sgp_: Yeah, that's what Zcash people wanted to do, until someone talked to an actual lawyer.

Which is ironic, considering their penchant for "compliance"

sgp_:

> This committee will vote on the distribution and investment strategy of the MAGIC Monero Fund.

By investment strategy do you mean the allocation of funds across various cryptocurrencies, and possibly stocks and bonds and fiat?

Yup most things are fair game legally

Investments can get super complex into private equity, real estate, etc., but we won't do that. Just to give you an idea of how broad it could be

s/do/allow/

So it's like a grantmaking foundation.

Yeah it's a grant committee as a part of a broader public foundation

lol.

Charities can invest their assets (subject to some restrictions)

I looked at the website a while ago. I'll be frank and say that I think granting scholarships to undergraduate students probably isn't a good use a funds. A better use would be funding specific research projects, targeted at the graduate level.

But in theory they could decide to hold 100% in XMR, for example

Rucknium[m]: The Monero Fund funds are restricted funds that can only be spent on things approved by the community elected committee. MAGIC's grants to undergrads comes from it's own unrestricted funds

The MAGIC Monero Fund committee could decide to give a targeted graduate scholarship if they believe this is a good use of funds

<t-900-a> There are better solutions to storage than a fork of bitcoin w/ magnet links added

peertube? :)

The Fund has its own separate ledger

And if you donate to MAGIC its tax deductible right? (US)

Scholarships aren't great because they create no particular obligations. It's a good thing, too, because Sarang's PhD research was partially funded by the U.S. Department of Defense 🧐

Yup, deductible in any case whether you donate to MAGIC's unrestricted ledger or the MAGIC Monero Fund ledger

Its a no brainer!

Ive heard someone called Justin say that some exchanges wants to 'donate' money to 'Monero' but need some kind of tax deductible avenue

The biggest con is that we need the TIN of every grant recipient. No way around that; the IRS wants its cut

Just trying to be clear about that, so contributors can be anon to the committee and to the public, but MAGIC needs the TIN

sgp_: I think it's fine. Different strokes for different folks. There are plenty of non-KYC avenues for funding, anyway

Aye.

Feedback seems quite positive then overall. Main thing appears to be making sure that there's little unnecessary, unproductive infighting

Next step seems to be to bring this feedback up with the board, and then schedule an information/feedback session if we decide to move forward

sgp_: Here's what I think the fund should fund: Brainstorm about open research questions that MRL may be able to identify. The efficacy of churning is one recent example. Then form a Request For Proposal(s) based on these questions and then post them to the academic grants databases...

And also specifically reach out to researchers who have already written a substantial amount about Monero.

Rucknium[m]: I havent followed the prior conversations, just hijacking half-understanding. Privacy preserving interest matching, in the context of a p2p network, for example strongly connecting the peers trading the same pairs without disclosing which pairs they're trading publicly, is something I have some pointers from the people from p2p collab, but havent deeply

researched. I supposed it could be an attractive topic for some researchers, if you can add that to your notes :D

zkao: Thanks. I may have a non-Monero application for that. CashFusion, BCH's CoinJoin protocol, is right now set up to run through centralized servers. However, recently it has seemingly been DDoS'ed. Do you think any of your p2p work could help? See

sgp_: are MAGIC grants open to non-US residents/scholars as well? i only ask as education on the whole is far cheaper (as far as i understand it) in Europe then the US, so one might get more value.

Anyone ever bought XMR or any other crypto in Japan?

My mate says it seems pretty impossible. Have they pretty much made it illegal there?

midipoet: might ask ferretinjapan - might know something?

will look out for them

I think Japan is one of the few jurisdictions which forbids exchanges from dealing with "privacy coins"

midipoet,

and this is not on the banking level like say Australia

its from the protectors of the people themselves

so to your mate

tell him to move to veepeenystan or Torystan and he'll be fine

Standalone GUI for comit atomic swaps 👀👀👀

\o/

٩(♡ε♡ )۶

<midipoet> "sgp_: are MAGIC grants open to..." <- They haven't been but they will be this upcoming year

sgp_: nice

Reminder that if you want to help make Monero Memes, please join #monero-memes:monero.social ! We are always looking for new 🔥 memes to post from the @MoneroMemes Twitter/Instagram/Facebook account.

Memes are excellent for engagement

Hey Rucknium, do you have any numbers on what portion of users would be affected by your statistical attack? And how they would be affected?

I'm asking because I see the reddit community reacting poorly, and I think you may get a better response if you can state the risk in terms of numbers instead of letting their imaginations run too wild with speculation.

BusyBoredom: I do have specific numbers. I am hesitant to release them, though, since the numbers may give CipherTrace, Chainalysis, etc. more information about the attack than we would like them to have.

I think it makes sense to clearly distinguish between two decisions. They are:

1) Fund my CCS research proposal

2) Implement the results of the research in code

We can move forward with (1), keeping the public release of information low, and after the problem is better understood, more information can be released at the point that we need to make a decision on (2). I alone will not be making a decision on (2), of course. It will sort of be out of my hands at that point -- although of course I will provide any information requested to the devs and other researchers.

Well we definitely need people involved in the VRP who have read the report to vouch for or against (1)

sgp_: did you read it yet?

No I don't have it

I can also imagine a scenario in which the full mechanics of OSPEAD are not released, but the devs, MRL, Core, etc develop an advisory about past transactions in which it is clarified what types of txs may be vulnerable to attack, ex post

sgp_: moneromooo managed the VRP process. He has already said that I should go ahead with the research project.

In fact, I believe his works were "Just fucking fix it"

>If it were me, I'd just fucking fix it and move to the next thing

in general VRP and CCS are separate

I assume core will have access to the report. They will be able to decide if it makes sense to fund the research proposal. If your report is valid (which I assume it is) there is no reason why it wouldn't get funded.

selsta: I see. Thanks for clarifying.

Rucknium[m]: this being a statistical attack I assume you can't de-anonymize a single transaction with certainty?

de-anonymize meaning finding real spend

It _is_ probabilistic. But keep in mind that, for instance, physicists only know that the Higgs boson exists probabilistically. And CERN spend billions of Euros to "prove" it. Probability is all about magnitudes.

To be clear, I am not saying the attack will yield Higgs-boson-level probabilities.

what about higgs-bosons?

Tracing a transparent chain like BTC is also probabilistic, anyway -- keep in mind.

<Rucknium[m]> "Tracing a transparent chain like..." <- Assuming good opsec and mixing yes.