Cloakcoin’s ABC
Go through the article and you will find a link that contains 1 private keys — happy hunting !
This is a very short direct covering of Cloakcoin made to avoid the same questions brought up repeatedly.
— But first please give this article the mandatory 50 claps ;)
The project/currency Cloakcoin were build in 2014 by a guy named Alty and were first started as a Proof-of-Work, which were running for 7 days up until 4.5 mio coins were mined, after this it changed to Proof-of-Stake. Unfortunately the guy was a scammer, and were only trying to make a classic pump and dump scam, however he left the project very quickly.
Luckily for the project, a user called ‘c4shm3n’ took the project’s lead role and managed to get a team together and make it reliable and a decent project to follow again. In 2017 ‘c4shm3n’ felt he had used to much time away from his family, so he decided to take a step back and passed on the role as project manager to Stefan Kender known as ‘lasvegas83’, and in the same time the developer ‘rzr’ took a step back from his role and passed it on to William Danielson known as ‘Deepend’. Remember that even though ‘lasvegas83’ has now been given a new role, he is no stranger for the Cloakcoin project — He has been here ever since the takeover from the Alty.
As you may have noticed no ICO has ever occurred, and this is also why the project may not have been as fast as other projects around. They simply just have not had any money for extra developers or big shiny marketing campaigns. Everything done from listings, sponsored conferences, marketing and audits have been on the teams own cost — Yes their private funds!
That is one thing people forget now a days because of all the ICO’s coming out of nowhere every single day — This project came before all of that, stood tall developed their own system and most important are here today 4 years later, try see how many old projects you can find who are still around and getting steady growth through its developing.
Everyone of course wants to know what is behind Cloakcoin, what makes it unique — And since I am not a developer, that is why I will use an answer provided by the team in and early interview.
Question: What is Enigma and how does it work?
Answer: If you need the ultimate in transaction privacy, you need ENIGMA, a unique, advanced, private & secure transaction system from the Cloak Team allowing Cloak Coins to be sent anonymously, while avoiding the need to ‘trust’ other nodes not to steal funds or leak sensitive information.
Alice wishes to send a 100% private currency transaction. In order to do this she uses the wallet to enable ENIGMA alongside CloakShield to supply an extra layer of encryption, which elects a series of decentralized ENIGMA nodes to add an additional, untraceable layer of privacy.
Alice’s Cloak wallet then automatically sends a request to the network for other Cloak wallets who have elected to become ENIGMA mixer nodes to obfuscate her transaction. All of this is done privately and securely throughout with no identities or true IP addresses revealed.
Bob has cloaking mode enabled in his wallet and the wallet generates a secure CloakShield encryption channel for communications with Alice’s wallet. Bob’s wallet sends Alice a secure connection, containing encrypted inputs and outputs to commence the transaction.
With this confirmed, Alice, with full anonymity, creates an encrypted ENIGMA transaction containing her true inputs and outputs and Bob’s cloaking (obscured) inputs and outputs. Bob and Alice both sign the ENIGMA transaction before it is submitted to the network for inclusion into a PoS block.
The transaction rewards Bob with his ENIGMA cloaking fee and outputs payment to Alice’s intended recipient. All participants remain fully anonymous and the entire process takes place without need for interaction from wallet holders — only using participants who have elected to do so in order to earn additional rewards.
Question: How do you provide secure communication between nodes?
Answer: Cloak uses the Enigma system in order to facilitate private/secure transactions.
How does this work?
CloakShield- Node to node communications
On startup, each Cloak wallet generates a [NID_secp256k1] key pair (Cloaking Encryption Key / CEK) to enable them to derive ad-hoc secrets using ECDH with their private key and the recipient’s public key. This communication forms the basis on all node-to-node communications relating to Enigma. This ECDH based encrypted communication is also utilized for onion-routed data, which is handled by CloakShield. CloakShield is a nice name for this collective functionality relating to encrypted node communications.
When onion routing is enabled, the client will attempt to construct a valid onion route for the data using the list of Enigma peers that it is aware of. The node may not have a direct connection to the Enigma peers, but that is not necessary as CloakData (data packed for routing with CloakShield) packets are relayed peer-to-peer. An onion route will typically consist of 3 distinct routes to the destination node, with 3 node hops per route. Multiple routes are used to cope with situations where a routing node drops offline.
Nodes periodically send out an Enigma Announcements to peers to advertise their services for onion routing. Other nodes on the network store the announcements (until they expire or are replaced with an update) and use them to construct the onion routes.
Question: How are stealth and Enigma transactions detected/received?
