🌰 Blockchain Developers Need To Keep User Privacy Top Of Mind

Sometimes blockchain developers forget the risks of public data. Bitcoin is a literal ledger of who has paid money to whom. Addresses are not anonymous, they’re pseudonymous. And the difference is massive.

If we are not careful, one day our health care premiums, our insurance premiums, and the ads we see will all be based off of the knowledge companies can glean from crawling public blockchains. And how could it be made illegal? It’s literally public data.

Yes, privacy coins make money laundering more convenient. But there is a middle balance. We need something that is private and auditable. It’s doable, Tornado.cash does it.

Update: Cointelegraph recently did an interview with Jason Potts, editor of the Journal of Institutional Economics and blockchain enthusiast. Andrew Fenton asked the following: “The Chinese government seems to love blockchain and they don’t like things they can’t control. So, it seems like it could just turn into Big Brother everywhere.”

To which Potts replied:

Yeah. That’s a very illuminating example because where I think we’re headed, is that the global blockchain economy splits into two: There’s more or less a China version and then the everything else version. In the same way that the internet has already done that.

There is a potential future of split blockchains, that’s true. But what Potts is forgetting here is that the issue isn’t “China is turning blockchain into a panopticon”, the issue is “Blockchains default to keeping data in the open and relying on lightweight psuedonymity, allowing any government to use blockchain for mass surveillance.” As outlined above, the architecture of blockchains and the design of blockchain products matter enormously in protecting the future of user privacy and personal freedom.

Inspired by: 🌱 it doesn’t need to be blockchain
Related to:
- [[Blockchain is as revolutionary as electricity- Big Ideas with Jason Potts]]
- This paragraph from Cointelegraph:
  - “MOBI and its partners are optimizing the blockchain-based system for connected electric vehicles. This way, transactions for tolls, car maintenance and even rest stop snacks can be recorded on the fly and then paid all at once when the vehicle is plugged into a charging station. In a recent analysis, Juergen Reers, Stephen Zoegall, and Pierre-Olivier Desmurs of Accenture predict that transactions like these will become a multi-trillion-dollar global ecosystem that enables new pay-as-you-go mobility services, with blockchain providing the infrastructure for data sharing and security across manufacturers, suppliers and other relevant parties.”

Every post on this blog is a work in progress. Phrasing may be less than ideal, ideas may not yet be fully thought through. Thank you for watching me grow.