The for-profit developer behind Zcash (ZEC), Electric Coin Co. (ECC), has released on Jan. 15 a set of resources to facilitate the implementation of shielded transactions on mobile. This builds on early tests in 2019 conducted after the Sapling upgrade. The developer released a complete set of Software Development Kits (SDK) versions for both Android and iOS. While the former was an update of the 2019 version, now supporting the Zcash mainnet, the latter was created anew to provide equivalent functionality for Apple devices. In addition, the company released a compatible backend service specifically designed for mobile clients to efficiently …

Researchers from cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX have suggested that the privacy and scalability benefits of Bitcoin’s (BTC) implementation of the Lightning Network are less than expected. A report published by BitMEX on Jan. 11 illustrates the researchers’ efforts to determine the growth of the Lightning Network by trying to extrapolate information about private payment channels from readily available data. The team focused on non-cooperative channel closures and they suggest that — since the network started its activity — about 60,000 such transactions took place. A non-cooperative channel closure happens when a Lightning Network node initiates the closure of a payment channel …

Data privacy has long been seen as one of the major non-monetary usages of blockchain technology. Many governments and corporations are already running recordkeeping systems based on distributed ledgers to securely store internal data. Tech enthusiasts believe that blockchain has the potential to revolutionize personal data and identity management for private citizens as well, yet these hopes remain largely aspirational so far. One of the reasons for that is regulatory uncertainty: Lawmakers around the globe are having a hard time catching up with data security challenges that the sprawling online economy poses. In 2019, the regulators accelerated their efforts to …

New York lawmakers proposed a bill on a peer-to-peer (P2P) savings and payment platform called the “New York Inclusive Value Ledger.” Introduced by New York State Assembly legislator Ron Kim and Senator Julia Salazar, the bill proposes to set up the “empire state inclusive value ledger establishment and administration act” that would create a system of wallets for payments by state entities and residents. According to public records, the bill was proposed in the State Assembly and the State Senate on Oct. 23, 2019, but New York State’s legislative session only reopened on Wednesday Jan. 8. Kim says that implementing …

The Monero Research Lab (MRL) has released Triptych in a Jan. 6 paper proposing trustless logarithmic-size ring signatures. As Monero’s core anonymity mechanism, research aimed at decreasing their size could improve the coin’s privacy significantly. Monero (XMR) is a privacy coin that uses several distinct mechanisms to obfuscate parts of a transaction. The primary line of defense against transaction tracing comes from ring signatures. These work by aggregating a sender’s true coins with a set of decoys, picked semi-randomly from other points in the blockchain. There are currently 10 decoys added by default to any transaction, an amount that has …

Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, said that he believes a “privacy coin” will go mainstream in the 20s. In a post published on Coinbase’s official blog on Jan. 3, Armstrong said that he believes in the 20s we will see the integration of privacy features into one of the major blockchains. He also foresees a cryptocurrency with such features to go mainstream in the following years: “Just like how the internet launched with HTTP, and only later introduced HTTPS as a default on many websites, I believe we’ll eventually see a “privacy coin” or …

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcoin (XZC) has launched a new crowdfunding system similar to one by another major privacy coin, Monero (XMR). In a Dec. 26 blog post, Zcoin announced the launch of the Zcoin Crowdfunding System (ZCS), a new platform that is designed to serve as shift from direct funding from block rewards to a donation model. ZCS to help Zcoin to further decentralize the project and fund additional initiatives The new ZCS system will help further decentralize the project in line with the company’s vision of a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, Zcoin’s project steward Reuben Yap said in the announcement. The executive …

Cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex announced a new account tier — dubbed Level 1 — allowing for up to $10,000 in daily withdrawals without requiring full Know Your Client (KYC) onboarding. According to the announcement published by the exchange on Dec. 19, the new account tier has been created in reaction to user feedback. The post reads: “We’ve heard your feedback time and time again about wanting to use Poloniex without giving up your identity. We’ve wanted to make this a reality for a while now and are sorry it has taken us longer than we’d like.” Anonymous trading From now on, …

A team of researchers claims that the prototype silicon chip that they developed enables encryption that is impossible to break. According to an article published on Dec. 20 by scientific paper publication outlet Nature, the system uses chaotic wavepackets in conventional Silicon-based semiconductors. The chip was developed by scientists from the U.K.-based School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of St. Andrews, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, and the Center for Unconventional Processes of Sciences in California. The paper explains that conventional encryption standards — that cryptocurrencies rely on — could soon become obsolete …

Bitcoin (BTC) users who employ privacy tool CoinJoin to add anonymity to their transactions face a major wake-up call after exchange Binance froze a withdrawal. In an ongoing Twitter debate which began Dec. 19, a user by the name of Catxolotl uploaded what appeared to be correspondence from Binance Singapore staff stating they had launched an “investigation” into a withdrawal of an unknown amount of BTC. Binance: we “do not tolerate” CoinJoin The reason, they said, was Catxolotl was using CoinJoin via wallet provider Wasabi. A Binance representative confirmed the problem in private comments, explaining: “Binance SG operates under the …

After a product launch and simultaneous Coinbase Pro token listing, Orchid Labs’ OXT token found itself down more than 20% in value by Dec. 18, as Cointelegraph detailed in a brief. Responding to the activity, Orchid’s CEO said the business has more of a long-term focus. “It’s obviously my responsibility as a CEO to be concerned about all aspects of the company, and given that this is now being traded, that’s one of the variables that we look at,” Orchid CEO Steven Waterhouse told Cointelegraph in a Dec. 19 interview, adding: “We are much more interested in the long-term performance …

British auditing giant EY has released a new iteration of its zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) blockchain, intending to cut transaction costs by 90%. A ZKP is a digital protocol that enables data to be distributed between the two participants without using a password or any associated information in the transaction. According to an announcement on Dec. 19, EY released its third-generation ZKP blockchain technology to the public domain on the Ethereum blockchain. The new ZKP blockchain aims to make private transactions on public blockchains more scalable by decreasing transaction costs by combining multiple private transfers in a single transaction. Specifically, the …