Source: news.google.com
In the digital age, the volume of data generated online continues to grow. Users leave their information at every step of interacting with websites and applications. Instead of a lengthy intro, check out this hilarious video “authorized by the Ministry of NoMemes.”
That said, is it still possible to stay private on “Filternet”? Yes it is. It has been possible thanks to unstoppable decentralization.
Anonymity and openness matching
Anonymity describes the quality or state of being unknown, which means that your username and identity are kept hidden. Users can remain anonymous for security or malicious reasons. The term that seems to be the closest opposite to “anonymity” is “openness”, which refers to the free use, exchange and modification of information for any purpose.
However, openness and anonymity are not mutually exclusive. In Web 3.0, openness represents the ability for users to keep track of all transactions and see the links between them. In this case, users do not know anything about the parties involved in these transactions, so they do not violate any privacy rules.
When the activities covered by the term “openness” do not result in the unauthorized disclosure of private data, there is an optimal balance between anonymity and openness.
Key features of cryptocurrencies, including anonymity, as explained by BlockGeeks
Decentralization and cryptography as contributors to openness
Decentralization in cryptography is achieved through the use of blockchain technologies. From a security perspective, blockchain technology presents a new way of storing information and enabling secure transactions, hence trust.
Blockchain is not based on any central point of control. Network participants must unanimously agree to add a new block and ensure its integrity. The other important feature of blockchain technologies is immutability, which means that the data remains unaltered, since any alteration requires enormous computing power.
Thanks to these characteristics, blockchain technologies bring openness and transparency to the financial world. Users can view public address stocks and transactions via block explorers.
A quick and general reminder of how blockchain works
In fact, decentralization and cryptocurrencies offer anonymity, but with only one purpose: SECURITY. If a bad actor performs malicious transactions and these activities are detected, their address will appear on various blacklists and all ethical projects will refrain from interacting with it.
If there is no central authority in decentralized technologies, who actually owns and controls the data? In general, no one, but…
…everyone on the network owns and manages data.
Decentralization has led to the establishment of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), the community-governed entities in which all interactions are organized around default rules embedded in smart contracts. By owning DAO virtual assets, users gain voting power and can therefore influence the development of the organizations of which they are a part.
Blockchain technologies: do they fight or favor the darknet?
There is a widespread prejudice that blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are actively exploited by criminals on the dark web for criminal activities such as money laundering.
Is this true? let’s analyze
In essence, the blockchain offered a way for digital money to exist across borders and beyond censorship. As a result, this has favored dark web activities such as the sale of drugs and other prohibited goods, services or content as sensitive data to buyers. Almost all payments on the dark web are done in cryptography. Transactions made in virtual assets grant cybercriminals anonymity, and the use of special cryptographic mixers makes it extremely difficult for intelligence agencies to track the movement of funds.
According to Chainalysis’ Crypto Crime Report, darknet markets received $2.1bn in cryptocurrency in 2021, with $1.8bn attributable to drug markets and the remaining $300m to fraud shops. Although the price of crypto assets skyrocketed in 2021, the number of fraudulent shops and drug-focused markets decreased by 5 and 13 units respectively. Therefore, the rise of cryptocurrencies did not lead to the uprising of the dark networks.
“Everyone has the right to vote” — 100% true in DAOs
As mentioned above, decentralization and the blockchain have brought openness and transparency to users. And one of the forms of transparency is the power of fair voting. With the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), decisions are made from the bottom up, as users are project owners and managers.
DAO is not about chaos: a proposal is activated only after getting the approval of the majority of stakeholders.
Prevents DAOs from being spammed with proposals. All activities that take place within DAO are fully transparent and verifiable.
Is it mandatory to adhere to the DAO? Users are free to decide whether to join a DAO. They can do so only after understanding the underlying governance rules.
As we can see, DAOs prevent barbaric behavior. Users do not have to depend and trust the single agent, as they work in groups with members who have aligned interests.
Are users able to make correct decisions?
