EXCELLENT points guys! My faith in the concept of a non-transparent blockchain is restored. But will Monero be the One? It sounds like ZeroCash has a lot of people very interested but it hasn't been released yet. Is Boolberry the next best thing in CryptoNote? What does BBR have going for it that XMR doesn't?
Quoting eizh on reddit for the comparison between BBR and XMR
The two major departures are:
(1) The PoW as it uses block header hashes as a scratchpad. This was intended to get a faster hashrate for verification purposes. It resulted in scrypt-like differences in CPU v. GPU hashpower. This itself led to concentrated distribution due to closed source private miners acquiring large portions of the network.
(2) It removes old ring signatures from the blockchain under a checkpoint. This is questionable because it pre-supposes consensus. The BBR dev himself referred to it as "Not the best solution, maybe we gonna find something more nice."
I like the alias feature, though it should come with some fee in order to prevent meaningless bloating.
I should add that BBR also already has a good GUI. It's in beta, but it's an "official" beta whereas XMR has several unofficial GUIs in beta. XMR won't make one official until the GUI development contest ends on July 1st.
Overall, I would say BBR is more experimental with respect to the CryptoNote reference code (i.e. BCN) while XMR is more conservative. Think of it as Litecoin vs. Peercoin. LTC went with simple changes to the reference (BTC) while PPC changed some things starkly -- namely PoW to PoW/PoS hybrid.
Of course, not everything has worked out for either coin. LTC has trouble justifying its existence and use while PPC has to deal with centralized checkpointing and hoarding. There are no direct parallels, but this can help non-technical people get a sense of the difference.
Make your investment allocations based on your judgement of merits, but it's silly to call a pretty different coin "Monero on steroids" because it's not Monero.
According to aminorex zerocoin/zerocash has some serious issues.
the winner will be taken once zerocash is out - anc failed so miserably that I think it is dead.
I think we will see the classical situation of two networks competing - the dominant ledger from the cryptonote implementations which is by no question monero and the dominat zerocash implementation.
from a game-theoretic point odds for monero are not that bad, it will strongly depend how zerocash is distributed.
zerocash has data size and compute time issues which make it unsuitable for many uses cases of xmr.
it also has the trusted mint problem, last i heard.
for those reasons i doubt that it can attain sufficient liquidity to displace monero as the dominant provider of dark liquidity.
If the anon fad is over, then hype will have less impact on price. Technical merit and community effort will play a larger role in determining the outcome. Lows are always the best time to invest. If the froth is gone, volatility declines and appreciation is more reliable. The end of the bubble is always good for the high-quality enterprises. Their fly-by-night competition is weeded out by the depressive lows. Fewer fools throwing money around means less malinvestment. I.e. investment goes to the most fit. Because monero is the most fit, monero will benefit.
Let us recap the situation and the contenders:
ANC - Zerocoin has serious UX problems due to high computational complexity and data-intensive operation. Also, it is moon math, and only time and extensive review within the cryptographic community will lend confidence. A promising crypto in the zygote stage.
DRK - Snake oil, plus instamine, plus ponzi, large entrepreneurial community, late-term fetal development stage.
XMR - High-quality well-tested crypto, large development and entrepreneurial community, mid-term fetal development stage.
Nothing else has enough promise*liquidity to be a contender. Of the three, XMR and ANC are respectable. XMR is substantially ahead of ANC in terms of technical development, mind-share and liquidity. DRK is substantially ahead of XMR in those terms, but it is technically unfit for most legitimate purposes.
Unfortunately I can't elaborate more on aminorex' opinions. Maybe some other member could do that.
