Various cryptocurrencies claim to be private, or at least provide some privacy-oriented solutions for its users. A new report by Chainalysis confirms that both Dash and ZCash should not be classified as such, albeit that isn’t a big surprise anymore.
Providing privacy in the cryptocurrency world isn’t as easy as most may think,
Chainalysis Confirms the Lack of Privacy
If these features are not built in at the protocol level, they serve no real purpose.
The new report by Chainalysis confirms as much.
The team looked at both Dash and ZCash to determine how private their transactions really are.
As it turns out, the possibility to mix transactions doesn’t provide better privacy compared to Bitcoin.
In fact, the use of PrivateSend on the network is less than 0.7% of all transactions.
Dash hasn’t advertised itself as a privacy coin for a while now, as the focus has shifted to payments, which it seems to be far better suited for.
For ZCash, obfuscation through zk-SNARKS is powerful, but it is not a foolproof method.
Chainalysis confirms they can track transaction values and at least one address for 99% of all network transactions.
Few transactions are completely shielded, simply because the protocol doesn’t enforce proper encryption of transaction data.
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