Introduction

I have friends in the cryptocurrency space who ask for my opinion on the viability of certain projects from time to time. There’s a lot of money in initial coin offerings (aka token sales) and generally the first piece of information available from which to make the decision to invest is a single whitepaper. These whitepapers in the cryptocurrency space were inspired by the original Bitcoin whitepaper which preceded the actual implementation and explained the mechanics of the blockchain. These whitepapers are considered authoritative references on the bigger questions about the coin’s existence and technical architecture, and are usually focused on high level details.

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Introduction

Among cryptocurrencies privacy is a major category of features for which there is a real need. When I say privacy, I’m referring to people who depend on their anonymity for their safety. The canonical examples include journalists, dissidents, political activists, and criminals. These groups are frequently targeted by governments, known to be the most powerful kind of adversary with incredible resources. For this reason, the gold standard of privacy is privacy from governments. Obviously, if you are private from governments, you are also private from everyone else, meaning that you don’t have to be targeted by a government to find utility in privacy.

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