It irks me when people say "[insert privacy project] is the best". There is a poor understanding of blockchain privacy even within the industry. Privacy is not a binary, it's a multi-faceted spectrum. And achieving privacy isn't free, it always comes at a cost. /1

This cost can take many forms. Scalability (size, verification, proving times), exotic math, complicated constructions, trusted setup, requiring interactivity and losing supply auditability. There are always trade-offs. /2

Additionally, on top of the privacy protocol itself, you also need to think about implementation and user behavior. How easy is it to use safely? For e.g., although Zerocash has the highest theoretical anonymity, the anonymity of an average user can be low due to user behavior /3

Different privacy projects place different emphasis on the trade-offs. $GRIN for e.g. values minimalism even at the cost of user experience and privacy. $ZEC doesn't mind using exotic math and trusted setup for performance and privacy (albeit opt-in). /4

$XMR has low theoretical anonymity sets per tx but achieves high practical privacy using a combination of enforced user behavior and solid building blocks. $BEAM, combines elements of MW, Lelantus and decoy txes at the cost of losing some of the benefits of each approach. /5

Zcoin's $XZC approach with Lelantus is to have high anonymity sets using a more 'ZKP' type of model, with relatively basic building blocks (and no trusted setup) and encouraging correct user behavior with privacy on by default (but with transparency opt-out). /6

And even beyond the tech and the implementation and user experience, there is also the question of whether the team/contributors behind the project have the know-how to deal with and take the tech further! Privacy is often a cat and mouse game which requires constant evolution./7

Among serious privacy projects, it's hard to actually say definitely which is 'the best' as it really depends on what you value more which is subjective. Maybe the right question is which privacy coin is best for your use case? What level of comfort do you have with it? /8

Some of you may then talk about the privacy as a feature vs a product argument or whether there's room for several privacy coins in the market (or if there's a place for us at all), but that's a subject for another tweet storm. /9 END.