Gabrielle Hibbert

About Gabrielle Hibbert

http://decentralizedfuturecouncil.org

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The Web of Privacy in web3: Part III

"The Web of Privacy in web3" Part II

The third and final part of a privacy series written by Decentralized Future Council Fellow, Gabrielle Hibbert.

Introduction

Now understanding the history of privacy in web1 and web2, and having addressed the potential of privacy in web3, part three of this blog series will focus on the technologies in web3 that provide layers of privacy and pseudonymity for the user.

Privacy enhancing technologies, henceforth referred to as their acronym “PETs,” have been around before the advent of blockchains and cryptocurrencies. Briefly speaking, privacy enhancing technologies are used to obfuscate content and metadata. While the level of efficacy of particular PETs continues to be debated, examples of PETs that users engage with are: secure messaging, anonymized networks, communication encryption software, and virtual private networks (VPNs) (Markin, et al., 2020).

However, with the rise of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, various PETs have been deployed in conjunction with various blockchains and their native currencies to enhance privacy. In the final installment of this series on privacy in web3, a brief primer on PETs in web3 will be explained through (i) zk-SNARKs, and (ii) the marketed increase in PETs.

Enhancing privacy on the blockchain with zk-SNARKs

One of the most popular means by which privacy preserving protocols strive to ensure an added level of privacy is through the implementation of zero-knowledge succinct non-interactive arguments of knowledge or zk-SNARKs (Banerjee, et al., 2020).. zk-SNARKs are a highly technical subject and for the purposes of this brief blog post a naive explanation of what they are and how they work will be explained.

Pioneered in 1988, zk-SNARKs are a proof construction where one can prove possession of a statement (e.g. information) without revealing anything about the specified information (e.g. “a secret”) outside of the validity of the statement. Zero Knowledge proofs can be verified in milliseconds and have the ability to transform the privacy enhancing landscape for a variety of web3 and non-web3 based technological infrastructures.

For example, zk-SNARKs have been used in a variety of web3 applications such as in Electric Coin Company’s implementation of Zcash to a newer utilization of it for the storage of off-chain data on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (zk-Rollups) to the verification of personally identifiable information (PII) such as driver’s licenses. Zero knowledge proofs provide a novel way of protecting the privacy of users while allowing the verification of their information to be conducted.

The Prevalence of PETs in Web3

The use of PETs in Web3 have exploded, where other cryptocurrencies such as Monero, Zcash, IronFish, and many others are beginning to implement variations on zk-SNARKs. Part of the reason why there are more privacy centric cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchains is due in part to a renewed interest in PETs. Data privacy has become an increasingly discussed topic as newer technologies are developed. As we’ve seen in the earlier iterations of this blog series, the ebb and flow of privacy consciousness has impacted and continues to impact the public’s desire for privacy in technological spaces.

Conclusion

Data privacy is a human right and should be continually fought for; especially as emerging technologies such as blockchains emerge as a new way for individuals and communities to communicate. The rise in discussion and want for privacy enhancing technologies markedly renewed with the continual misuse and brokering of personal data by the hands of prominent web2 internet companies. If we are to create a just and fair technological landscape for all, privacy and security needs to remain part of the wider conversation and research on blockchains and the decentralized web.

"The Web of Privacy in web3" Part II
The Web of Privacy in web3
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The Web of Privacy in web3: Part II

"The Web of Privacy in web3" Part II

Understanding the web of privacy in the web3 space through transaction data and the unresolved permanence of our privacy landscape

The second part of a three part profile from Decentralized Future CouncilFellow, Gabrielle Hibbert.

Introduction

In the first part of our blog series, a condensed history of the privacy landscape of web1 explained the rise of the privacy conscious movement of the cypherpunks. The cypherpunk movement partially gave way to our current cryptocurrency landscape.

Even with advances toward privacy in the web3 space, for those not closely attuned to the space, it is not easy to determine what embodies privacy. In part two of this series, the following will be explained, as it relates to blockchain: (i) the interplay of transparency and privacy and (ii) a detailed look at blockchain transaction data.

Transparency: A tenet of blockchain development

When people speak about blockchains, one of the first aspects of the technology to be mentioned besides its tamper-evidence is its transparency. One of the values embedded in many legacy 1 blockchains such as Bitcoin, is that each transaction has the ability to be audited by the public; this characteristic is what makes risk-limiting audits for voting (4) and supply chain applications more favorable than our current opaque processes.

Transparency within blockchain development is used to create accountability and a pseudo public forum for those to see what transactions are happening and when. This accountability is something that is not wholly different from how we envision functioning democracies to operate.

