Sorry for reviving this old thread. Just noticed I replied directly to
Steven instead of the list, there might be something in here people
find interesting ... replies inline.

On Wed, 23 Aug 2017 12:26:43 -0700
Steven Schear <schear.steve@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 8:34 PM, Lee Clagett <forum@leeclagett.com>
> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 18 Aug 2017 14:18:40 -0500
> > Steven Schear <schear.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > And now some politics...
> > >
> > > *Here is why Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Is The Real Bitcoin*
> > >
> > > *It is the original bitcoin*
> > > It was hijacked from Gavin Andresen very surreptitiously by Adam
> > > Back (back in the day, Adam and I worked on hashcash and digital
> > > cash-related projects) with his Sidechain
> > > <http://www.satoshisdeposition.com/podcast/BTCK-169-2015-09-11.mp3>
> > > proposal. It was a "Trojan Horse" and together with the help of
> > > Blockstream, Theymos and the Core developers the process was
> > > completed. We, the original community, have finally regained
> > > control of the Bitcoin project, except that we have lost control
> > > of the name. This position is about to be redressed.
> > >
> > > *It does not have Segwit.*
> > > If you look at a Bitcoin file as AD. A being the address and D
> > > being the data, Segwit removes the address portion A, It is
> > > reduced to a hash and the original signature is discarded after
> > > it is verified. So if your "fingerprint" is the hash of all your
> > > signatures, the signatures are discarded after being checked, and
> > > only the "fingerprint" is kept. This is in effect what Segwit
> > > does.
> > >
> > > The signatures are stored on another chain, but not the main
> > > chain. Some nodes will keep signatures, some only keep partial
> > > records, some will discard them entirely. If you ever need to
> > > refer back to the transaction to check on the signatures all you
> > > have is the hash. "The fingerprint". Satoshi's original design of
> > > bitcoin being an unbroken record of signatures is violated.
> >
> > It has been possible to "prune" old transactions from a local copy
> > of the blockchain with Bitcoin Core for some time before Segwit was
> > ever merged. You cannot realistically force someone to store the
> > entire blockchain for you. The ability to prune old signatures
> > while keeping the core transaction is actually a benefit - every
> > transaction is necessary to verify that no double-spending has
> > occurred or that miners did not create more coins than allowed. So
> > even if the entire network dumped all segwit information, some
> > critical checks of the system can be done by newcomers (but only if
> > at least one person stores the entirety of the transaction
> > information).
>
> Accessing information from another's blockchain db is a privacy issue.
> That's why running your own full, private, node is such a good idea.
> Its not practical to do so in your mobile so an appliance is good
> solution.
>
> A few years back some cypherpunks write a paper with controversial
> suggestions on improving the Bitcoin blockchain. I think its still
> worth a read. Here's the coverage article. There's a link inside to
> the paper on scribd.:
>
> https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-activists-suggest-hard-fork-to-bitcoin-to-keep-it-anonymous-and-regulation-free/

What did this have to do with my post? You seem to be addressing a
tangential part - yes pruning transaction information in your local
blockchain may cause information leakage - but my focus was refuting
the argument against separating the signatures from the transactions.
Bitcoin is not a cryptonote like design where the signatures are
intricately linked to double spending and the inflation schedule. So
the impact/negatives are in more of a "gray" area.

> Key suggestions:
>
> 1. Use forced mixing (like ZeroCoin/ZCash) to improve transaction
> privacy 2. Enforce a limited, regular-sized, block chain
> 3. Ability to choose miners of payments
>
> Steve

1. Privacy transactions are optional in ZCash, which reduces its
cloaking set. I am not sure about the Zcoin variant, but privacy
transactions are also unlikely to be mandatory due to the costs of
computing such transactions. And most likely Bitcoin would switch to
something closer to Dash than the ZeroCoin protocol (not that its
necessarily a better privacy option, just that its a smaller less risky
transition).

3. I do not see how this is desirable based on the information provided
in that Bitcoin 2.0 paper. The "winner" of the next block is still based
on hashing power and therefore this does not appear to be a solution
that prevents mining centralization. No reasonable person would select
a miner with low probability of mining the next block. I suppose if
magically nearly everyone agreed to ban one miner it could work, but
only until the miner generated another alias.

> >
> >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > Steve
> > >
> >
> > Lee
> >
>
>
>

Lee