Yonatan Sompolinsky

sovereignty as a service

I miss America

since many (~4) asked me about the zcash bug - - - earlier this year I had this convo with a zcash core dev:

zk: it's weird that kaspa is pruning past records
me: why does it need to keep 'em?
zk: the whole point of ledgers is to prove correctness of all state transitions
me: the whole point of ledgers is to provide focal points for the consensus state
zk: the whole point...
me: hmm then why did you come work in zcash? you know the Sprout->Sapling counterfeiting bug
zk: Turnstile guarantees that the counterfeit could have been very limited
me: true but you still cannot prove or even reason about correct state transitions besides the total supply cap
zk: that's actually a good point

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the most hardcore cryptography coin is shifting away from correctness proofs to practical-enough proofs. I believe this is a step in the right+practical direction, yet the paradigm shift should not go unnoticed - -cryptography is giving way to consensus.

if you came to zcash for cryptographic integrity, reconsider. there are many good reasons to root for zcash prospering. zcash is serving a more important role than bitcoin, whose utility for the original mission is by now blurry. cryptographic integrity is/should not be one of those reasons.

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BTW the bug should definitely have been exploited. I don't know the personal values of Taylor Hornby, and I shouldn't be required to make the effort to learn them. I only know that if I found such an exploit, it wouldn't take me more than a few minutes to tempt myself into printing a longint amount of ZEC and deciding later what to do with it.

I wouldn't necessarily use it to exit the pool immediately and corrupt the supply, I'd wait to see if some portion of the broken pool does not seem to migrate on time (probably lost funds), in which case I would not think twice before claiming the funds myself.

you could argue that no harm done, and you might be right, but then again you are here -- in zcash / in crypto -- for its consensus dynamics, the ability to coordinate interests and convictions across different trust zones around some shared asset; not for some pristine mathematical integrity.

fam: its been like 13 years, figured youd move on by now.

me:

Highly recommended, Covenant + SilverScript + Chess (!!) webinar @michaelsuttonil & @OriNewman

In 30 minutes @ discord.gg/kaspa meeting-room