Snowden slams Taproot upgrade to spark controversy: Does Bitcoin really need to be anonymous?

"Bitcoin's privacy isn't enough, and an upcoming Taproot software update could make it worse." As one of the world's foremost privacy advocates, Edward Snowden said that The Taproot upgrade that was done didn't look good. It is reported that Edward Snowden is a former employee of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He disclosed the secret documents of the US National Security Agency's "PRISM" monitoring project to the British "Guardian" and the US "Washington Post". newspaper, and was wanted by the United States and the United Kingdom. He has since traveled to Russia and obtained permanent residency.

Speaking at the Ethereal summit, Snowden told Marta Belcher of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): "Cryptocurrencies, and for this I would say Bitcoin, really fail terribly when it comes to security. He also added that Taproot is not a good solution.

Edward Snowden: Don't Invest in Cryptocurrencies: Edward Snowden spoke about encryption and internet privacy at the Consensus 2022 conference in Austin, Texas, Golden Finance reports. Edward Snowden believes that the use of cryptocurrencies is more valuable, but he discourages people from putting money into cryptocurrencies as an investment.

In 2013, Snowden, who leaked classified information about the NSA's surveillance of citizens, appeared virtually at the Consensus 2022 conference in Austin, Texas, saying: "I use Bitcoin to use it. In 2013, I used Bitcoin to buy a server under a pseudonym."

Snowden also defended the crypto industry in the face of recent criticism from a group of technologists who have criticized cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in a push back against the industry's lobbying efforts earlier this month. Snowden said he believed the signers were deliberately misinterpreting the crypto industry, repeating some of the same traditional arguments that have been made many times in the past. (coindesk) [2022/6/12 4:19:41]

The statement sparked an uproar among other activists. Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation, believes Snowden misrepresented the Taproot escalation. Others argue that the Russian exile doesn't appreciate the importance of mainstream adoption of the project, which could be problematic if bitcoin becomes too anonymous.

Gavin Wood, founder of Polkadot: Web 3 is a "post-Snowden era network", a very interesting social experiment: Golden Finance reported that Polkadot founder Gavin Wood expressed his views on the evolution of the Internet at the BlockDown: DeData Conference conference, He said that because of the Edward Snowden incident, the Internet felt the urgency to create a new platform. He called this way of human interaction on a global scale the "Post-Snowden Web" (Post-Snowden Web). ). Looking 10 or 20 years into the future, Gavin Wood's framework for future large-scale multi-user applications can provide users with "real" guarantees. When asked to predict the Web 3 ten years from now, Gavin Wood replied: "It will be a very interesting social experiment, we will see the world focus on privacy, self-sovereignty and transparency, knowing how the rules of the system or service work, Very real." [2021/12/4 12:50:10]

Taproot was first proposed in early 2018 with the aim of increasing Bitcoin privacy. Currently, it is going through the process of making its way from the brains of the developers and into the Bitcoin protocol itself. When it does go live, will it improve privacy, scalability, and security? Taproot is said to be able to take complex, multi-step transactions on the Bitcoin network and make them appear to be a single transaction. Therefore, transactions involving multi-signature wallets or the Lightning Network are just like any other peer-to-peer transactions. Additionally, Taproot's upgrade may be combined with Schnorr signatures, which combine multiple signatures into one, further obscuring the mechanism at play and increasing privacy.