Critics of DAOs argue that these organizations are not perfect as the masses are entitled to make complex financial decisions without even understanding their nature. The proportion of tokens a user owns is the sole determinant of their voting power. Therefore, the knowledge and experience of the users do not affect the voting power.
Some projects solve this problem by launching educational campaigns with attractive financial rewards on their websites. These campaigns can be launched on the largest platforms in the industry. Majority voting also reduces the risk of a few users making critical decisions without understanding the problem.
CoinMonks contributor covered some of the Learn-to-Earn initiatives
Data Ownership in Web 3.0
In the Web 3.0 network, data is stored and managed locally in a distributed and decentralized ecosystem. Data tokenization is firm confirmation of ownership, which means a data creator gets full control and freedom to distribute data whenever they want.
In Web 3.0, digital wallets are used to interact and exchange data, thus creating an online identity. Access to our personal and professional digital spaces resides in users’ wallets. Online identity enables participation in the online economy, access to content, and trade in digital assets. The purpose is to ensure that no organization can limit user access.
In general, vital information should be stored decentralized because centralized solutions are still too vulnerable to external pressure and attacks.
Decentralized identification systems
Decentralized identity is an emerging concept in Web 3.0. It is the approach to identify and access administration where individuals can create, manage and control their personally identifiable information without the consent of third parties.
Decentralized identity management enables transparent and secure interaction between users, organizations, and things. Distributed ledger technologies and blockchains validate the existence of a legitimate entity. The foundation of decentralized identity management is decentralized encrypted wallets built on the blockchain.
For crypto projects, decentralized identity management simplifies their compliance responsibilities as they can collect and store only the information they really need, thus handling less identity data.
Unstoppable Domains as an example of decentralized identification
What about depersonalization in crypto?
With respect to more recent advances in cryptography, such as those related to the Metaverse, the global community is moving towards depersonalization instead of full anonymity. Interactions in the Metaverse take place through digital avatars that may, but do not necessarily, contain sensitive data about their true owner. However, if an avatar makes a real individual identifiable in the real world, this data should be treated as confidential.
Decentralized labeling as the next cybersecurity solution
Simply speaking, tagging means ascribing positive, neutral, or negative connotations to any object or item based on predefined criteria. Labeling is widespread in cryptography. For example, you can tag your addresses on different exchanges or give your friends’ or family’s addresses names to distinguish them from malicious players. On the contrary, when being scammed, users place negative labels on all addresses and contacts involved in the incident. It’s cryptographic tagging on a micro level.
Crypto projects and exchanges make up their lists of trusted or malicious users and contacts. Centralized cybersecurity companies also compile their whitelists and blacklists of projects that meet and violate essential security standards. However, the capacity of each cybersecurity brand is limited by its internal human capital and available technologies.
Now imagine a situation where the entire crypto community is engaged in collecting cybersecurity data about projects, exchanges, and platforms. A huge open database with projects that get tags from the community in real time. There is no question that all of these volumes of data need to be managed by a trusted, independent intermediary to ensure that people have access to high-quality, verified information.
What can it look like? Imagine that there is a security scale in front of each project that ranges from 0 to 100 and changes every moment based on input from the community. Through this scaling, we can even group projects based on their security, as well as pinpoint bad actors. This new cybersecurity paradigm can be called decentralized tagging.
Contribution of decentralized labeling to the growth of the crypto community
Decentralized labeling would create links between cybersecurity and crypto communities. That is, the former will be even more deeply integrated into the latter by meeting the security needs of cryptocurrency holders. Imagine that through decentralized labelling, we can turn cybersecurity data into something like public goods that would serve the entire crypto community.
Whitelisting as a result of decentralized tagging
Would you like to only interact with trusted and secure projects? How about finding all possible security information about your chosen projects in one place with just a few clicks? Or see the largest database of secure projects, the so-called crypto whitelist?
It is the new reality thanks to decentralized labeling, which opens new horizons in crypto. So, don’t miss your chance to be among the first beneficiaries of decentralized labeling. I guess we still have a chance to remain anonymous. Thanks, web3.
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