Not Truly Anonymous? ... PATCHED!
I never shared this much in my videos on NAV Coin, but based on some slack channel discussions, I had been concerned in the past about how truly anonymous NAV Coin actually was for private sending. I did know that the developers were aware of their issues of not being truly 100% anonymous, only theoretically anonymous. I also knew they planned on fixing this at some point in the future.
A statement I heard some months ago was, "You could infer that A sent to B, but you could not prove it." The idea of inference bothered me, though, because it is not really private if people can infer how a private send transaction worked.
NavTech 1.2 solved this issue to a certain degree, and NAV may be becoming the best privacy technology at this point when future upgrades hit.
Monero uses ring signatures, however, these are not so great because any individual looking at ring signature would be able to pin down a list of candidates for who actually sent the transaction. It is a clunky methodology. ZCash requires we trust the original authors to not have put a backdoor into their encryption permitting them to print infinite coins.
What I am seeing from NAV, I prefer now as an anonymization mechanism.
The concepts of obsufucation they have implemented in NAVTech 1.2 are as follows:
- Split up a private-send transaction into chunks, send those chunks over different blocks... this should not slow down payments dramatically because NAV already operates on 30 second block times
- Encrypted private send transaction sent to special NAVTech server, only that server can read the message, they decrypt the key that the funds are being sent to. That NAVTech server sends a message to another NAVTech server, telling that server to release funds from their pool of funds to the destination address, using the above obfuscation
- Random private data is embedded into normal transactions, creating false network traffic, making pinning down real anonymous transactions more difficult
Future upgrades to improve this further may be:
- Dummy transactions
- Multiple wallets for the receiving address, making matching funds much more difficult
- Every wallet becomes a NAV Tech server for private send
Read full details here on NAV's anonymous approach: https://navcoin.org/news/a-guide-to-navtech/
Anonymous Smart Contracts
The nice thing about this methodology is it will still make it easy for future smart contracting to be anonymous. The dual chain just makes anonymous dapps simple!
A smart contract is simply run through an address, and perhaps the contract author specifies all funds sent be processed anonymously. This means, the NAV Tech layer would be the only layer sending in the funds to the smart contract. This layer would mask who sent the funds, and it may also split those funds up significantly across different blocks if possible, as it sends to the contract address.
With enough obfuscation, it will simply be anonymous because no one could figure out who is sending to who.
Anonymous ICO's
As the SEC may regulate cryptocurrency markets in the future, there will certainly be high demand for not showing up on their radar. It may be that some projects prefer raising funds anonymously in their ICO.
Imagine an ICO where no one can prove a US investor participated. Imagine an ICO where no one can prove where the funds are being sent and held?
Anonymous smart contracts hold potential. NAV is cheap, especially if we see them corner the market in this area.