I value legit anonymity for many reasons.... but coming on the heels of a major bitcoin heist this seems kinda... ironic/
Bitcoin right now has abysmal privacy properties, and yet even these don't seem have helped in tracking down the executor of the BFX heist. (Perhaps this will change, of course, it is still early days.) It certainly is not going to help getting the money back. In general, people who want to do illegal things are able to be anonymous about it, often taking huge losses in the process -- maybe it costs you 50% to launder money, but if you stole all the money in the first place, this is acceptable. Meanwhile people who are just trying to live their lives cannot afford to be taking huge haircuts all the time, don't get the anonymity that criminals can afford, and wind up being screwed by the poor privacy properties of whatever payment system they're using.
This is definitely something interesting.... however, it is not important at all. Bitcoin doesn't need anonymity. Those who need it have things to hide...
There is an old article by Mike Hearn called
merge avoidance which describes many reasons that financial privacy is important for ordinary people. For businesses the consequences are even more severe; you cannot run a business with entirely public accounts.
Add as others have said, "you don't get to choose what things you need to hide".
I think this is the latest innovation of the bitcoin. But I see it is very unfavourable to be realized, because in this way it is able to provide opportunities to those who make transactions that are prohibited and also passed all those who commit corruption. Perhaps this needs to be fixed, so that it can become a good innovation and successful innovation
See my above comment about criminals already being able to hide their activity, since they value this more and have more money to burn.
the link is about removing the transparent ledger(the blockchain(7 years of historic data)).
sorry but removing the blockchain out of bitcoin and instead only handle "unspents" is totally ridiculous.
It is already possible to delete all historic data in Bitcoin and track only the unspent outputs. You will not be able to help others join the network with full security, and you would not've be able to join the network yourself without validating this data. But it hardly seems ridiculous on its face that it could be validated more cheaply than downloading all of it.
it ruins the "trust" and security that bitcoins cannot be"created" by any other method.
It does not. Can you say more about why you think this? The paper explicitly addresses why inflation remains impossible.
it ruins the security, simply because each block is created with details of the last block. by removing "blocks" then that removes the security.. thus making it easier to fake new data.
The paper does not talk about removing blocks at all. Did you read it?
the other point is about hiding values of transactions..
this is also a overall risk because if you cant see the amount someone had. you cant validate what you received is real or not. (bitcoin counterfeiting risk)
Are you familiar with
confidential transactions? This is an existing technology that has been in use on the sidechain Elements Alpha for over a year now, and is exactly what the MW paper uses.
even if they did remove the history of bitcoin data and hide values of transactions publicly so no one can analyze the history. they can still analyze current data and anyone watching a person in particular will still be able to get information about them.
This is largely addressed by the use of
OWAS and CT, which again is discussed in the paper itself. (Note that MW's mechanism for doing OWAS is novel and not related to the one in that link.)
the easier solution is just to move funds to a new address and then anyone watching you doesnt know if its still you or someone else you made a payment to.
Can you paste an address that will allow me to learn the blockchain's chainstate with full security and without complete history, while also hiding its transaction graph even from people who have the full blocks? If not, can you say how somebody would make one?
