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New Monero user here
(monero.town)
Just started to research more into Monero recently. I was one of the people who used to think Monero was a "bad guy" thanks to the way tech journalists and mainstream media report and portrays it. After making a point to read about it and took the time to research, test and experience it. Monero seems to be the only crypto and chain that fully aligns with the ethos of Satoshi Nakamoto!
Thanks for joining monero.town :) Not only it’s a good crypto—it is a great privacy tool, recommended e.g. by privacyguides.org, accepted (as donations) by the Tor Project (which is endorsed by the BBC, the New York Times, etc. and now also by Amnesty International), by Tails.net, and many other privacy advocates.
You might be thinking about “investment” but the implications of Monero is much, much bigger—among other things, you may question today’s privacy invasion by some oppressive governments or monopolizing companies like Google.
Also, if you happen to be a math geek or a cypherpunk, this thing is based on Elliptic (Ed25519)—something deep and fascinating for number theorists to study!
I was studying privacy coins and ZCash and Monero came into the picture. Read about the pros and cons of both and realized that there is a whole company, shareholders behind ZCash. Monero on the other hand is not. Also, Monero is privacy by standard and default whilst ZCash is privacy by option. So i gotta give it to Monero on this. Also, I'm a researcher and participant of the web3 ecosystem first, investor last. Thanks for the warm welcome!
Yes, Monero is community-based. That is warm and fuzzy, except frankly, this Lemmy instance is not always very peaceful… its users tend to be vocal and variously a bit weird.
XMR is an interesting experiment and, although not perfect, rather successful so far. Several privacy-friendly companies accept XMR as you can see on kycnot.me so it has its ecology. Like you said in your OP, this might be what Satoshi really wanted to create.
For many people it’s difficult to get out of the box—ditching Google, Windows, &c. You have chosen and joined Lemmy (Fedi), even though there may be a more “popular” place elsewhere in non-libre world. That’s why I said thanks!
I'm guessing you know more than average person about this, right?
I'm very intersted in cryptography, math, and programming. I'm making some basic programs in rust with encryption (I haven't done any zero-knowlage, signing, ant similar stuff, but I want). Do you maybe know how can I learn more about this? I'm 16, still in (Europe) high school, after that I will (hopefully) go to faculty for CS and math. I will learn a lot, but I want to start now. Do you maybe know any projects I can do? Now I am trying to implement basic post-quantum encryption with lattices (it's not going well).
A fun project would be: factor Mersenne numbers! Naive trial division -> optimize your code by only trying valid candidates (you’ll learn about quadratic residues, Jacobi symbol etc.) -> You’ll soon realize that trial division only goes so far, motivated to learn new approaches. The P−1 method may impress you, it’s powerful. Enjoy coding that. -> But then, you’ll be frustrated by even stronger opponents here and there beyond M100, which the P−1 method can’t factor. Now you’ll be so ready, even determined, to learn ECM. At this point, you’ll find using elliptic curves is actually not so difficult, because it’s just like P−1. And yay, 20- or 30- digit numbers are no longer your enemies, they’re just small fish, elliptic curves rule!
Before you know it, you’ll have a clear, intuitive vision about “an elliptic curve over a finite field”. Try to understand why ECM works. Try to count the number of points. Everything you experience with ECM is related to ECC too.
I’m not that good; know enough to know that I don’t really know much. Just a hobbyist; posted ℍappy ℍamilton Day! here.