A Cake contributor or contributors are also running, or related to, a blockchain analytics provider, Moonstone Research, specialized in tracing difficult-to-trace payment methods such as Monero, proudly saying, “Moonstone Research can provide leads when no other blockchain analysis firm can.” How? Maybe because their technology is so great, and/or unlike other companies, they’re running major remote nodes themselves, monitoring and recording a lot of things.
The positive side is, this Moon-Cake duality could help Monero improve, become more private, more untraceable. They simply may have tried to help solve the recent incident, never using it as a promotional opportunity of their unparalleled blockchain analytics.
- Postmortem of Monero CCS Hack: A Transaction Graph Analysis https://monero.town/post/996649
That said, this reminds me of Team Cymru, a company basically selling its skill to deanonymize netflow data. Someone from Team Cymru had managed to become an important board member of the Tor Project, hosting TorProject.org website and several bridges to the Tor Network. The Tor Project admitted the conflict of interest, and quickly fixed the issues once discovered.
Like mentioned above, the Moon-Cake duality could work positively for Monero. Nevertheless, one might want to think carefully about the potential ramifications of using Cake Wallet, related services, and especially their remote nodes. Nothing personal against Cake, its contributors, developers, supporters/users. On the contrary, I genuinely thank Justin Ehrenhofer (sgp/SamsungGalaxyPlayer) for revealing (at least part of) what they can do, what they’re doing as a side business. Thank you!