Answer: All incoming transactions are scanned. Stealth transactions are scanned for first (using the default ephemeral pubkey contained in a random OP_RETURN TX output). After this, Enigma transactions are then scanned for. Enigma transactions also use the standard ephemeral pubkey, but payments use an additional step involving a further derived key. Enigma outputs are generated using a hash of the ephemeral pubkey, a private stealth address hash and the output index.
When scanning for Enigma transactions, the zero-index payment addresses are generated for each owned stealth address [HASH(ephemeral_pubkey, hash_stealth_secret, 0)]. If a match is found for the zero-index of a stealth address, additional addresses are generated for the remaining indexes [num_tx_outputs] and these are scanned against to detect payments. See “FindEnigmaTransactions” in wallet.cpp for more info.
A similar scanning method is employed by Cloakers prior to signing an Enigma TX to ensure they are getting reimbursed correctly. See “GetEnigmaOutputsAmounts” in wallet.cpp for more info.
Source: http://techcompanynews.com/enigma-unique-advanced-private-secure-transaction-system-cloak-team/
Transparency is the key
When you read about the teams approach to anonymity, it is quite different from what others are doing. They are of course letting you stay anonymous with your pc through stealth addresses, but proving publicly that this system is safe with a completely public ledger saying — If you can find the receiver and amount, you are the Champ!
But why is it so important with a public ledger? Which such we can quite easily make a scan of the blockchain and make our own rich list (if it was not already made) and that aren’t good for privacy?
The answer is quite easy and important — Transparency!
When the project are using a public ledger, we can all see that the system isn’t corrupt and someone making their own money because of some bug, who hasn’t been discovered.
Then let us talk about the rich list, there isn’t much privacy going on if my neighbor can look at my account and see how much I have? You are right, in a way, but with Cloakcoin the wallet itself are creating new address from time to time, and receiving and sending from these even though you not making these transactions, that could be when you take part of an ENIGMA transaction or are simply just using it to send some yourself.
Example could be that you have 1000 Cloakcoin available in your wallet, but these can be spread out on 5 different addresses, meaning that for one to know your holdings they have to link all the underlying addresses, which no one have done yet!
It’s all very good, but for me as an investor I also need to know what a project are doing for its investors — What are Cloakcoin doing for you to make you keep your holdings?
Cloakcoin has a 6% per year interest, if you hold your coins in a Cloakcoin wallet and mint them (stake) then you don’t even have to run it 24/7, your coin will gain coin age from the time offline, but you need to have it online to get the reward.
This is for sure the future for blockchain making it so much less of an environment issue when the system need so much less of electricity to make it all work, and are still able keep the network safe and running. And if you want to have the possibility to earn more, you can run it 24/7 and maybe become an ENIGMA node and get in on some of the ENIGMA fee as an extra reward.
Wallet explanation and setup
Installation
To install the wallet just go to the official Cloakcoin website www.cloakcoin.com and press wallet, choose your current system and download the wallet.
It will be downloaded as a .zip file, and if you don’t have a software to unpack this type you can download the free 7zip here: https://www.7-zip.org/
Setup
When the wallet is installed and it is your first time running the wallet, go to settings and encrypt your wallet. This will ask you to create a passphrase so if you get your pc or files stolen, the coins can’t be transferred because they need this passphrase.
NOTE — Write down the passphrase on a piece of paper. Remember the file and passphrase can’t be restored — Keep it safe!
When you have encrypted your wallet with a passphrase you need to backup your ‘wallet.dat’ file, which is the actual private key for your account. I personally like to take several backups on different USB sticks, it is typically on C: \ users \ (username) \ AppData \ Roaming \ Cloakcoin and there you find ‘wallet.dat’ file.
Minting
To mint you first have to encrypt your wallet (see above), then you have to transfer Cloakcoin from an exchange or another seller, but let’s first look into the receiver sections here you have 2 addresses,
— The first and the shortest is the regular address, that is the only one you can use when transferring from and exchange.
— The second and the longest is the ENIGMA address, that is the one you have to use when you want to receive anonymously.
When you have receive your Cloakcoin it will show in the Overview and under unconfirmed it will say the current value received. That is because the transaction is trying to get through but the network needs to confirm that this transaction is for real.
When the transaction has been confirmed by the network, it will now be shown under Balance and you are now able to use the coins.
You are now able to press ‘Unlock for minting’ and type in your passphrase to confirm the setting.
After that is done, the tab will change it’s name from ‘Unlock for minting’ to ‘Lock wallet’, now you know the wallet is minting.
NOTE — If you can’t see the hole address because of a small table/window, select the current address and press ‘’Show QR Code’’ and you will see the hole address. The market blue is your hole address, double click double click in the middle of it and it will only mark your address.
