What is the difference between Monero (XMR) and Electroneum (ETN)?

Question

I have heard of the Monero fork Electroneum (ETN), which they claim adds additional features to Monero, includes ICO funding, and takes a mobile-first mentality. How is Electroneum different from Monero, especially in terms of privacy?

Answer 1

Going through the commits there is really only one significant difference. Electroneum has no decoys, thus removes a significant aspect of privacy:

#define DEFAULT_MIX                             0
#define DEFAULT_RINGSIZE                        1

A couple of other things to note:

• There is no attribution given to many commits which are simply copies of Monero commits since it forked (so they don't know how to use git to fetch upstream commits and merge to their fork)
• There was a premine
• They had an ICO
• They believe in patents as opposed to FOSS
• Good luck finding the patent they claim to have (1805708.3 applied for != granted)
• This is not [as] decentralized, it is run by a company
• Their mobile app is closed source [which is a huge red flag]
• They reference "US Dept. Defence" being engaged for a security audit (big claim when in fact they are actually just using HackerOne)