TLDR: I am afraid the Seraphis upgrade might make it possible for governments to pass legislation demanding all businesses and exchanges to collect wallet view keys from users for any and all transactions involving Monero and maintain records, hence allowing state sponsored blockchain analysis companies the abilty to ‘Trace’ Monero transactions.
Disclaimer: I am new to Monero, I lack any detailed understanding of how code works and the complicated cryptography involved within Monero, and at best I possess surface level knowledge about how transactions are kept confidential on the blockchain. Some of my examples and scenarios assumes that Monero is recognized and classed by governments as a Foreign Currency and is not outright banned in any way.
One of the best things about Monero(in my humble opinion) and its core strength over its peers, is that it is truly Fungible. From my understanding one of the ways this strict fungibilty is achieved, is by keeping blockchain transaction between wallets; amounts, and addresses: confidential and obfuscated.
Like cash, it doesn’t carry a record of which parties have handled it before, so any Non-KYC exchange or business that deals with XMR is granted plausible deniability over the source of its coins as there is no way to prove if they ever have been involved in any illegal activity(Ransomware, DNM etc.). Similarly, a customer is also offered plausible deniability(unless other obvious factors are present) This protects both the exchange and an honest user as they don’t have to worry about handling and dealing with ‘tainted’ coins. This easily makes it superior to any other coin in which there is a risk of your funds getting tainted because of lack of vigilance.
From what I understand, the limitations of View keys presently that Seraphis hopes to solve, is that they only reliably show incoming transaction, but not outgoing transactions or the correct wallet balance.
This in my opinion is good enough!
I believe Governments have a right to demand and collect Tax as it is necessary to fund public infrastructure, social security and protection for its citizens(Whether they do an adequate job of it or not, is not the scope of this discussion as are your feelings regarding it).
Most Governments take TAX evasion pretty seriously.
Assuming I am an Honest Citizen, any XMR flowing into my wallet, originates from my Honest LEGAL Income(Job, freelancing, KYC CEX etc.) and with the limited view key, I can prove that and pay any relevant tax on it.
But what I do with my XMR after that is nobody’s business(not even the governments), it’s my hard-earned Monero, and It’s cash, so whether I lose it all on meme coins, or buy groceries; that limited view key protects my daily financial decisions from being public by default.
But unfortunately due to that very exact nature, Monero is a particular thorn on the side of Law Enforcement Agencies worldwide. And presently Europe and the G20 nations are pushing disturbing and far-reaching legislation controlling the flow of any kind of money and agreeing on establishing communication channels to easily share information and prevent financial crime.
From My understanding, the Seraphis upgrade allows the private view key to reliably display incoming and outgoing transactions, as well as current balance of the wallet. After the upgrade, there would be nothing stopping any government from passing legislation demanding that any and all businesses and CEX’s that operate within its borders or offer their services to its citizens; to collect view keys of personal wallets of its customers for all XMR transactions or more worryingly, declare any transaction involving a wallet that has not disclosed its view key to be illegal and in violation of AML laws.
This would have the ripple affect that anyone with a decent database of these keys(maybe state sponsored) could effectively trace a substantial amount of transactions on the blockchain.
Using obfuscation technology of other cryptocurrencies such as Mixer, RAILGUN or coin-join immediately gets your wallet FLAGGED on public ledger, I envision a similar future where any Monero transaction whose view key isn’t accounted for gets scrutinized and blocked.
Privacy darlings (such as a certain VPN company with a mole for its mascot) would be forced to collect view keys due to legislations.
A plague, a menace to financial privacy, whether government mandated or not, I believe it is inevitable, if such a feature is natively introduced into Monero.
This discussion isn’t about how we the community will get together and ‘stick it to the man’ refusing to give away view keys, or whether such legislation could or could not be passed and its purported efficacy.
This is about whether the Seraphis ‘improvements’ hands over the presently paranoid governments and corporations, a silver platter containing the ability to regulate and track Monero in any substantial capacity.
I am losing sleep over this, call me paranoid, but such far-reaching regulation is definitely not out of the question, the BTC maximalist would celebrate the news, most people in the crypto space won’t really care or understand its implications, the financial press would run articles about how ‘Monero the problematic child’ was tamed and can now be allowed to relist and used for speculative investments.
I think the project developers should take this into consideration and either severely limit or drop this feature entirely as it has potential for Abuse by the establishment and can threaten the core values behind Monero
Why should the goverment stop at the point where they can see your incoming balance? They probably gonna outlaw it completely.
If you still believe a monopoly on force (aka goverment) is A: warranted and/or B: needed I can’t really help you.
The state is the biggest threat to our liberty and well being. Monero is here to help us get rid of it (or to just get our well deserved freedom back).
They’re going to introduce their CBDCs so they’re able to see every transaction (in- and outgoing). To automatically deduct taxes and block you from transacting completely if you don’t comply.
@DisgracedDoctor what governments force you is outside of the scope of monero… they can force the business to provide viewkeys the sameway they can force them to provide bank balances… the way monero will work past seraphis + full membership signatures it will be damn dificult to analyse anything on blockchain
what governments force you is outside of the scope of monero yes it is but at the same time it isn’t; Monero’s growth and adoption, depends on the way it is handled by legislature, the likely outcome of my dystopian reality is relisting(but at what cost, I rather have it be banned); It is as I said ‘the view keys is equivalent to Handing a silver-platter to the Government and by extension analysis companies’ I agree they are legitimately useful but they have the capacity to be Abused and used for surveillance.
