Hi,
I first ran into incognito when @andrey stopped by a booth I was running with one of your nodes at the coinmarketcap conference in Singapore. I’ve always had a huge soft spot for hardware, since it makes all the software tangible. We had a great conversation. Incognito struck me as the most unique project I’d heard of at that event.
I’ve been kinda-following since then, but took a more renewed interest after running into @jason at cryptoecon2020 in Hanoi.
Since then I’ve quizzed Andrey and Jason about the software, made a wallet, shielded some Bitcoin, and bought some PRV. I even got awarded some PRV for my forum post, which I thought was really cool. Nice community-building touch that puts some small funds in the hands of users and ensures that they can get to know the software even without a direct spend.
So, yeah, I’m interested. Privacy tech is badly needed in our space. I’m sure I still have a ton to learn about this project, so I’m starting with all of the hardest questions I can think of. Please feel free to answer in hyperlink form, if these questions have been answered elsewhere on the forum.
1) Can you tell me the story of PRV (the token), from Genesis?
Who got what, for what, et cetera is what I’m looking for here.
- Is this auditable?
Partial answer found here:
https://incognito.org/t/prv-holders/
2) Is the supply of PRV auditable?
3) Is there an entity behind the project?
For example, steem had stinc, cosmos had Tendermint, and Ethereum had the ethereum foundation.
- If there is an entity, what portion of the token supply does it hold?
Partial answer found here:
https://incognito.org/t/prv-holders/
But I have seen mention of a foundation in the forum.
4) The fixed nodes:
- Who runs them?
- Are they geo-distributed?
- What percentage of them can go down, and the network will still function?
- What happens to the network and funds on it if they are taken down?
- What do they do precisely?
- In terms of risk, please compare the fixed nodes to the Iota coordinator.
5) I’ve linked my wallet to this forum account, and my real name, as well. Is it like…
- Only the private key holder can view balances?
- What can someone learn if they only have my address?
6) The Bitcoin trusted link currently in use:
- Who am I trusting by using it? A company? A person? The node network?
- How many machines have access to the relevant private keys?
- Are the machines running this peg geo-distributed?
- Could an adversary (privacy has many adversaries) seize or destroy all of the machines where these keys are kept? How difficult would that be?
- How much longer will the trusted setup be used?
7) Sharting
One time I sharted badly and had to change my pants!
…so I am a little afraid of sharding technology. I worry that it adds unneeded complexity. I’ve been pretty vocal that I think the sharding effort at ethereum has been a big folly.
How vocal, you ask?
This vocal:
(Luckily, that’s not actually me in the photo!)
At the same time, I recognize that no current single-chain/monolithic design (POW and POS alike) can scale to the levels that will soon be needed to support cryptocurrency transactions.
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Can you ease me into how your sharding implementation works?
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Do shards have independent economies at all?
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Is there a plan to support smart contracts, where a contract on shard A may need to fetch data stored on shard B?
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Since there are currently 8 shards, can you explain to me their relative roles, or do they all do the same thing, and each shard just adds additional capacity to the network?
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Can we do a real-world stress test right on mainnet by setting up a script or somesuch between some machines to fire PRV at one another at high speeds? This would do wonders to ease my concerns.
8) Inflation is currently running at 50%.
- Is the plan to do something kind of like what monero did, with very high initial inflation and then much lower inflation over time?
Answered in detail here:
https://incognito.org/t/prv-holders/
- Is the supply curve documented anywhere?
Answered in detail here:
https://incognito.org/t/prv-holders/
9) Coinmarketcap/coingecko
I wasn’t able to get a read on prices anywhere other than the pDEX.
Is PRV on any kind of “price listing” site or is the only market the pdex?
Only market is the pdex. Found here:
https://incognito.org/t/prv-holders/
10) pDEX
- Does the pdex live on the same infrastructure that runs the blockchain?
- Why do I need to move funds from my wallet into the pDEX?
- What’s the relationship between the chain and the pDEX?
- Is the pdex something that runs on the incognito chain?
11) what does this mean?
12) What does it mean to become a liquidity provider?
13) Taint
Tainted coins could enter the system. I should say that I don’t personally subscribe to the “tainted coin” theory-- Bitcoin, the protocol has no concept of taint whatsoever. To Bitcoin, they’re all just bitcoins.
Sadly, we live in a world where tainted coins are aggressively tracked, and even refused service at some exchanges.
- Is doing a coinjoin on the way in or on the way out a possible solution to the taint issue? Is that way too complex to implement?
14) How did @Jong’s BTC get lost?
Receiving coins from external wallet anonymously
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How can we have a system where BTC get lost, ever?
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The private key to that wallet was actually destroyed or…?
This doesn’t seem reliable or scalable. System should be built around the reality that bitcoiners pay low fees and don’t mind waiting many blocks.
Thank you very much for your answers to these hard questions, and being such a wonderfully welcoming community.
Cheers!
-Jacob
PS: I plan to set up a vnode tomorrow. Let’s dance!