Marc Serafino
There is a new privacy tech in town, one that is seemingly easy to implement and could thus be included in many big blockchain networks.
Called “bulletproofs,” it is the invention of University College of London’s Jonathan Bootle and Stanford’s Benedikt Bunz that has quickly gained attention of many blockchain developers. The technology was initially created with Bitcoin in mind, but it is first being adapted for Monero and MimbleWimble, with Litecoin’s creator saying that he may follow suit.
What makes bulletproofs great?
The main reason for the interest is that the bulletproofs code is both simple for blockchains to execute (it minimizes computational excess) and powerful in the way of boosting privacy. This, as you may know, is a rarity in the cryptocurrency sector,
According to one of bulletproofs’ creator, Benedikt Bunz, the underlying technology has been in use since the 1970s, and the new advancements are allowing it to be applied to cryptocurrency systems.
“If there wasn’t a clear application in mind, the time and resources would have been devoted to something else,” he said. “It’s a lucky and good marriage of these two timelines working together. The killer application and the technology are meeting each other. The killer application is the money application.”
What bulletproofs does?
Bulletproofs is made to only conceal the quantities sent within a transaction — the sender and recipient’s address are still visible, but the amount being sent is not.
So this technology won’t deliver total anonymity, but it could be combined with other privacy tech, such as “CoinJoin” which fuses transactions together, to deliver more anonymous transactions at a fraction of the cost.
Nevertheless, even without other privacy technologies, bulletproofs could find its use case.
“I wouldn’t want my salary to be made public, and if you run a business you don’t want to say publicly how much you’re paying your supplier,” Bunz said. “I don’t think you have to be a idealist to see that confidentially for money is basically a requirement.”
And again, it could do its magic while reducing transaction fees. “It’s just better. It’s shorter, more efficient, three times faster – it’s better than the old system in every way,” Bunz concluded.
But it may not be included in Bitcoin
As we have seen throughout 2017, the Bitcoin community is not willing to easily adopt changes to the main chain. Rather, bulletproofs will likely find its way in other cryptocurrencies and perhaps some other fork of Bitcoin, with the main network continuing to run on the original code.
A lot of testing is needed before the wider Bitcoin community decides to make changes, as we have seen with SegWit2x. Even after some time, we may never get see it entering the blockchain of what is widely considered the digital gold…
