Proposal “PrivateSend-De-Anonymization-Contest“ (Closed)Back
| Title: | Dash $100,000 PrivateSend De-Anonymization Contest |
| Owner: | DashDude |
| Monthly amount: | 99 DASH (2919 USD) |
| Completed payments: | no payments occurred yet (4 month remaining) |
| Payment start/end: | 2017-09-18 / 2018-01-16 (added on 2017-09-20) |
| Final voting deadline: | in passed |
| Votes: | 524 Yes / 317 No / 147 Abstain |
Proposal description
Problem Statement: Dash has a robust, protocol level coin mixing service called PrivateSend, but it is frequently dismissed as inadequate by those favoring other coins such as Monero, Zcash and others.
Proposal Description and Goal: The purpose of this program is to create a Contest and Public Relations event to challenge people to determine where coins in a PrivateSend transaction originated from. The purpose of this is two fold:
The Contest will offer a prize worth up to $100,000 USD, paid in the winner's choice of cryptocurrency, to someone who can successfully determine the originating address of a small quantity of DASH in an address given out to the public.
Example:
Prize Schedule:
The contest will begin with a prize of $25,000 and then increase by $25,000 each quarter until a maximum prize of $100,000 is reached as follows:
Start of Contest to 3 Months: $25,000
3 to 6 months: $50,000
6 to 9 months: $75,000
9 to 12 months: $100,000
To help keep the contest impartial, I will arrange for a 3 person panel of prominent members of the crypto community to serve as contest judges. These people will not be generally connected to the Dash community. I will target members of the Bitcoin community to be judges to elevate Dash awareness among Bitcoin users.
As an incentive, at the conclusion of the contest the judges will each receive a donation of 100 Dash to be paid to the charity of their choice. The charitable donations will be made whether the contest prize is claimed or not.
How to make this a viral PR Event:
This is intended to be a big PR event and not just a simple bug bounty.
Rules for claiming Contest Prize:
To claim the contest prize, the winner must do the following:
I will work closely with the Dash core team to coordinate efforts. I will also coordinate PR or provide content to Dash Force News or others as appropriate. @mastermined
Upon approval of this proposal the administrator of Dash.org shall create a contest landing page at Dash.org for promotion and execution of the proposal. PO will provide the content for the landing page.
Duration of Contest: The contest will run for a period of 12 months.
Why Now? This is a critical time in the crypto community with news about Bitcoin forks taking all of the headlines. A new fork for "Bitcoin Cash" with 8 MB blocks and a stance toward on chain scaling was recently created. Another Bitcoin fork may come in October/November.
These forks more closely compete with Dash for the "digital cash" market segment so this is a good time to highlight Dash's advantages over these new Bitcoin forks and other digital cash coins. This contest helps to accomplish this by creating a PR coup to take some of the headlines back for Dash.
Program Risks:
Program Funding Request:
Contest prize - will only be requested from treasury if needed to be paid to contest winner. Dash will be converted into the cryptocurrency of the winner's choice.
Charitable donations - 300 Dash (100 Dash each to be paid to the charity of the judges respective choice.)
Program promotional material development, judge recruitment, communications and program management - 80 Dash
Escrow fee - 10 Dash
Proposal fee reimbursement - 5 Dash
Total Request: 395 Dash
Treasury Payment Schedule (into escrow):
98.75 Dash per month for 4 months - 395 Dash total. An escrow service will receive the treasury payments and hold them until they are ready to be disbursed.
Escrow holder: Green Candle Inc. (greencandle.io)
Background: Green Candle is an Canadian Incorporation formed by @coingun to act as an intermediary between proposal owners and the Dash network.
Milestone Payment Schedule
Month 1: 5 Dash - proposal fee reimbursement to PO and 10 Dash to Green Candle for escrow fee
Month 2: 80 Dash to PO following launch of contest
Month 12: From escrow to judges charities at the conclusion of the program - 300 Dash
From escrow to contest winner (only if necessary) - up to $100,000 worth of Dash depending on date claimed.​
Proposal Owner: Allow me to introduce myself. I've been into crypto about 2 years and am a reformed Bitcoin maximalist. I got bitten by the DASH bug recently because of all it's great features and all of the governance problems I see with Bitcoin. I bought my first DASH a few months ago.
