Ok, did some research. Monero's stated goal is fungibility. That's good, but from what I can see they have some methods for tracing transactions, which is - for the most part - what ruins the fungibility of cryptocurrencies. This could probably be fixed better than it is in future patches.
Which leads to my biggest concern - fungibility needs to be maintained. It must be constantly kept in that state. Which means if the devs maintaining the code decide they no longer want to develop it, or if they decide that fungibility isn't the most important thing on their plate, or if a new algorithm doesn't work or is exploited, etc., it instantly loses that property. The whole blockchain could, just instantly, become as bad or worse than Bitcoin.
That's not saying there's better out there, I haven't found better. Just that there are major weaknesses in the whole thing that frustrate me.
What we need are bill transporters, lol. A scanner that scans and destroys a regular dollar bill, and spits one out the other end instantly. It's easy to make physical objects fungible, not so much with crypto. The problem, really, comes back to everything in the digital world requiring an identifier in order to separate it from everything else, and requiring places for that identifier to be stored.
Real money has serial numbers, but those serial numbers are not copied down and stored for every transaction they are used in. It's impossible. Meanwhile, with crypto, the serial numbers ARE the currency, and they must be written down and stored for every transaction. Some crypto is coming along that allows the deletion of the blockchain. That's closer, but I haven't dug into it. Really, if block chains could be completely deleted, it would be an improvement. It would require the coin to be manually tracked. Dunno.
Most people don't understand how privacy and fungibility are fundamentally linked. I lose a dollar, someone else picks it up off the ground, they have a dollar - I no longer have a dollar. Another concept that people don't understand is a good thing.
From what I've read, Monero is still traceable with about 80% or more accuracy through the blockchain, even after the changes. I'm not saying it's not the best we've got, but it's not perfect. Again, what if one of those devs isn't on board with fungibility? What if they all decide to abandon the project? These things can and do happen. It's why I don't trust crypto in general. It's inherently exploitable. A computer cannot hold a block of something, or 10 blocks of something, that aren't identified in some way. Which means Monero, essentially, isn't fungible. It gains some fungibility through obfuscation. If someone can find a way through that obfuscation, then it's non fungible nature is directly apparent.
A block of gold, however, is fungible by nature. It has to be made nonfungible by external means, and even then it's very difficult. You could put a chip in it, but then someone can melt it down and take the chip out. You can't melt and reforge any bitcoin.
If you were to try to make truly fungible by nature crypto coins, they would be easily, infinitely, counterfeitable. Which is something else about fungible currency that people think is bad, but is actually good. It can be counterfeited. But, a good fungible currency is difficult to counterfeit to the extent that it doesn't completely devalue the currency.
One thing I do have to say is, if Triptych works, and it is implemented, and no major vulnerabilities are found in the short term, then the value of Monero will go up fast. If I did think like an investor, now would be a good time to take a risk.
Counterfeiting is solved at the expense of fungibility. I don't believe in magic.
With regards to how it's traceable this paper shows the theory and practice.
I don't like to link articles, but this is the source for those articles - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.04299/
Apparently, mixins can be analyzed and eliminated pretty easily. Combine that with tracking other known transactions and using those to also eliminate fake mixin transactions, they can narrow it down. It seems, over time, if someone was dilligent - like the government, they could catalog enough mixins to improve their ability to eliminate the fake ones. Probably above 80%.
I post this, because it's from 19 hours ago at the time of this post. Basic confirmation that the problems still exist, and there's no real idea of when they will be fixed.
Ok, did some research. Monero's stated goal is fungibility. That's good, but from what I can see they have some methods for tracing transactions, which is - for the most part - what ruins the fungibility of cryptocurrencies. This could probably be fixed better than it is in future patches.
Which leads to my biggest concern - fungibility needs to be maintained. It must be constantly kept in that state. Which means if the devs maintaining the code decide they no longer want to develop it, or if they decide that fungibility isn't the most important thing on their plate, or if a new algorithm doesn't work or is exploited, etc., it instantly loses that property. The whole blockchain could, just instantly, become as bad or worse than Bitcoin.
That's not saying there's better out there, I haven't found better. Just that there are major weaknesses in the whole thing that frustrate me.
What we need are bill transporters, lol. A scanner that scans and destroys a regular dollar bill, and spits one out the other end instantly. It's easy to make physical objects fungible, not so much with crypto. The problem, really, comes back to everything in the digital world requiring an identifier in order to separate it from everything else, and requiring places for that identifier to be stored.
Real money has serial numbers, but those serial numbers are not copied down and stored for every transaction they are used in. It's impossible. Meanwhile, with crypto, the serial numbers ARE the currency, and they must be written down and stored for every transaction. Some crypto is coming along that allows the deletion of the blockchain. That's closer, but I haven't dug into it. Really, if block chains could be completely deleted, it would be an improvement. It would require the coin to be manually tracked. Dunno.
Most people don't understand how privacy and fungibility are fundamentally linked. I lose a dollar, someone else picks it up off the ground, they have a dollar - I no longer have a dollar. Another concept that people don't understand is a good thing.
From what I've read, Monero is still traceable with about 80% or more accuracy through the blockchain, even after the changes. I'm not saying it's not the best we've got, but it's not perfect. Again, what if one of those devs isn't on board with fungibility? What if they all decide to abandon the project? These things can and do happen. It's why I don't trust crypto in general. It's inherently exploitable. A computer cannot hold a block of something, or 10 blocks of something, that aren't identified in some way. Which means Monero, essentially, isn't fungible. It gains some fungibility through obfuscation. If someone can find a way through that obfuscation, then it's non fungible nature is directly apparent.
A block of gold, however, is fungible by nature. It has to be made nonfungible by external means, and even then it's very difficult. You could put a chip in it, but then someone can melt it down and take the chip out. You can't melt and reforge any bitcoin.
If you were to try to make truly fungible by nature crypto coins, they would be easily, infinitely, counterfeitable. Which is something else about fungible currency that people think is bad, but is actually good. It can be counterfeited. But, a good fungible currency is difficult to counterfeit to the extent that it doesn't completely devalue the currency.
One thing I do have to say is, if Triptych works, and it is implemented, and no major vulnerabilities are found in the short term, then the value of Monero will go up fast. If I did think like an investor, now would be a good time to take a risk.
Counterfeiting is solved at the expense of fungibility. I don't believe in magic.
With regards to how it's traceable this paper shows the theory and practice. I don't like to link articles, but this is the source for those articles - https://arxiv.org/pdf/1704.04299/
Apparently, mixins can be analyzed and eliminated pretty easily. Combine that with tracking other known transactions and using those to also eliminate fake mixin transactions, they can narrow it down. It seems, over time, if someone was dilligent - like the government, they could catalog enough mixins to improve their ability to eliminate the fake ones. Probably above 80%.
And they used math, too, it seems - to do it.
Some of this is referenced and confirmed in this subreddit discussion - though they try to skirt the issue. https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/hfmhbl/could_a_malicious_actor_flood_the_network_with/
I post this, because it's from 19 hours ago at the time of this post. Basic confirmation that the problems still exist, and there's no real idea of when they will be fixed.
This article seems unbiased. It does offer a good explanation of some of the possible attacks on Monero -
https://www.finder.com.au/can-monero-ever-achieve-private-transactions