How to restore a wallet
If you at some point needs to restore your wallet, simply just download the newest wallet from www.cloakcoin.com, install it like it was you first and find the folder where the ‘wallet.dat’file is placed, typically in C: \ users \ (username) \ AppData \ Roaming \ Cloakcoin — Now you just replace the new created ‘wallet.dat’ file with your backup file and you are done.
You can try restore the donation wallet
— If you succeed to break the passphrase you can take the coins :D
https://files.fm/u/j5nner6d — click on the link to download
Overview explanation
Balance is what is on your wallet and has been confirmed by the network
Enigma Processing is when you take part in an ENIGMA transaction and not confirmed by the network yet.
Stake is where it will show the number of coins you are getting a reward for at the moment, which hasn’t been confirmed by the network yet.
Immature is the current holding of coins which are not mature to mint with
Cloak Assist Earnings is the total reward you have been getting from being an ENIGMA node.
Number of transactions is of course just the number of transaction your wallet had been involved in.
FAQ
Question: Can I store my Cloakcoin on a hardware wallet like Trezor or Nano ledger S?
Answer: No, these hardware wallets do not support Cloakcoin at the moment.
Question: Can I stake my coins from a mobile wallet?
Answer: No, Cloakcoin can only be minted (staked) from a desktop wallet.
Question: Why is the wallet always out of sync when I open it?
Answer: When you close your wallet, it gets offline and because of that it won’t be up to date with the new blocks created. Now when you get online again, it starts to download new blocks and sync itself to be up to date again.
Question: What is an ‘’ophran’’ block and why is my reward not confirmed?
Answer: Cloakcoin is Proof-of-Stake and this means that you have to find the next block in the chain to earn your reward, but sometimes many other wallets are trying to find the sameblock, of course this means that some are gonna lose that race and only 1 will be the winner and get the reward. The ophran block just shows that your wallet tried to win that race, but it did not and now the block won’t confirm your reward.
— But do not worry you will just gain more coin age and get a bigger chance the next time.
Question: When I look in my wallet at the icon down left corner, it says my wallet is minting but under my balance to the right it says 0 — Why is that?
Answer: When you receive a reward for finding a block, that reward will be equal to an amount of your stake holding, often you are not getting all your interest at once. This means that if you stake Cloakcoin for a month with 1000 Cloakcoin (60 per year, 5 per month) and you after that 1 month only get 2.5 Cloak in reward, then it will only have staked 500 of your Cloakcoin, the rest will still gain coin age for a bigger reward the next time. But under the confirmation of the 2.5 Cloak you will have allocated 500 Cloakcoin for this, and now it will say stake 500.00 Cloak until the confirmation is finished.
Question: What is the max supply?
Answer: Cloakcoin does not have a max supply, and could in theory increase with 6% per year. This will of course not increase with 6% because of a few things like;
— if someone moves their coins before they minted them it will lose coin age and the reward
— exchanges have big holdings but doesn’t mint
— lost coins from closed exchanges, destroyed computers, lost files
— the regular network fee for sending are also burned, which gives a little bit less inflation
Question: When I open my wallet it doesn’t want to sync — What can I do?
Answer: If you have waited for a long time, and it can’t get connections or are not starting to sync then go to the folder you did install Cloakcoin on …/users/(username/AppData/Roaming/Cloakcoin
Now delete ‘txleveldb’ and ‘database’ and restart the wallet
If you can’t find the folder, it’s probably NOT checked as ‘Hidden items’ Go to ‘This pc’ and press ‘View’ on top -> ‘Details’ and check ‘Hidden items’.
NOTE — Always remember to take a backup of your ‘wallet.dat’ before deleting or messing around with files.
Question: When I open my wallet it gives me this error ‘’Error loading blkindex.dat’’ — What can I do?
Answer: Same answer as above !
Question: My wallet are syncing really slow, maybe because of bad connections, is there anywhere I can download the blockchain manually?
Answer: Yes, you can download the blockchain on this link https://backend.cloakcoin.com/wallet/v2/cloak_ldb.zip — it is updating the file automatically every Monday.
If you want to donate you can do it to this address: CEBNRtcY5WKJNdVAMDLpppsu2MeXVvj59m
The same wallet as the one you can download yourself and try to crack :)
Chat with the team through
Telegram: https://t.me/cloakproject
Rocketchat: https://chat.cloakcoin.com
Sources to above.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=637704.0
https://cointelegraph.com/news/cloakcoin-we-had-to-do-everything-from-scratch-only-the-name-has-stuck
http://techcompanynews.com/enigma-unique-advanced-private-secure-transaction-system-cloak-team/