The founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin has said that privacy should be a top priority for developers in the blockchain world. According to him, assumptions that consistently good intentions are only possible with full transparency are false and even overly optimistic. Vitalik shared more details in a new post titled “Why I Support Privacy” on his blog.
Privacy is a freedom
Buterin began his story by trying to identify the reasons for the need for privacy.
Why do we want privacy in the first place? Each person’s answer will be different. In this post I will give my own, which I will break down into three parts:
- Privacy is freedom: privacy gives us space to live our lives in the ways that meet our needs, without constantly worrying about how our actions will be perceived in all kinds of political and social games
- Privacy is order: a whole bunch of mechanisms that underlie the basic functioning of society depend on privacy in order to function
- Privacy is progress: if we gain new ways to share our information selectively while protecting it from being misused, we can unlock a lot of value and accelerate technological and social progress
In the end, the main thesis of the founder of Ethereum turned out to be the following.
Privacy is an important guarantor of decentralization: whoever has the information has the power, ergo we need to avoid centralized control over information. When people in the real world express concern about centrally operated technical infrastructure, the concern is sometimes about operators changing the rules unexpectedly or deplatforming users, but just as often, it’s about data collection.
The belief that transparency is something always necessarily good is fundamentally at odds with the facts, says the developer. Here is his next line.
These assumptions include the belief that the world’s political leadership is generally well-intentioned and sane, and that social culture continues to evolve in a positive direction. Both are increasingly proving to be untrue.
Buterin admitted that at times he is troubled by the lack of personal privacy. The proof is the many surreptitiously taken photos of Vitalik himself in public places.
Every action I take on the street has a chance, however small, to suddenly become news in the media.
The need for privacy will only grow as technology advances: for example, brain-computer interfaces will potentially allow automated systems to read thoughts directly.
Another problem Vitalik cited was dynamic pricing. Still, companies start charging users as much as they think they can pay.
The developer also opposed the idea of integrating government backdoors into systems that provide privacy. According to him, such proposals are common, but they are inherently harmful.
In the case of data collected by platforms under KYC or Know Your Customer procedures, it is not only government agencies that have access to the data, but also a wide variety of private companies with varying levels of integrity. Data is stored and processed by banks, payment systems and other intermediaries.
By analogy, telecommunications companies are able to track the location of users. And as practice shows, this information is often sold illegally.
Buterin expressed concern that people with access to such data will always have an incentive to use it for personal use, and the databases themselves could be hacked. In addition, even a trustworthy government could eventually become unscrupulous with sensitive information. The developer continues.
From an ordinary person’s point of view, if data is taken from them, they have no way of knowing how and by whom it will be used in the future. The safest approach is to collect as little data as possible in the beginning.
Buterin also raised the issue of the ability of governments to access any information upon request using statutory regulations. This has been practiced for hundreds of years, but in the past, governments had far fewer tools to gather information. Now, the capacity of the state apparatus can do serious damage to every citizen.
A solution to the privacy problem
According to Cointelegraph sources, Buterin has proposed his own solution to the problem. It is based primarily on zero-disclosure proof technology, or so-called ZK-proofs.
They allow for “fine-grained control over who can see what information and who can see what information”. ZK-proofs are cryptographic protocols that allow one party to prove the truth of a claim without revealing any additional data.
One such system is the ZK-proofs based identity verification. It proves that you are unique without revealing more precise and more extensive information. These systems rely on documents like passports or biometric data combined with decentralized solutions.
Another proposed solution is the recently launched tools that allow transactions on the ETH blockchain to be anonymized to meet regulatory requirements. Buterin also mentioned device-level anti-fraud scanning, which checks incoming messages and detects potential misinformation and fraud.
The systems listed are provenance verification services for physical objects using a combination of blockchain and ZK-proofs. They track various characteristics of an object throughout its production cycle, ensuring its authenticity to the user.
The bottom line
As a result, Buterin calls for making privacy a key priority in the development of blockchain technology. According to him, it is not only the protection of personal freedom, but also the basis of public order and technological progress. Vitalik criticizes excessive transparency, centralized data collection and government backdoors, offering instead solutions based on ZK-proofs, which allow you to choose what information will be available and to whom. Only such an approach can preserve decentralization and trust in the digital world.
Source: https://coinpaper.com/8542/vitalik-buterin-why-privacy-must-be-a-top-priority-in-blockchain-development