Can anyone help me explain:
If blockchain is unreadable, in combination with snarks and rings and what not. How can we be sure of the total amount of coins in existence? Is it still possible to see that? What if someone would try to cheat the amount?
Sorry for my Noobiness.
Not a noobiness act at all.. Its just kinda hard to explain without a page full of context but ill try to put it simply.
Each transaction has to be verified just like any other bitcoin like system. This is the bitcoin protocol. It first has to be proven it exists and has not been spent already
The aim here is to break the link between sender and redeemer.
This is done using stealth addresses, a secure commitment scheme and ring signatures to make a zero knowledge proof that acts like a lock box, as i understand it.
A commitment scheme allows one to commit to a chosen value while keeping it hidden to others, with the ability to reveal the committed value later.
A ring signature is a type of digital signature that can be performed by any member of a group of users that each have keys.
A zero knowledge proof or zero knowledge protocol is a method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier)
that a given statement is true, without conveying any information apart from the fact that the statement is indeed true.
Each transaction has to go through a rigorous security protocol to be verified just like bitcoin.