One of the most powerful use-cases for a cryptocurrency is facilitating the ability to anonymously store and transact value.
The rise of Bitcoin was due in part to the utility it brought to darknet marketplaces via “pseudonymous” wallet addresses. Initially, this allowed Bitcoin’s users to transact value anonymously.
As Bitcoin became more popular, more resources were dedicated to understanding patterns of transactions between pseudonymous wallets. It is now well established that Bitcoin does not provide its users with the ability to transact anonymously. Because of this, a number of “privacy coins” have been created with the goal of solving this problem.
On Tuesday at 12p PST, ResearchHub will host a live e-Journal Club and AMA with George Kappos discussing his paper “An empirical analysis of anonymity in Zcash”
Sign up here if you are interested in how experts perform network analysis on privacy-coin blockchains and would like to learn exactly how anonymous Zcash transactions are: https://ama.researchhub.com/georgekappos
When paying someone, send Zcash from your shielded address to their shielded address. If Zcash is transacted in this way, the results of this paper do not apply and transaction privacy is maintained.
I will make sure to bring up this point during the event and ask George for his thoughts. Overall, it seems like the paper largely supports Zcash’s ability to maintain its users’ anonymity.
Do you have any other questions/comments you think would be worth discussing?
I don’t personally have anything to ask. It’s important to discuss these issues and this research is welcomed by the ECC, ZFND, and broader Zcash community. In fact, when I first saw your post I assumed it was newer research that the Zcash Foundation funded: https://www.zfnd.org/blog/q2-grant-winners/
But the paper from Mr. Kappos group is unrelated to the other one I was thinking of.