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Dash is supposedly completely anonymous. How does this work without any centralisation? Is there one person with all the transactions and only they mine?
How does Dash achieve anonymity without centralisation?
Answers
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TL;DR yes, it's still decentralized, no it isn't perfectly anonymous.
From the Darkcoin (now Dash) Wikipedia: "It adds privacy to transactions by combining identical inputs from multiple users into a single transaction with several outputs. Due to the identical inputs, transactions usually cannot be directly traced, obfuscating the flow of funds." The nodes who perform this "mixing" are called Masternodes, and operate on a decentralized ledger.These nodes are trustless and do not have complete knowledge of input/output
In order to prevent Sybil attack, the masternode tier requires colateral of 1000 Dash to run. This makes the cost of attack very big. In this whitepaper is a lot more information for interested ones.
Doesn't the amount of coin reveal any information? If the outputs matches the input, it reveals in the mixing process and correlates the inputs to the outputs. How can this be prevented? – abeikverdi – 2015-04-15T16:02:45.103
1 From the wiki: "combining identical inputs from multiple users into a single transaction with several outputs. Due to the identical inputs, transactions usually cannot be directly traced, obfuscating the flow of funds." However, there are claims to be able to trace transactions, so it seems likely that Dash is not perfectly anonymous.
I suppose it could be called semi decentralized, as if those privileged nodes are cut off from the network, then remaining nodes are unable to mix. – user36303 – 2016-06-03T15:48:09.267
11) I don't think Darkcoin lives up to its promises of anonymity. 2) No, darkcoin is not centralized. – Nick ODell – 2014-10-28T01:52:52.907
Dash already made a lot of changes since its inception. Now on testnet you can achieve probably the fastest mixing with PrivateSend ever. It takes only hours to have up to 2000 Dash ready for PrivateSend. It will be live on mainnet with many other updates in less than two months. – Comodore – 2016-05-27T22:40:13.560