I'm writing under a new handle DashDude, but for full transparency my name is Steve Dussault. I'm a professional working as a Sr. Product Manager in heavy industry with many years of blue chip company experience. I have extensive experience introducing new high-tech products worldwide and working to increase their market share and profitability.
My LinkedIn Profile
Link to pre-proposal and discussion.
Edit: Bonus due to strong Dash price:
If the price of Dash is above $284 when the contest launches, I will also research and develop an infographic to highlight Dash's competitive position against Litecoin - something many have requested from me already. I will also translate it into 9 other languages in addition to English for a total of 10 infographics.
For reference, please see this infographic I did previously called the "10 Stupid Things People Say About Dash".
Thanks for your consideration and your votes!
Steve
Proposal Description and Goal: The purpose of this program is to create a Contest and Public Relations event to challenge people to determine where coins in a PrivateSend transaction originated from. The purpose of this is two fold:
- First, this gives the Dash community ammunition to effectively respond to challenges that Dash isn't private enough. We can publicly challenge anyone who thinks PrivateSend is weak to try to claim the prize by breaking the anonymity.
- Secondly, this is designed to be a huge PR event where we can promote Dash generally by publicly organizing, announcing and discussing the ongoing status and conclusion of the Contest.
The Contest will offer a prize worth up to $100,000 USD, paid in the winner's choice of cryptocurrency, to someone who can successfully determine the originating address of a small quantity of DASH in an address given out to the public.
Example:
- an unspecified quantity of Dash is in a wallet in address(es) A
- the dash is mixed using an unspecified number of PrivateSend rounds
- 0.1 Dash is sent in a PrivateSend transaction to address B
- address B is given to the public with a challenge to determine the address(es) A where it originated from before PrivateSend mixing began
Prize Schedule:
The contest will begin with a prize of $25,000 and then increase by $25,000 each quarter until a maximum prize of $100,000 is reached as follows:
Start of Contest to 3 Months: $25,000
3 to 6 months: $50,000
6 to 9 months: $75,000
9 to 12 months: $100,000
To help keep the contest impartial, I will arrange for a 3 person panel of prominent members of the crypto community to serve as contest judges. These people will not be generally connected to the Dash community. I will target members of the Bitcoin community to be judges to elevate Dash awareness among Bitcoin users.
As an incentive, at the conclusion of the contest the judges will each receive a donation of 100 Dash to be paid to the charity of their choice. The charitable donations will be made whether the contest prize is claimed or not.
How to make this a viral PR Event:
This is intended to be a big PR event and not just a simple bug bounty.
- Preference will be given to judges with substantial social media presence
- Involving members of the other crypto communities as judges will gain Dash exposure to a wide crypto audience.
- Offering a contest with a significant prize demonstrates to all how the Dash treasury system can do things that other coins can't do
- Offering a prize that increases each quarter makes the contest more newsworthy with fresh opportunities to discuss the new larger contest prize.
- When promoting the contest we now have an excuse to go into "home forums" of other coins and gently plug the Dash contest
- This gives Dash Force News and everyone else covering the crypto space something interesting to talk about to help increase Dash awareness
- The contest improves confidence in the PrivateSend technology in a way that is more meaningful than simply just claiming "ours is the best."
- Charitable donations will be paid in Dash expanding Dash awareness in the non-profit community.
Rules for claiming Contest Prize:
To claim the contest prize, the winner must do the following:
- enter by sending an email to PrivateSendContest@protonmail.com including "I won!" in the subject line. Communications should include an English translation if necessary. The size of the prize will be determined by the prize in effect when the entry email is received. Entries should include their choice of cryptocurrency and the payment address to receive any prize winnings. The conversion rate between the nominal USD prize and the cryptocurrency of the winner's choice to receive payment will be locked at the time the winning entry email is received by the contest administrator and at their sole discretion. Winner's choice of cryptocurrency must be among those supported by Shapeshift.io.
- correctly identify the originating address(es) of the PrivateSend transaction before the mixing started
- reveal the method by which the PrivateSend transaction was de-anonymized in sufficient detail to convince at least 2 of the 3 judges that the anonymity was effectively compromised.