The privacy that we talk about on various blockchains is determined by how private individuals desire to be when they use blockchain based technologies.

Just as we mentioned before, there are different levels to privacy protocols when we speak specifically about blockchain transactions. However, the level of privacy that is afforded to all users is pseudonymity.

Pseudonymity is afforded through a hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet (one of the most common forms of a “crypto wallet”), where the user is afforded a level of privacy through their public wallet address. This wallet address appears as a string of non-human readable alphanumeric characters (ex. 14qViLJfdGaP4EeHnDyJbEGQysnCpwk3gd). In web3, the public wallet address can be likened to an account that users create for websites in web2. However, unlike accounts in web2, your address neither shows your name nor any other personally identifiable information (PII). Due to the asymmetric encryption behind hierarchical deterministic wallets, a user can generate multiple addresses or accounts from the master key pair. One of the main functions of this is to enhance the privacy of the user. If a user has multiple addresses an outside observer cannot be certain that a specific address is tied to the master key pair. (5)

While a public address affords a level of privacy, users new to the web3 ecosystem often incorrectly believe that their transactions on various blockchains are anonymous. This idea is particularly misleading, as each transaction is subject to transparent metadata. Blockchain protocols are purposefully transparent, where all transactions can be viewed. One of the easiest ways to view blockchain transactions is through using a block explorer such as Etherscan. Essentially a block explorer is akin to viewing an air traffic control system, where users can view not only the transaction on the Ethereum blockchain, but also analytics such as the price of gas, the pricing mechanism tied to transactions.

The Metadata of a Blockchain Transaction (on a blockchain — specifically an Ethereum blockchain):

For further details, click here for the Etherscan.

What you can glean from the metadata table is the following:

  • One of my Ethereum Addresses
  • The transaction metadata

What the public cannot see:

  • Where I am located
  • Who I am (e.g., it’s not an ecommerce marketplace where my financial and personal data is stored)
  • IP address

This varies greatly from our traditional means of financial communication, and is a huge selling point for those that value financial and personal privacy. The personal details of who I am as a person are obfuscated by the transaction hashes, which provides a layer of privacy or pseudonymity that I otherwise would not have if I bought a good or service with a traditional line of credit.

Conclusion

Transactions on the blockchain provided a layer of privacy but not complete anonymity. However, there are ways in which users can add additional layers of privacy to their identity and transactions.

Privacy is often thought of as “all or nothing” where something is either private or public. In actuality and especially with blockchains and cryptocurrencies, privacy is a layered and nuanced process. In the last installment of this series, a primer on the various types of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) used within the web3 space will be explained.

Footnotes:

4. A big caveat here is that while RLA (risk-limiting auditing) is a supported way of doing voting on the blockchain. Voting during an election using blockchain is not supported (Park, et al., 2021) for various reasons ranging from security concerns

5. In asymmetric encryption, hashing functions such as a SHA-256 (secure hashing algorithm) is used to digest an arbitrary set of information. Hashing functions only work “one-way” meaning that they are deterministic and not reversible. Therefore, an outside observer of a user’s public address cannot determine the master key from any of the extended key pairs.

"The Web of Privacy in web3" Part II

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

Privacy’s Place in Web3: Where is Privacy in the Web3 Space? Part I

"Privacy’s Place in web3" Part I

The first part in a three part profile from Decentralized Future Council, Fellow, Gabrielle Hibbert

Where is privacy in the web3 space?

Since Bitcoin’s emergence in 2008, when the pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto published their research paper on a peer-to-peer version of electronic cash, a renewed discussion on the construction of online privacy resurfaced. However, ideas on crafting online privacy far precedes the publication of Bitcoin, with events like the political movements of the cypherpunks and an early 1890 legal briefing on the right to privacy by Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis.

The question of privacy is neither a new phenomenon, nor one where collective consensus prevails. The forward movement of the web3 space has provided visibility to how online platforms are constructing the positive right to be anonymous(1) or pseudonymous online and fortifying peer-to-peer transactions.

In this 3 part series, I will outline how the evolution of privacy intersects directly with current discussions and new software being created for the web3 space. Both ideas are a continuously evolving phenomenon of an era that is founded on discovery and experimentation.

The growth of the internet and social networking (web1 to web2)

Pseudonymous spaces have existed online far before the advent of web3. Various protocols such as pgp (pretty good privacy) and Tor (The Onion Router), 1991 and 2002, respectively are early internet privacy protocols. While both protocols are still widely used, the conversation of online pseudonymity through encryption was still considered a fringe development in the context of the general public. During the early days of web1, the nature of the ‘internet superhighway’ itself was a marvel.

