This is the review and ranking of Zerocoin “Anonymous Distributed E-Cash from Bitcoin” whitepaper authored by Ian Miers and on the “Vision”: “Singularity” (project’s uniqueness) — “Volume” (targeted market size) — “Empathy” (appeal to users) — “Timeline” (project schedule and long-term strategy) sub-scale.
Zerocoin addresses BTC pseudo-anonymity issue “by breaking the link between individual Bitcoin transactions”. For that authors propose what they called “a decentralized e-cash scheme”. Basic idea is that an anonymous holder can use a digital protocol to commit to UTX a newly denoted coin, belonging to the pool of similar coins, and then claim any other coin from this pool providing he / she can produce a key containing a zero-knowledge proof of her coin belonging to this pool and a hidden value linking her coin to UTX.
As our industry moves from the innocent times of most popular currencies beginnings towards the future, which looks darker every day for personal privacy advocates, the confidential transactions might grow in popularity not only with individuals but also with corporations, specially outside of US and EU. Result: “a” for “Volume”.
At the same time a number of other choices available for potential consumers of “anonymous coins” will also be increasing and we can expect that the newly proposed technical solutions will be more sophisticated compare to the epoch 2014–2018 to account for the latest developments on the AML&KYC and surveillance fronts. Result: “b” for “Singularity”.
As to the “Empathy” it appears that most world’s governments have already taken the decision to not adapt their outdated money-tracking mechanisms to the new realities of XXI century but instead they will try to squeeze new technologies into their old systems. That will result in more people, specially among educated technical elites, joining the “movement”. That might also lead to some governments unleashing the full force of their repressive apparatuses on them, which will frighten many from using anonymous coins. Result: “a-” for “Empathy”.
As it’s the case with many other whitepapers belonging to the same time period, Zerocoin authors do not bother themselves with long-term planning. Result: “c” for “Timeline”.
Result: “Vision” (Singularity — Volume — Empathy — Timeline): baa-c
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