- simply making a correct address guess will not be sufficient to claim the prize
- the method used to de-anonymize the transaction must tie the origin and destination addresses together either directly or by greater than a 50% chance if using probabilistic methods
- the DASH core team will have a least 14 days to review any de-anonymization method and provide a technical opinion to contest judges
- any discovered PrivateSend vulnerability must be confidentially disclosed according to Responsible Disclosure principles in order to receive the contest prize.
- contest entrants must supply an email address in case any questions regarding the de-anonymization methodology arise. Email addresses will not be used for any other purpose and will be destroyed following the conclusion of the contest.
- If the contest prize is won it will be paid within 60 days.
- entries not meeting the criteria above will be considered Spam and deleted
- The contest announcement to the public will contain a cryptographic signature of a message which reveals the origination of the PrivateSend transaction funds (the solution to the contest). In the event of a dispute regarding the correct solution to the contest the signature may be used to verify the solution.
- No member of the Dash core team or anyone involved with the contest in any way, including the judges may claim the prize.
- If at least 2 of the 3 judges agree that the contest has been won following 14 days technical consultation with the Dash core team, judges agree that Dash will make the announcement regarding the conclusion of the program taking Responsible Disclosure principles into consideration.
I will work closely with the Dash core team to coordinate efforts. I will also coordinate PR or provide content to Dash Force News or others as appropriate. @mastermined
Upon approval of this proposal the administrator of Dash.org shall create a contest landing page at Dash.org for promotion and execution of the proposal. PO will provide the content for the landing page.
Duration of Contest: The contest will run for a period of 12 months.
Why Now? This is a critical time in the crypto community with news about Bitcoin forks taking all of the headlines. A new fork for "Bitcoin Cash" with 8 MB blocks and a stance toward on chain scaling was recently created. Another Bitcoin fork may come in October/November.
These forks more closely compete with Dash for the "digital cash" market segment so this is a good time to highlight Dash's advantages over these new Bitcoin forks and other digital cash coins. This contest helps to accomplish this by creating a PR coup to take some of the headlines back for Dash.
Program Risks:
- It would obviously be an embarrassment if someone actually won this contest by de-anonymizing Dash. Need the core team to ensure that all known PrivateSend vulnerabilities have been addressed. This risk can be mitigated by correcting a discovered vulnerability and then launching a fresh contest with a doubled prize.
- It is possible that a contest judge or other person may leak the origination address(es) or otherwise have the address(es) exposed due to security problems. This isn't really a concern since claiming the prize requires demonstrating how the source and destination addresses are linked.
Program Funding Request:
Contest prize - will only be requested from treasury if needed to be paid to contest winner. Dash will be converted into the cryptocurrency of the winner's choice.
Charitable donations - 300 Dash (100 Dash each to be paid to the charity of the judges respective choice.)
Program promotional material development, judge recruitment, communications and program management - 80 Dash
Escrow fee - 10 Dash
Proposal fee reimbursement - 5 Dash
Total Request: 395 Dash
Treasury Payment Schedule (into escrow):
98.75 Dash per month for 4 months - 395 Dash total. An escrow service will receive the treasury payments and hold them until they are ready to be disbursed.
Escrow holder: Green Candle Inc. (greencandle.io)
Background: Green Candle is an Canadian Incorporation formed by @coingun to act as an intermediary between proposal owners and the Dash network.
Milestone Payment Schedule
Month 1: 5 Dash - proposal fee reimbursement to PO and 10 Dash to Green Candle for escrow fee
Month 2: 80 Dash to PO following launch of contest
Month 12: From escrow to judges charities at the conclusion of the program - 300 Dash
From escrow to contest winner (only if necessary) - up to $100,000 worth of Dash depending on date claimed.​
Proposal Owner: Allow me to introduce myself. I've been into crypto about 2 years and am a reformed Bitcoin maximalist. I got bitten by the DASH bug recently because of all it's great features and all of the governance problems I see with Bitcoin. I bought my first DASH a few months ago.
I'm writing under a new handle DashDude, but for full transparency my name is Steve Dussault. I'm a professional working as a Sr. Product Manager in heavy industry with many years of blue chip company experience. I have extensive experience introducing new high-tech products worldwide and working to increase their market share and profitability.
My LinkedIn Profile
Link to pre-proposal and discussion.
