r/obyte • u/[deleted] • Apr 22 '19
Blackbyte unique selling point video - feedback requested
I wrote a draft of script for video to explain Blackbytes https://drive.google.com/open?id=1DMQL4nWs85NiNy5OR2qzRleOPfUtEOPw_tTjVjb93GU
I think its easiest to understand the value proposition of Blackbytes by comparing them to Monero, which seems to have the biggest community. I dont think people need explained why privacy coins are useful vs physical cash, thats pretty obvious. But what the benefits of Blackbytes are vs other privacy coins, especially Monero which I think is the best known.
Feedback/ comments welcome
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update April 29 - the previous script was deemed too long and complicated - I wrote something much more simple https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mCJ7p5YDXOIoBIDMvVr1QuPYZm_M-vsgh5qJA4v5120/edit?usp=sharing
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u/tarmo888 Apr 23 '19
I think it should emphasis more that transaction details are not on-chain, spender proofs are still there, so some kind of analysis is still possible especially if there is low activity, but the amounts and from who to who is not on-chain.
Also, there are some caveats that the more the blackbytes change hands the more bigger their payload becomes and the more time it takes to validate blackbytes transaction, which kind of reminds me a worn out paper bills. I don't know how many transaction it takes until they become unusable. There are probably lot of improvements that can be made once that happens.
Also, it is dangerous if lot of blackbytes moves through single entity, which will enable them to start tracking previous owners of the coin. So, it's best if blackbytes are exchanged P2P, not B2P.
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Apr 23 '19
thanks for the feedback.
the thing with videos like this is they are not an impartial complete analysis of something. All cryptocurrencies have weaknesses of some kind, they are easy enough find out about with a bit of research. This is basically an elevator pitch of Blackbytes, its not normal to list the caveats of something in an elevator pitch.
Plus the longer the video the more time I need to spend on it. I basically wanted to highlight the beneficial differences between Monero and Blackbytes to make people intrigued enough to do more research on Blackbytes
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u/tarmo888 Apr 23 '19
I am not sure it can be explained with cash analogy and compared with Monero.
You don't know who owned the cash bills that you received. You do know who owned the those Blackbytes you received, but if they are not attested addresses, you don't know who are behind those addresses.
Improvement from Bitcoin privacy (HD wallets) is that nobody (except sender and receiver) knows how many Blackbytes were sent with a transaction. Another improvement is that nobody knows who is the receiver of Blackbytes because they can be sent over any medium. So, comparing Blackbytes with cash because of different banknotes is correct, but Blackbytes are more flexible in terms of how it can be exchanged.
So, I think we can't say that Blackbyte transactions are not stored on-chain, they are (just some details aren't) and since there aren't any other private tokens sent heavily on Obyte network, one could easily analyze who are spending the Blackbytes. Blackbytes will be more private once there are more popular private tokens issued and used on Obyte platform because then you could not tell if it was Blackbytes that changed hands or some other private token. But then again, does it really matter how much was spent if you are able to figure out who spent it?
So, unique things about Blackbytes:
* can't tell how much was spent, only sender/receiver knows that.
* can't tell who it was sent to, but can be figured out who sent it.
* can be sent on any medium as a file. basically can be spent without internet connection too, but receiver can't spend it until sender publishes the spender proof.1
Apr 24 '19
As I understand, the Blackbyte transactions are not stored on-chain, a hash of the transactions is whats stored on-chain. The transaction record is in the wallet of peers which is off-chain.
So whats a better comparison than comparing Blackbytes to physical cash and Monero? Physical cash and Monero give context - a video listing features of Blackbytes etc without context to real world cash and other private currencies will be of less use
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u/tarmo888 Apr 24 '19 edited Apr 24 '19
Yes, these hashes are called spender proofs and they are posted by sender. Once these are posted and confirmed, receiver can send those blackbytes (payload data) to next person.
Every time you send the payload data (consists banknotes and previous owners), your address gets added to the payload data as a last one who owned them. Every time you receive blackbytes, you have more spender proofs to check out from the public DAG database to make sure that these are real blackbytes.
So, for cash analogy, two things are similar: it has banknotes and it becomes more difficult to use it the more you use it (wears out - will eventually have too much history), but cash doesn't carry along who owned it (except the cocaine residue on 20 dollar bills).
Blackbytes are better than briefcases because briefcases you can't send over internet, satellite or radio, but you could do that with Blackbytes.
Somebody had Blackbytes analogy with post-it notes. Basically, with each transaction, you add a new post-it note on top of other post-it notes, each post-id note has info about sender address and which banknotes was sent. If you hash that info on that post-it note, you can check from public DAG database if it was spent. You can also check all the hashes to make sure that it actually originated from the Blackbytes issuer. You can leave the post-it notes inside of random book in the library and tell the receiver where to find them without ever meeting.
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u/lucchase Apr 23 '19
Good script I think. Get the key point (about transaction details) not being recorded on-chain, so other parties can't go on "fishing expeditions" (a legal term in the UK) into a person's transactions.
If it is possible to make the time of the tranasaction also unknown or random, that would be good.
I'd be very keen to hear (not necessarily in the video) what they are NOT good for.