Welcome to the first edition of the HashCloak monthly newsletter focused on blockchain privacy.
August was an exciting month for privacy on blockchains as many blockchain projects have made many improvements to improve the privacy of their users. Moreover, there has been interesting research done that can be used to improve already widely deployed systems like Monero and Zcash.
Notable Research Papers
PLONK: Permutations over Lagrange-bases for Oecumenical Noninteractive arguments of Knowledge
Interesting Articles and Updates
Chainalysis is a company known for its blockchain tracking services. In a recent web seminar, they presented research that shows that most of the Bitcoins that pass through mixers do not come from illicit sources. Most users use mixers to increase their privacy. However, they still showed that Bitcoins from illicit activities are more likely to end up in a mixer.
High level survey of current approaches to privacy on blockchains by Decred
In light of Decred’s announcement on their implementation of a modified CoinJoin++ protocol, they wrote an article summarizing current privacy coins and the techniques these projects use to provide privacy to their users.
Monero Research Lab’s Sarang Noether’s August Research Report
Sarang Noether is a researcher working on behalf of the Monero Research Lab. For every funding period, he provides a monthly update on the work he has done on Monero research and any interesting papers he has come across. Most notably, he has published 2 papers, focused on analyzing and improving new proposals like RingCT3.0 and fixed various miscellaneous bugs.
Login with Semaphore Authenticate
A proposal to use Semaphore for privacy-preserving login on Ethereum by BarryWhiteHat.
Privacy-Preserving Casper FFG using Traceable Ring Signatures
A work-in-progress proposal to use Traceable Ring Signatures to create a more privacy-preserving Casper FFG by yours truly.
A ZKP to remove the mapping of ip addresses to validator’s addresses
The Pegasys R&D team have presented a solution using ZKPs to remove the link between a validator’s IP address and on-chain public key address.
Low-overhead secret single-leader election
A proposal to use SNARKs for a secret leader election by Justin Drake.
Privacy Additions to Major Blockchains
Tornado Cash mixer live on Ethereum mainnet
Tornado Cash, a SNARK-based mixer, has been deployed to mainnet Ethereum, this past August. ETH users now have a way to increase their privacy on-chain.
Decred has added support for a mixer based on CoinShuffle++
Decred has also added support for a mixer based on CoinShuffle++, based on research from Tim Ruffing, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez and Aniket Kate. It takes a different approach than Tornado Cash and uses Chaumian signatures, also known as blind signatures, and confidential transactions in order to increase transaction privacy.
Tools
Huff Implementation of the BabyJubJub Curve
An implementation of the BabyJubJub Curve in Huff, a low-level language that compiles to EVM bytecode, by the Aztec Protocol team.
Learning Resources
A high-level primer on zk-SNARKs from Clearmatics
If you’ve been having trouble understanding zk-SNARKs, the technology behind Zcash and Tornado Cash, then you’re in luck. The Clearmatics has written a nice high-level overview of zk-SNARKs so that you can get just a little closer to understanding them.
How to broadcast Bitcoin transactions privately using Wasabi Wallet
Wasabi Wallet is a privacy-preserving wallet for Bitcoin. It enables one to enhance the privacy of their Bitcoin transactions using CoinJoin. This video explains how Wasabi Wallet sends Bitcoin transactions privately.
A high-level overview of Zcash. This article by Blocks Decoded gives a brief history of how Zcash came to be and an explanation of how Zcash works.
That’s it for this month, folks! I decided to keep it short since I’m still deciding what the format of this newsletter should be. What were your blockchain privacy favorites this August? What did I miss? If you have any feedback, please hit it me up on twitter. You can follow me on Twitter @badcryptobitch