Data privacy issues have been escalating in 2020 as personal data is increasingly being used to fight COVID-19. The Linux Foundation, a non-profit technology consortium, has today announced a new data privacy project featuring dozens of cross-industry giants like Mastercard and IBM. Called the ToIP Foundation, the new data trust coalition aims to provide a trusted exchange of data over the internet and establish a global standard to ensure digital trust. Blockchain consortium R3 outlines Corda’s potential for private transactions According to a May 5 announcement, the ToIP Foundation’s participants include a wide list of companies, governments and nonprofits across …

Privacy coin Zcoin (XZC) has revealed the new block reward distribution that the project will introduce after its September halving after more than one year of community discussion. The new redistribution will see 15% of all block rewards diverted to a development fund. The funds will be diverted toward network infrastructure and core development including research into new privacy protocols and wallet development. Zcoin publishes post-halving block reward allocations After the September halving, 12.5 XZC will be produced per block. 50% or 6.25 XZC will be distributed to miners, while 35% of 4.275 XZC will go Znodes, and the remaining …

While enjoying a wide user base, cryptocurrency-enabled web browser Brave's users do not seem to be taking advantage of its token features. During a May 5 Twitter live stream, the CEO of major crypto exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, talked with Brendan Eich, the CEO and co-founder of Brave. Eich said that his crypto-enabled web browser reached 13.8 million monthly active users at the end of April, to which Zhao said: “That’s probably the most active user base in crypto, to be honest.” Still, Eich admitted that most do not actually use its built-in cryptocurrency features. He said that the number …

The number of fully shielded transactions recorded on the Zcash (ZEC) network leaped up almost 70% in April to hit a new record of over 8,700. According to a May 1 tweet from the ZcashCommunity account, this represented 6% of the total transactions, which was also a record proportion historically. April’s gains followed an equally impressive March, which itself saw a 100% increase in transactions over February. In total, the jump from February’s 2,430 fully private transactions to the 8,721 in April represents an increase of over 250%. In contrast, it took three years for fully shielded transactions to break …

Blockchain scalability solution Matic will power a privacy-focused coronavirus tracking mobile application. According to an April 29 announcement, the new app — dubbed Tracy — leverages the Matic network for contact tracing and quarantine management. The solution also uses decentralized data storage solution, MóiBit, to store sensitive data. The application was launched by the firm behind MóiBit, Aicumen. Per the announcement, Tracy is the first blockchain-based solution that was developed for quarantine management and contact tracing. The application is meant to let users understand how likely they are to have come in contact with somebody who tested positive for the …

Props Project, a decentralized network of apps including Dating.com, is migrating from a private blockchain to Algorand (ALGO). Props’ network of independent apps uses Props Token as a reward mechanism. Currently it has over three million users across various apps. The company developed PropsChain, a private fork of Ethereum that currently handles 50,000 transactions an hour. No need to sacrifice However, to achieve greater scalability and transparency, the company decided to move to Algorand’s public blockchain. Algorand CEO Steven Kokinos told Cointelegraph that Algorand was unlike “first generation blockchains” in that it does not have to sacrifice scalability for security …

On April 27, Brave browser filed a complaint urging the European Commission to take action against EU governments that fail to adequately protect their citizens. A recent report compiled by the Brave team concludes that most EU member states do not adequately staff their General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, enforcers: “Only five of Europe’s 28 national GDPR enforcers have more than 10 tech specialists. Europe’s GDPR enforcers do not have the capacity to investigate Big Tech.” Source: Brave Regulators can’t afford to fight for privacy Furthermore, the report stipulates that the enforcement agencies are underfinanced, which leads to reluctance …

In a recent YouTube stream, Andreas Antolopoulos said that the controversial EARN IT Act might as well be called “Fuck you, Zuckerberg”. The bi-partisan bill was written by Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and if passed, it would: “Create incentives for companies to “earn” liability protection for violations of laws related to online child sexual abuse material”. Antonopoulos: civil rights aren’t EARNed Talking to Cointelegraph, Antonopoulos disagreed with that premise: “The EARN IT act is a backdoor encryption ban disguised as a modification of the DMCA act [Digital Millennium Copyright Act]. Civil rights aren't "EARNed", they are inalienable.” …

The United Kingdom’s Open University has developed a COVID-19 proof-of-immunity app that combines blockchain with a privacy-preserving data solution from web inventor Tim Berners-Lee. The prototype app, undergoing testing as of April 29, would support the proof and verification of tamper-resistant test results for COVID-19 antigen tests and vaccination coverage. The solution could ostensibly be used to provide frontline workers, healthcare professionals and the wider public with reliable immunity certificates that would be stored on a distributed, immutable and trusted blockchain-based registry. Alongside consortium blockchain technology, the app uses solid “pods” — an acronym for the personal online data stores …

In an interview from April 25, Andreas Antonopoulos compared working at Chainalysis to working for a weapons manufacturer or a company that builds cages for concentration camps. Andreas Antonopoulos, perhaps, the best known Bitcoin (BTC) educator, had very harsh words for companies like Chainalysis that help to deanonymize Bitcoin transactions: “Companies like Chainalysis and others are basically in an arms race against privacy. And what they're doing is they're providing the world's worst dictators and regimes, either directly or indirectly, with information that violates the civil rights of millions of people.” He also added that in his opinion, it is …

Incognito is a new privacy and interoperability project that seeks to anonymize the tokens of every other blockchain. As part of that goal, it is launching private versions of leading Ethereum (ETH) decentralized finance platforms. Announced on April 24, the pKyber initiative is the first part of Incognito’s initiative to make DeFi private. First theorized in October, pKyber began full-scale testing on April 24. The team plans to release this to the Incognito mainnet on May 7. How does it work? Incognito is a standalone blockchain that focuses on private transactions. Its privacy technology is based on the same technologies …

The first blockchain was launched more than 10 years ago and since then, it has evolved from simply being a backbone for Bitcoin (BTC) to a global technological phenomenon. In some sense, the distributed ledger became more popular than Bitcoin itself. Even the harshest cryptocurrency critics — like the government of China and JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon — recognize blockchain technology’s potential, while corporations as large as Microsoft and Accenture have adopted it to their needs. However, there is another view of blockchain technology. One that is based on the assumption that the technology has stalled in certain areas it …