PS. Is there a way I can voice my concerns directly to the development team currently working on Seraphis?
there is:
IRC: irc://irc.libera.chat/#no-wallet-left-behind
Matrix: https://matrix.to/#/#no-wallet-left-behind:monero.social
I wish there were more users on this instance or Lemmy in general, Can some one please Crosspost this post to the subr*ddit, I would like to hear their thoughts about it as well, all my accounts have been shadow-banned to the depths of tartarus. PS: Mentioning Lemmy or the Fediverse gets you shadow-banned, as well as having any direct links in the post; Try typing it as ‘monerodottown’
I don’t know why the Monero community is not active here. Any place where I can find them? Do they use a different forum?
The subr*ddit is pretty active, but lately the posts there feel ‘suppressed’ and sorta just weird.
Don’t they have their own forum? The official website, for example?
Why did you sign up on that Lemmy instance and not monero.town if you were already aware of it, as per your comment? Help us grow by adopting it and then spreading the word.
the verification process involved revealing an existing and established social media profile, I had none(at least none that wouldn’t pose a huge OpSec risk) and I am currently broke(XMR) to justify sending money for a signup(I will do it eventually, I am not stingy and am willing to contribute to a cause I support)
Fair, I was just curious, not accusing you of being stingy. To answer your question from another comment, you can pose your question, uncertainty re: Seraphis in a dedicated Matrix room, where some developers hang and coordinate the ongoing research, development and eventual deployment of it. It is where most big, ‘official’ rooms are hosted. You could even reach out to @[email protected] there to see if maybe he can approve your registration that way.
thanks, though I might hold out on that for a month or two as I am quite busy right now(can you please make them aware of my concerns in my stead?)
Rucknium brought up your concern during today’s Monero Research Lab meeting, some people commented on it: https://libera.monerologs.net/monero-research-lab/20240410#c361656
Thanks for informing me, i read through the logs; looks like there are mixed oppinions regarding my concerns, but i am glad that there are others that see it as a potential issue as well, I am confident that eventually a solution can be found that fixes the privacy issue without sacrificing functionality.
Yeah, just dming me on matrix would be enough :)
The best way forward would simply be a way to churn the view/send keys/mnemonic but keeping the account number the same, but I assume that comes with privacy implications. The easiest method then would be to manually churn using multiple accounts, but that’s a pain and will require substantial scripting to automate.
The ability to keep a longterm use single wallet and private key would seem helpful. Say you wanted a high value wallet with some more permanance with the seed stored in a more secure fashion with something like shamir secret sharing, stored in a lockbox, stamped in cryptosteel, on a hardware wallet, or anonero setup or something. It’s not ideal to simply spin up a new wallet frequently to churn for this type of wallet.
But this could probably be solved with multiple always rotating low value hot wallets, where any transactions publicly transmitted in or out go to or from the hot wallets. And then your churn occurs by sending only private personal transactions to or from those hot wallets to an airgapped cold wallet.
Yes, we could have a separation between outward-facing wallets and the cold wallet. But these are hacky workarounds and I personally don’t like it.
Is there a way for Monero devs to circumvent this?
I understand. Less friction and more ease of use without workarounds or sacrificing privacy or security is what you are after. I hope it can be achieved where Monero can serve as many individual users needs and use cases to become the best currency possible.
This what i am trying to say, the only option being a limited view key is way better(Sorry if my rants sound preachy, but this just sort a popped in my head and is making me utterly miserable)
I’m glad I don’t live in Europe for this reason; first the anonymous SIMs, now crypto.
I’m sure somebody has thought of disposable XMR accounts and a way to create, link and destroy them on demand/in an automated fashion, but without an active community it is impossible to find such steps.
This is not really a problem. You could just send the funds to another wallet and say the outgoing transactions were to pay for goods and services. If you are already handing over view keys and paying extortion it does not make much difference if they can see outgoing transactions. They would not be able to follow the transactions past your wallet.
If you have a “boating accident” you would most likely lose all your keys, including the view keys. :)
PS. The state has no right to directly tax income as this is derived from an even exchange of labor for currency, there is no profit. If you are profiting from the labor of others then a tax claim can be made.
This is not really a problem. You could just send the funds to another wallet and say the outgoing transactions were to pay for goods and services. Businesses would be the first to be forced to declare their view keys, Assuming that; If your transaction doesn’t show up on their system they have probable cause to suspect you, It would be equivalent to using Tornado cash directly from your CEX wallet; Call me paranoid but this neat feature has huge potential to be abused, not just from governments but essentially all businesses.
If you have a “boating accident” you would most likely lose all your keys, including the view keys. :)
Not plausible when presently i can just say “What Monero? 🤷♂️”
PS. The state has no right to directly tax income as this is derived from an even exchange of labor for currency, there is no profit. If you are profiting from the labor of others then a tax claim can be made.
Your state is different than my state