Snowden opens the NFT auction proceeds will be donated to the Freedom of the Press Foundation: Golden Finance reports that Edward Snowden, the disclosurer of Prism Gate, has started auctioning the NFT named "Stay Free" at 3 pm Eastern Time . Bidding on the collectible reached 40 ETH (just over $100,000) just an hour after the auction started. All proceeds from the sale will go to the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Snowden has chaired the foundation's board since 2016. "This auction will advance the development of valuable and privacy-preserving encryption that preserves a free press and serves the public," Snowden said in a statement from the Freedom of the Press Foundation. [2021/4/16 20: 25:02]

Snowden: Bitcoin will be replaced by cryptocurrencies that don’t use public ledgers: At a Blockstack event in Berlin earlier this month, Snowden said he doesn’t think Bitcoin will last forever, ccn reports Bitcoin will eventually be replaced by another cryptocurrency that does not use a public ledger. Snowden believes that Bitcoin has lasting value for a long time, but when looking at the core development team and the speed at which they are improving the protocol, Snowden believes that they need to do better or they will not be able to compete. "Snowden also said he was most interested in privacy-focused cryptocurrencies. [2018/3/23]

However, Snowden is not buying it. He told Belcher: "Look at what Taproot actually does? Taproot doesn't solve Bitcoin's privacy issues. There are even some arguments that this practice actually fragments the address space and makes forensic process analysis easier." Easy, which makes privacy worse." He went on to praise privacy coins Zcash and Monero, and urged Bitcoin to be "private by design."

At the same time, he also questioned whether those who help maintain the Bitcoin blockchain are willing to accept this model: "I think for many people in this field, the core development team of Bitcoin did not prioritize privacy issues, which is really true. It's frustrating because the longer they wait, the more obstacles there are to prevent that from happening."

In response, some developers and researchers said Snowden's comments about Taproot were clearly incorrect.

Gladstein said frankly: "I have great respect for Snowden. He sacrificed a lot to reveal the surveillance state to the world, but I disagree with his assessment of Bitcoin privacy. I hope he can consider more in-depth research on Taproot upgrades and Existing privacy tools, such as coin-mixing technologies CoinJoin and Lightning.” The two refer to tools that mix multiple transactions into one to anonymously transact and second-layer applications that allow transactions to happen quickly off-chain.

He also pointed out that Snowden was wrong to attack the priority of Bitcoin developers. "They are effectively constrained by Bitcoin users not to accept any software upgrade that breaks Bitcoin's auditability, backwards compatibility or stability. And developers can't do whatever they want, they have to craft a solution, the first condition is The most important value of Bitcoin, which is the scarcity of decentralized digital currency and the ability of users to control the system, cannot be sacrificed. This arrangement also means that Bitcoin cannot currently put experimental encryption technology on the main chain."

BlockTower Capital founder and CIO Ari Paul doesn't quite agree with Gladstein.

In a tweet that included Snowden and Gladstein, he wrote: "Core devs are clearly not prioritizing privacy. This is an objectively true statement. We could have hybrid or other privacy built into the Core client Technology. This is not a criticism - perhaps it is wise not to prioritize privacy. But it is objectively accurate." Decentralized finance researcher Chris Blec (Chris Blec) believes, "Taproot is to improve the comparison A nice step for Bitcoin to use pseudonyms. In today's world of ubiquitous surveillance, true anonymity is needed to maintain privacy. Sadly, anonymity is not a priority at Bitcoin Core, Because it will only hinder mainstream adoption and slow Bitcoin's absorption of the world's wealth."

Many people agree with this point of view. With a market capitalization of over $1 trillion and increasing mainstream acceptance, Bitcoin is in a long game that will require patience.

In addition, Messari founder Ryan Selkis mentioned Snowden on Twitter, saying: "His role is a self-righteous honest man, and he plays this role admirably. But those who really win the war (that is, let the cryptocurrency" too big to fail") know that anonymity (transactions) kills the entire ecosystem."

Others, like bitcoin developer Eric Lombrozo, see making bitcoin, a decentralized database with diverse stakeholders around the world, more private, as much a technical feat as it is Implementation challenges.

Lombrozo tweeted: "Before he managed to fork the Bitcoin protocol to add more privacy, he was in no position to criticize others for not doing so. He clearly didn't know how hard it was."

Taproot may not be implemented until November. Until then, expect to hear more talk about whether the move is good enough for bitcoin’s philosophy, or if it’s simply a concession as the fledgling cryptocurrency goes mainstream.

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