What “Privacy” means to Abelian

At Abelian, we always value privacy the most. When our team was looking at the crypto space, thinking of what was missing, one thing, among others, stood out to us — the lack of privacy. More precisely, we were seeing a great lacking of effective technological tools to empower people with privacy.

From the view of experienced blockchain developers and veteran cryptographers, we believe that the way the cryptocurrency space is operating is dangerous when it comes to privacy. Many people consider privacy and security two separate issues, but they are more intertwined than one might think. One of the integral features of cryptocurrencies is that they are public ledgers, with no restrictions on who has access to them. This is so miners can verify transactions and prevent malpractice such as ‘double spending’. However, this poses a threat to those of us using the network. Our wallet addresses and every single transaction details become visible, making us more susceptible to hacks. Another prominent concern in terms of privacy is “traceability”. Traceability refers to the capability of an adversary who is able to keep track the transactions hopping from one wallet to another. For example, Bitcoin is theoretically anonymous as wallet addresses can be changed (despite not being very user friendly), however, is traceable as the ledger is fully public.

We want a coin, not for criminals to move and launder their illicit money, but for us, the everyday citizen who doesn’t want big brothers looking over their shoulders at everything they do. Privacy is a fundamental human rights, as recognized by the UN Declaration of Human Rights, one that deserves its place in the Web 3.0 space. Unfortunately, privacy comes with its baggage. Privacy coins have recently been under fire for their part in enabling the flow of illegal transactions. Privacy intrinsically brings with it this problem. With the banning of Tornado Cash in the US and the delisting of several coins across the globe, the landscape for privacy in Web 3.0 doesn’t look too promising.

So that’s where we are now, standing between a rock and a hard place. We have thought long and hard, and we believe we have reached a comprise, one that values our user’s privacy in compliance with regulations and authorities.

Introducing “Privacy with accountability”, Abelian’s answer to the problem of privacy. Abelian gives its users optionality in the level of privacy their transactions have. The levels are as follows, Basic Privacy, Full Privacy, and Full Privacy with Accountability.

“Basic privacy” is akin to the standard pseudonym-based anonymity in use by the likes of Bitcoin, with the additional security of one-time coin addresses to hide the pseudonyms of receivers.

“Full privacy” provides users with true anonymity and untraceability, transaction amounts and wallet addresses are hidden using lattice-based linkable ring signature and commitment schemes. This hides wallet addresses among a set of wallet addresses. The use of one-time wallet addresses also ensures users are untraceable.

“Full privacy with accountability” enables a tracking key to be generated such that, to everyone else in the network full privacy is achieved, but to the user of authority with a generated secret key, transactions achieve basic privacy. This privacy level may have applications for enterprises especially financial services and regulatory compliance.

Abelian advocating privacy as our human right takes the existing encryption system to the next standard. With our team of hard-working experts, Abelian is growing every day, both in users and features. Stay tuned for more announcements and updates.

ABOUT ABELIAN

Abelian is a post-quantum Layer 1 blockchain led by a group of lifetime cryptographers, mathematicians, and computer scientists. A combination of our quantum-resistant cryptographic technology and privacy-enhancing features, enables us to offer unparalleled levels of both security and privacy to our users. By embedding these qualities at the core of Abelian, it is primed to foster a prosperous, scalable ecosystem and exciting community.