sameer <sameer@c2.org> writes:
To provide payee anonymity:
Enterprising cypherpunk, Ed sets up the Ecash Remailer.
Alice pays Bob e$15. Alice is anonymous. Bob sends Ed the e$15 Ed cashes the e$ into his ecash mint account, withdraws e$13.50 then pays Bob those e$14 .. Bob can now spend those e$ at will.
Bob is now anonymous.
This requires some trust-in-Ed, but Bob could be anonymous from Ed just as Ed is anonymous.
Perhaps this is the scheme lucky mentioned. I will have to get an account and implement it.
I think this is basically the scheme Lucky mentioned. A more elaborate version would have Bob sending Ed blinded proto-coins to be used in the withdrawal. However this would require hacking the ecash protocols to work differently than intended, which would probably infringe the patents. What about this, though: Alice did not mean to pay Bob, but rather Charlie, and Bob stole the coins. He launders them through Ed's service. Charlie never got the cash, and Alice complains to the bank that the coins were stolen. The bank says, fine, we can identify the perpetrator, let's see... it's Ed. Ed is now charged with theft and has an expensive and uncertain legal experience ahead of him. Are you sure you want to put yourself in this position? You might win, but it could still be expensive (ask PRZ). And if your service is seen as a fencing operation to receive stolen goods with the legitimate uses just a "cover", you could lose. Also, I believe in normal use Digicash coins are marked as being for a specific recipient. This is not certain since no details have been released. And apparently it can be worked-around by the spender by marking the recipient as just "@" (or some such string). If this feature is present in the Mark Twain cash then the payee-anonymity service may not be very effective. Hal