Mimblewimble, a privacy-focused blockchain protocol, is allegedly not private at all. According to an expert at blockchain research firm Dragonfly Research, Mimblewimble's privacy is fundamentally flawed, which he reportedly proved by discovering the exact addresses of senders and recipients for 96% transactions of Mimblewimble’s privacy-centric coin Grin (GRIN). Ivan Bogatyy, a researcher at United States-based Dragonfly Capital Partners, published a Medium post on Nov. 18 in which he claimed that he was able to break Grin’s purported privacy while spending just $60 per week on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Mimblewimble should no longer be treated as an alternative to Zcash …

Notable use cases Over the last two to three years, a number of platforms have adopted zero-knowledge proofs in order to bolster their native security/privacy capabilities. ZoKrates is a digital toolbox that can be used by skilled developers to devise and verify zero-knowledge proofs using Solidity — an object-oriented programming language used for creating Ethereum-based smart contracts. Similarly, a couple of years ago, JP Morgan Chase adopted Zcash’s zk-SNARKs-based proof of concept to bolster the privacy of its native blockchain ecosystem called Quorum. Simply put, Quorum is a fork of the Ethereum blockchain that makes use of its very own …

Electric Coin Company (ECC) has donated the Zcash trademark to the Zcash Foundation. ECC created and launched the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) in 2016, and will now own the trademark bilaterally with the corresponding foundation. ECC and the Zcash Foundation have been in negotiations since August Upon an agreement signed on Nov. 6, the Zcash Foundation will be financially responsible for costs associated with assigning and protecting the trademark. Announcing the news, the Zcash Foundation mentioned the existing disagreement with ECC over the trademark’s future. The foundation noted that it returned to negotiations with ECC after failing to reach an …

What kinds of wrapped tokens are there? Because Ethereum is the biggest DeFi ecosystem, wrapped tokens are often those hosted on other blockchains but are also stablecoins that are pegged to the dollar. Many of the first wrapped assets were, in fact, fiat-backed stablecoins, such as tokens with prices pegged to the dollar — Tether, Coinbase’s USDC or TrueUSD. There are also euro, yen, yuan and countless other fiat stablecoins that are mostly based on the Ethereum blockchain. These are backed accordingly via the reserves, with coins fed in according to the demand of online crypto exchanges and larger institutional …

As Japan and South Korea — two of the largest cryptocurrency exchange markets in Asia — are increasingly pressuring exchanges to delist privacy-focused crypto assets, and concerns are rising that it could lead to more markets, at least in Asia, to follow the trend of the two major countries. Meanwhile, Blockchain analytics firms like CypherTrace appear to be developing technologies to better understand the structure of privacy-focused coins and to trace transactions initiated by cryptocurrencies. Speaking to Cointelegraph, a spokesperson for CypherTrace said that the company expects to see some progress by 2020 on privacy coins, stating, “We look forward …

The German Federal Ministry of Finance has expressed concerns about rising use of privacy tokens due to their association with criminal activities and difficulties in tracking them. Published on Oct. 19, the ministry’s “First Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing National Risk Assessment” for 2018-2019 provided analysis aimed at the identification of existing and future risks in the field of anti-money laundering (AML) and terrorism financing (TF) in Germany. Among other challenges, the report examines circulation of cryptocurrencies in the darknet for criminal purposes. Pseudo-anonymous vs. anonymous tokens The report marks a distinction between pseudo-anonymous and anonymous tokens, noting that pseudonymity …

Members of the Zcash (ZEC) community have discovered a suspicious and potentially malicious counterfeit version of Zcash Foundation’s native ZecWallet. According to a Twitter post published on Oct. 20 and retweeted by Zcash developer Electric Coin Company, the fake ZecWallet likely contains malware. The tweet reads: “PSA to all Zcash users! There is a fake version of ZecWallet that likely contains malware (size and checksum is different) double check you are downloading from official @zecwallet repo on GitHub: https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zecwallet” As Cointelegraph reported on Sept. 29, a bug was found in all Zcash implementations and most of its forks that could …

Changpeng Zhao, CEO and founder of major cryptocurrency exchange Binance, said that the reasons why Binance Coin (BNB) dropped over 50% from its all-time high in June do not make much sense. “Markets often confuse people” Zhao explained that new services such as margin trading, an increased number of fiat onramps, peer-to-peer (P2P) trading, and futures trading have made the last quarter “very productive” with many significant projects coming to fruition. Resultantly, the CEO isn’t sure why BNB price has slumped over the past few months, mentioning the drop in Bitcoin price among other possible reasons. Zhao noted: “There are …

The privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) is seeking access to Ethereum’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem. Zcash’s shielded addresses on the Ethereum network On Oct. 13, Coindesk reported that the topic of interoperability was the theme of the now concluded Devcon 5 developer conference in Osaka, Japan, where a number of smaller cryptocurrency projects displayed interest in accessing Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem. Summa co-founder, James Prestwich, told the news outlet: “Connecting to other chains doesn’t seem to be an Ethereum developer’s priority, but other chains seem to want to connect to Ethereum.” Developers all over the world have been working on interoperability solutions …

Cryptocurrency exchange OKEx Korea announced the end of Monero (XMR), DASH, Zcash (ZEC), Horizen (ZEN) and Super Bitcoin (SBTC) trading as of today, Oct. 10. Per the Oct. 2 announcement, the assets have been delisted today. A previous version of the announcement was published on Sept. 10. That being said, since then the support for privacy coins ZEC and DASH has been defined as temporarily suspended due to regulatory concerns. Regulatory concerns over privacy coins More precisely, OKEx Korea reports having received a request to end the transaction support and review the compliance with the 'Travel Rules' according to the …

A bug in all Zcash (ZEC) implementations and most of its forks could leak metadata containing the full nodes’ with shielded addresses (zaddr) IPs. Komodo (KMD) developer Duke Leto disclosed the bug in a blog post published on his personal website. A Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) code has already been assigned to track the issue on Sept. 27. Leto explained: “A bug has existed for all shielded addresses since the inception of Zcash and Zcash Protocol. It is present in all Zcash source code forks. It is possible to find the IP address of full nodes who own a …

Israeli cybersecurity startup GK8 has reportedly developed the world’s first offline system for transacting cryptocurrencies. The new system uses GK8’s proprietary cryptographic techniques that enable instant blockchain transactions of digital assets without any need for an internet connection, Israeli business news publication Globes reported on Sept. 18. The company raised $4 million in a funding round led by Discount Capital, a venture arm of one of Israel’s three largest banks, Discount Bank, and Marius Nacht, a co-founder of cybersecurity giant Checkpoint. Other investors reportedly included EdenBlock, iAngels, IDEAL-HLS, StratX and the Israel Innovation Authority. As reported by Globes, GK8’s new …