Edit: Bonus due to strong Dash price:
If the price of Dash is above $284 when the contest launches, I will also research and develop an infographic to highlight Dash's competitive position against Litecoin - something many have requested from me already. I will also translate it into 9 other languages in addition to English for a total of 10 infographics.
For reference, please see this infographic I did previously called the "10 Stupid Things People Say About Dash".
Thanks for your consideration and your votes!
Steve
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Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?
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solarguy
This job is both very expensive -- a small annual salary's worth of Dash per judge! -- and, if executed incorrectly, could be extremely embarrassing for DASH.
I really like the idea, though, and I'd like if you put in a smaller, less-crucial proposal in the future so that we may try you out as an employee.
To improve your confidence in me I'd like to point out that I spent around 80 hours carefully refining this proposal over a two month period and turning it into the detailed, robust proposal before you. As a result of this careful preparation there have been very few objections to the way it has been proposed for implementation.
When the blocksci paper came out in the middle of this two month pre-proposal period I reviewed the details personally and also consulted with moocowmoo to ensure that PrivateSend remained robust and that the Dash community would not be embarrassed. I might add that any failure would be embarrassing to me personally as well!
I also anticipated concerns about my newness in the Dash community in advance which is why I proactively sought out escrow service before anyone suggested it, even though very few proposals use escrow currently. I consider it a best practice and wanted to lead Dash toward this improvement! I also provided my LinkedIn profile with my real life identity.
Managing a project of this size is well within my area of comfort. I am typically accustomed to managing programs with a few more zeros after them! This is small by comparison. Again, please peruse my LinkedIn profile. I would not survive in the industry and position I'm in if I were not capable of executing projects like this.
I have also already completed a small, non-crucial job for Dash. Please see this infographic that I produced called the "10 Stupid Things People Say About Dash" located here: https://i.imgur.com/YrpuSpZ.png
I did not ask MNOs for any funding for this so there is no proposal, but it is still an introductory job for the community. I might add that it has been well received and has been viewed over 6,700 times already! Hopefully it helped to convert some of the many new members we are seeing.
The size of the contributions to the judge's charities you mentioned are large by design. First, it will help to recruit the best, most prominent judges for maximum PR value. Second, it is an overt demonstration of the strength of the Dash network which will be emphasized in the contest communication strategy. I'm a big thinker and I didn't want to make this a lukewarm effort at a time when the treasury can afford to do something revolutionary!
I want the Dash marketcap to overtake Litecoin, Ripple and Bitcoin Cash within the next 12 months. A big move like what I'm proposing here will help us accomplish that, but it takes courage. A longer period for us to get to know one another better might feel good, but the delay will be costly. The time to attack is now!
Putting your faith in me and voting yes for this proposal will be a sound decision. If any MNO is on the fence and wishes to speak with me on the phone personally I would be happy to do so. Just PM me in the forum or slack.
Thanks again for your trust and consideration!
Do you remember when XM radio was significantly larger than Sirius? Then Sirius made a huge, expensive deal to get Howard Stern and grabbed the publicity and the momentum. A short time later Sirius had gained share and was able to acquire their XM rival.
I want this to be Dash's Howard Stern moment!
in appropriate forums? Universities, security forums, etc.
I think it is important that some of these funds be dedicated to promoting the contest. And it has not been detailed in the budget.
Thank you for your proposal
Thank you for your interest in this proposal and your consideration.
Hi Fluffy!
solarguy
Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=TElvM3V7sO0
You are fighting trolls. No matter what you do it will never be enough to convince alot of these people. They will still nitpick about how all the masternodes are owned by one person and he can see all the private send transactions. They are delusional, and in my opinion, there is no point in blowing valuable money trying to convince them of anything.
I've already put a ton of effort into this and received a lot of help and effort from the community as well. I think this contest would be a great boost for Dash and I want to make it easier for MNOs to vote yes, even if the price of Dash remains strong. Therefore, I've decided to improve the value side of this proposal.
If the price of Dash is above $284 when the contest launches, I will also research and develop an infographic to highlight Dash's competitive position against Litecoin - something many have requested already. I will also translate it into 9 other languages in addition to English for a total of 10 infographics.