The ability to create B2B and SaS companies, and later social communities, spurred the early foundation of our current social (participatory) web2. With an estimated 52% of American adults using the internet in 2000, jumping 24 percentage points to 76% of American adults in 2010 (with the rate of adoption skewed to higher income earners)(2), an increasing number of American adults led many of the bulwark internet companies of the web2 era to collect data on its users.)

Many of the web2 platforms bequeathed the autonomy of publishing to the public with social networking platforms; which many took with gusto to publish, document, and photograph the quotidian. However, with massive scale social networking readily available — big data aggregation became the go-to strategy for many web2 companies to better understand macro trends, attitudes, and preferences. (3) Using web2 softwares to harness this data steadily eroded the very idea of online privacy for the individual. The positive freedom to be pseudonymous was replaced by the de-facto right to be mined, harvested, and aggregated into a data point.

The positive right to be anonymous or pseudonymous online

Legacy 1 web3 protocols such as Bitcoin were eclipsed by the discussions on big data collection, and the regulation needed to curtail trends in massive data collection. When Bitcoin did emerge to the general public, a renewed discussion on where our collective positive right to pseudonymity returned to the forview. Questions on how the users of the internet could interact with each other pseudonymously led to growing interest in privacy preserving internet browsers (Brave, DuckDuckGo), rising cybersecurity concerns, and a continued debate on how to control one’s personal information online.

Importantly, what many of the legacy 1 web3 protocols did was shift the narrative back on how we could collectively build a distributed, private networking future, where surveillance is not the norm. However, it has not been easy to parse out what privacy looks like for many new to the web3 ecosystem. In part II, I will dive into what privacy looks like and the forms it can take.

Conclusion

The push for more privacy preserving technologies within the web3 space was borne not only from a long tradition of research, but also from the societal reaction to current massive data collection and surveillance of web2. While the work is not done, the ways in which individuals can engage as peer-to-peer networks can prove to be more autonomous, sovereign, and pseudonymous than our current ecosystem if we build it the right way.

Footnotes:

  1. It is incredibly difficult to be completely anonymous online. Even if a user were to connect to a virtual private network (VPN) or an anonymous browser, a user’s connection to said services can still be known. This does not mean that the user’s identity is revealed, rather, their connection to these services is known. VPNs, anonymous browsers, and other privacy enhancing technologies services are still incredibly important and great at enhancing the anonymity of users online.
  2. Higher income is defined by the Pew Research Center as USD 75,000.00 (which in the year 2000 had internet adoption rates of 81%). Internet usage disaggregated by race saw 72% of english-speaking Asian Americans with the highest internet usage with 72% in the year 2000 (Pew Research Center, 2015)
  3. https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/download/3993/3269
"Privacy’s Place in web3" Part I
A Deep Dive into Web3 with Gabrielle Hibbert
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Deep Dive into Web3

In this episode of Debugged, Medha Gupta sits down with Gabrielle Hibbert, security auditor and researcher at Least Authority, co-founder of Web3 native startup Future Proof Collective, and Fellow at the Decentralized Future Council, to discuss what Web3 is and how both governance and policy play a huge role in this space. Hibbert shares her unique journey in the technology sector and how she was able to leverage her background in public policy and economics to build an impactful career as a researcher, an educator, and an advocate for Web3 and blockchain.

Shane Tews
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What Will the Next Generation of the Internet Look Like? (with Gabrielle Hibbert) “Explain to Shane”

What Will the Next Generation of the Internet Look Like? (with Gabrielle Hibbert)

To start off 2022, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Shane Tews of the Explain to Shane podcast. Throughout our half-hour conversation we discussed all things Web3 including: as it relates to its potentiality to affect our current internet landscape, the need for greater regulatory guidance, and finally ending with a call for diversification in our technological spaces.

When Web3 entered the public lexicon, the public’s understanding of it was mired in opinion pieces and sensational articles. As we move closer to operating in a Web3 environment, it’s paramount for both our public and regulatory bodies to understand what Web3 is and how it can change our current internet landscape for the better. Having the privilege of engaging in the conversation surrounding Web3 with Shane can help facilitate the knowledge transfer needed to build equitable, diverse, and resilient systems in the Web3 ecosystem.

This episode will be live Tuesday, 2/1 at 6:00am ET. Listen here.

What Will the Next Generation of the Internet Look Like? (with Gabrielle Hibbert)
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