There is a new privacy protection technology in the Wild West crypto, and if the speed at which it wins the favor of developers is a sign, it is to watch.

Called "bulletproofs", Jonathan Bootle's new invention of University College of London and Benedikt Bunz of Stanford was announced last month, and developers of major blockchains quickly took steps to implement the code. Originally created to be used on bitcoin, the bulletproof ones are already suited for monero and mimblewimble, and the creator of litecoin said that his blockchain, one of the 10 largest, could do the same.

And the reason for the interest is that the blinds seem to offer something rare in the cryptocurrency sector, a code that is both simple to execute for blockchains and powerful to the extent that it reinforces confidentiality.

If part of the attractiveness of a public blockchain undoubtedly lies in the transparency that it provides (allowing, for example, more audible financial markets), this attribute does not have the same appeal. is not always desirable, especially when users want private or confidential transactions. between partners.

Reflecting on the hype, Bunz told CoinDesk that although some of the cryptography underlying the bullets has been in use since the 1970s, new advances allow it to be applied to cryptocurrency systems.

"If there was not a clear demand in the mind, the time and resources would have been spent on something else," Bunz said, pursuing :

"It's a lucky and good marriage of these two chronologies that work together, the deadly application and technology meet, the killer application is the application money. "

Here are bullets

Based on a technology called confidential transactions, the most notable feature of bullets may be that it minimizes excess calculation.

Rather than obscure the completeness of a blockchain, bulletproofs only conceal the quantities sent in a transaction – the sender and the recipient's address are always visible but the amount sent is not it. And while it's not total anonymity, the privacy added to the bullets can be managed by blockchains already operational, said Bunz.

"I would not want my salary to be made public, and if you run a business, you do not want to publicly say how much you pay your provider," said Bunz, adding:

"I do not think you have to be an idealist to see that money is confidentially a requirement."

There could also be other derived benefits.

For example, according to reports from the monero development team, the use of bulletproof could reduce transaction costs (another hot topic while blockchain charges continue to increase) for private transactions up to 80%.

On top of that, the more bullet-proof transactions are checked at once, the less the process is good, said Bunz at a UCL conference, stressing that this could mean that it works even better with existing privacy technologies. "CoinJoin" – a piece of popular code that merges transactions today.

But it's not just the lightness and privacy that make bulletproofs so appealing. It's also in the fact that technology does not require the trust of others, as zcash technology does zk-snarks (the reason for its elaborate generation ceremonies). And even if the secure configuration becomes more and more secure, the process is still heavily criticized.

For bulletproofs, the real reason for the celebration may be that the developers do not seem to have found any problems with that. Addressing CoinDesk, an anonymous researcher for the Monero Research Lab, Surang Noether described the bullets as a "clear victory on all fronts" for cryptocurrency.

Echoing this feeling, Bunz told CoinDesk:

"It's just better, it's shorter, more efficient, three times faster – it's better than the old system in every way."

The tests continue

That said, bullet technology is still young and nascent, and while other blockchain developers are interested in adding it to their technology stacks, it will not see the implementation. on bitcoin anytime soon.

On Reddit, co-author of the white paper on bulletproof bulletins and developer of bitcoins, Peter Wuille said it's still too "premature" to propose inclusion of technology in bitcoin.

Adding to this, another co-author of the white paper, Andrew Poelstra, wrote on a mailing list that the technology is still not ready for a "serious proposal to go anywhere." . "

Speaking to CoinDesk, mimblewimble's lead developer, Ignotus Peverell, was in agreement with the hesitation, saying that technology should be deployed and tested in nature, on smaller platforms like monero or mimblewimble before blockchains like bitcoin feature.

Still according to Peverell:

"We are much closer to that goal [of private transactions] now than we were before the bullets."

Disclosure: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which owns an interest in Zcash Company.

Image of bullet-proof glass via Shutterstock

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