For reference, please see this infographic I did previously called the "10 Stupid Things People Say About Dash" located here: https://i.imgur.com/YrpuSpZ.png
Again, I really want to see this move forward and I don't want to see Dash's rising price act as an impediment so I hope this value sweetener will make it easy to vote Yes!
The administration cost is not unreasonable. Are we not willing to pay a decent wage to the thoughtful, creative, innovative people that push the Dash ecosystem forward? If you hired a PR firm with the technical chops to design and administer this properly, I can assure you it would only cost more.
solarguy on the forums
I also expect a month's worth of work to set up the landing page, promote the contest and to get 3 high profile judges from outside the Dash community. I expect most judge candidates will decline due to not wanting to be associated with Dash due to other allegiances or just not being familiar with Dash at all.
I expect another 2-4 weeks worth of ongoing work to manage the contest throughout it's one year lifespan and to manage the charitable payouts at the close of the contest. Don't forget that this contest is designed to have a higher payout each quarter with additional rounds of PR. It's not a "set and forget" contest!
The Dash price looks decent now, but as a trader it looks to me to be in a consolidation triangle between $240 and $360. The current 50 day simple moving average price is $284. Using that metric the project execution and management portion is $22,720 for about 2 1/2 months worth of labor. This might seem high to one from India or China, but I don't think is out of line by Western standards.
Finally, as with all proposals the currency risk is carried by the PO. To protect MNOs I am not requesting payment until after the program launches. However, this means I carry currency risk much longer as I won't get paid for about 5-6 weeks. If Bitcoin takes another leg down (50-50 odds in my view) Dash will be dragged down too and the fee will look much lower.
I hope this helps you to better understand the labor aspect of the proposal and the risks I see going forward to allow you to vote yes. Thanks!
Here is why:
The amount in should not be the same amount as out. The in and out amount is a clue that should not be giving. Part of the mixing function is, that the amount('s) in are not the same as the amounts out. When and If you know that person A has 0,1 to mix and person B has 0,5 and C has 1 and they all do a 1 on 1 conversion. You perhaps not link them via decryption but you can know person A is person A simply because he is the only one with a wallet with 0,1 coins.
My request is this:
So contest should only providing wallet B.
The question now is, From which wallet OR wallets the coins came from.
Use a maximum of 8 rounds
*Because it's know that 8 rounds are used, the amount of address hops is known, which is in fact also a clue
** I am unaware how many individuals per round are active, seeing dash only process about 5000 transactions per day, this is still a risk, and mixing should be done at a busy time, if that falls, redo it.
The payment will then come from multiple public key's. (this actually part of how private sent works as well).
*** The amount used in to mix does not need to be the complete amount either.
*an unspecified quantity of Dash is in a wallet in address(es) A
*the Dash is mixed using an unspecified number of PrivateSend
rounds
*0.1 Dash is sent in a PrivateSend transaction to address B
*address B is given to the public with a challenge to determine the address(es) A where it originated from before PrivateSend mixing began
My votes are in and they are yes.
Before i read down to the escrow part i was thinking i would offer to escrow it for free but then i thought since it will be sitting around for awhile i might see if splawik21 would escrow it in his masternode shares program.
coingun's service seems great though and much more structured to keep tabs on progress than me or splawik.
I would however like to see the 10 Dash escrow fee lowered so maybe some kind of collaboration deal could be worked out with splawik to help with that.
What I can say is that I'm aware of the recent paper, have discussed it with moocowmoo and we will be OK. I will also make the transaction available to the core team for private review before publicizing it just to be sure.
"...the method used to de-anonymize the transaction must tie the origin and destination addresses together either directly or by greater than a *50% chance* if using probabilistic methods" ---
If we're seeking to demonstrate the inability to de-anonymize, then 50% odds are way too high a standard. I suggest something more like 3-5%, i.e. beyond 2-3 standard deviations type of thing.
The fact is that if someone can demonstrate Private Send is traceable to a confidence level higher than that, they have a case. We don't want this to look like a straw man.
Just my view.
One of the rules is a catch all that gives Dash the right to modify or cancel the contest at any time. We could always wait a few months and then lower the odds requirement (with further community input) if anyone complains. Might be more newsworthy this way, too.
And how are the potentially significant changes in exchange rates handled?