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by BrendanEich 2812 days ago
Separate thing, not promising it on a schedule yet so really FWIW: our BAT roadmap's "Apollo" phase aspires to decentralize as much as possible. This could certainly include p2p flows with ZKPs in state channels or better. We are looking at OMG's Plasma implementation.

So the ultimate goal is to get away from ANONIZEd traffic to a blind accounting server. But as I say, lots of problems to solve before promising this. Yet with Ethereum scaling and anonymity support, for users who buy their own BAT (where I claim your objection to IP address has most merit), we could go p2p on-chain for decentralization w/o fraud risk for bring-your-own-BAT users.
1 comments
ohmygodel 2812 days ago
Interesting, but decentralization does not equal privacy. Indeed, it might make privacy worse by sharing the data more widely and making it even easier to get copies of the data. Consider, for example, BitTorrent, which has a pretty decentralized distribution protocol that also makes it easier for third parties like the MPAA to observe who is sending and receiving the files.

Even using a privacy-enhanced blockchain isn't necessarily sufficient. Blockchains do not provide anonymous messaging. Therefore, a recipient R of a transaction can identify the sender S if R can observe S sending the transaction. Yes, this problem affects Bolt, Zcash, Monero, etc.

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BrendanEich 2812 days ago
Yeah, I noted blockchain issues in my latest (in time) reply. But at least you won't have IP addresses to worry about any longer :-P.
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18pfsmt 2812 days ago
What if one were to run one of these "privacy-enhanced blockchain"s from a VPS (paid for with these same anonymized tokens)?

In case it's not clear, I'm earnestly asking this question

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ohmygodel 2812 days ago
That's basically using a proxy, and so it has the same security. If the proxy is/geos bad (say, your VPS provider reveals your IP to some interested guys with guns), then you lose (anonymity). If your proxy remains good, then all that can be learned is the transactions originated at the proxy. However, the proxy does serve as a potential pseudonym, and so if the collection of transactions reveals something identifying, even if any one transaction doesn't, then you lose.
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