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@ waxwing
2025-05-27 19:21:00
2nd paragraph: I think it's just debatable. The basic mechanism you point to is clearly something that has to be taken into account (anon set size).
The ecash one is particularly interesting because, many years ago I used to be fond of pointing out: if you want information-theoretically perfect privacy, you need to use Chaum's ecash type scheme (digicash), except, it absolutely didn't work because it was centralized and so it just stopped existing. Clearly systems like zcash and monero made different, more nuanced tradeoffs. I continue to be doubtful about Chaumian mints. The new extra ingredient is Lightning, but debating the merits of that hybrid is more about LN than Chaumian cash imo.
Imo the value of Chaumian mints is in more in scenarios where anonymity is valuable for an ephemeral client server relationship. Examples: Tor, Lightning routing nodes, coinjoin servers or generally buying digital services from a persistent online entity.