in opinion here, but it's always good to engage in philosophical discussions with you both. Descartes: Likewise, Locke. And next time, try to use Google Maps before coming here, will you? (All three laugh) Hobbes: Ah, Descartes, always the funny one. Locke: He's got jokes, that one. Joe Rogan (laughing): And that's the beauty of philosophy, folks. Even if we can't all agree, we can still have a good time discussing these ideas.

Don't hate me, I'm just testing nostr character limits! Bitcoin Cash — Semi-centralized, Bitcoin-pegged, Scalable, Instant, Anonymous Electronic Cash System nopara73 adam.ficsor73@gmail.com www.github.com/nopara73 Abstract. A semi-centralized version of electronic cash would allow online Bitcoin payments to be sent from one party to another instantly, anonymously and free of charge without the permission of the backing financial institution. Chaumian e-cash provides part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is, that is required to prevent double-spending is not accountable. Our smaller contribution in this paper we propose an improvement to the accountability problem using a semi-centralized system. The system accepts Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals, similarly to custodial Bitcoin wallets. Contrary to these systems the backbone of the Bitcoin Cash wallet, in short b-cash wallet backbone is required to expose its master public key to the public. Therefore anyone can see the activity of this watch-only wallet on the Bitcoin Blockchain. Furthermore anyone who deposits and withdraws can independently verify the addresses are derived from the seed extended public key. Properly utilizing the accountability of the Bitcoin network is a major improvement to the accountability of centralized systems, however it is not a complete solution. The b-cash wallet backbone can still inflate the money supply, however it has less leg room for that. This improvement on Chaumian e-cash is not the main innovation of b-cash. From another point of view, b-cash is a second layer Bitcoin scaling solution, that has a side effect of enabling instant, anonymous transactions within its system for free of charge. The anonymity properties of Bitcoin Cash is orders of magnitude stronger, than the anonymity any decentralized or peer to peer network can hope to achieve. Thus the internal b-cash transactions cannot be prevented by the central issuer, since the central issuer is a blindly signing entity, it does not hold any information on the transaction, other than the fact that a transaction happened at a given time with a given value. 1. Introduction Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties and peer-to-peer cryptocurrencies to process electronic payments. While the both systems are satisfying different needs and together they work well enough for most transactions, they still suffer from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based models and blockchains. Completely non-reversible transactions are only possible for high transaction costs, due to inherent design problems of open, permissionless, peer-to peer blockchains. On the other hand, financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for nonreversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party. What is needed is an electronic payment system, that brings the best of both Worlds, with minimal compromises, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party. While other second layer scaling solution had been proposed, such as Lightning Network, they are complex and need time to be implemented and to mature. With Chaumian Bitcoin Cash, these financial institutions are also incapable of mediating disputes, because of the lack of transaction information they know about. Unlike the Lightning Network, Chaumian b-cash can be abused by fractional reserve, but it is orders of magnitude less complex and orders of magnitude more fungible. 2. Transactions We define an electronic coin as a digital serial number. Every one of these serial numbers represent 0.0001 bitcoin, otherwise known as 1 finney. Introducing multiple denominations are possible. Each owner transfers the coin to the next by sending some of his serial numbers to the payee. The problem of course is the payee can’t verify that one of the owners did not double-spend the coin. A common solution is to introduce a trusted central authority, or mint, that checks every transaction for double spending. After each transaction, the coin must be returned to the mint to issue a new coin, and only coins issued directly from the mint are trusted not to be double-spent. The problem with this solution is that the fate of the entire money system depends on the company running the mint, with every transaction having to go through them, just like a bank. In Chaumian b-cash, we improve upon this scheme, by utilizing blind signing. With this, the payee can make the central issuer to reissue the coins to him anonymously. 3. Blind Signing Server The solution Chaumian e-cash proposes begins with a blind signing server. A blind signing server works by taking, newly generated, blinded serial numbers to be signed and the old, already signed serial numbers to be invalidated. The server verifies that the old serial numbers are valid, if they are, it signs the new, blinded serial numbers, marks the old ones used and responds to the client with the signatures. At last, these signatures are unblinded by the client and verified that they are properly signed. 4. Accountability And Decentralizing the Servers Deposits and withdrawals to the system happens on the Bitcoin network. The server must publish a master public key to provide complete transparency about its Bitcoin transactions and Bitcoin holdings. Utilizing Bitcoin’s multisig can further mitigate the risk of fractional reserve. theymos explains it in his post on Blinded bearer certificates: N people who are independent and widely considered trustworthy come together to create a multisig address. You need 80% (or whatever) of the N people to agree in order to send money secured by the multisig address. This multisig group is called “the bank”, though it ideally should not actually be a single monolithic organization, but rather a more decentralized selection of independent entities. Furthermore the server should make public every internal transaction it knows about. In this case, if the server tries to print more money, it would not go unnoticed. 5. Privacy The traditional banking model achieves a level of privacy by limiting access to information to the parties involved and the trusted third party. In Bitcoin the necessity to announce all transactions publicly precludes this method, but a form of privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone. Since the invention of Bitcoin, we learned this pseudonymity is fragile. Bitcoin Cash improves upon both Bitcoin and the traditional privacy model. b-cash gets as close as it is possible digitally to the privacy model of physical cash. 6. Incentive The third party, while it is not completely untrusted, it is less trusted than traditionally third parties are. Transactions happening within the b-cash network are semi-peer to peer. First b-cash users must exchange information with each other, then the payee must invalidate the payer’s coins with the help of a third party in a privacy preserving way. Because the server does not have any meta information about the transaction, the server cannot prevent or reverse transactions. The server does not know what serial numbers it signed, because it signed it blindly, therefore it does not know what serial numbers it has to withdraw from circulation in case of for example government intervention. 7. Conclusion We have proposed a system for electronic transactions that minimalizes trust. We started with the usual framework of coins made from digital serial numbers, which provides strong control of ownership, but is incomplete without a way to prevent double-spending. To solve this, centralized server to record a public history of transactions and a peer to peer network that exchanges value with each other, with anonymous help of the server. The network is robust in its unstructured simplicity. Transactions are instant and free. The fungibility properties this system achieves is better than any purely decentralized cryptocurrency can hope for. The server is more accountable, it has considerably less leg room to print money, than traditional financial institutions. Chaumian b-cash’s strong fungibility guarantees irreversible payments. References [1] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf [2] https://medium.com/@nopara73/chaumian-e-cash-for-custodial-bitcoin-wallets-and-services-to-scale-bitcoin-8977d9a03064 [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5ksu3o/blinded_bearer_certificates/ [4] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4xy0fm/scaling_quickly/ [5]

credlib - Credential Library

[6]

How To Make A Mint: The Cryptography of Anonymous Electronic Cash

[7]

Lightning Network

[8]

Ecash - Wikipedia

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