StealthCoin Unique Kind Take On Crypto-Currency Anonymity
Posted by: Greg Miller
October 16, 2014
Since Darkcoin started and tried to take on the challenge of crypto-currency anonymity, many more anonymity focused crypto-currencies have popped up – Cloakcoin, Anoncoin, BitcoinDark, Monero, and many more. While most have provided unique contributions to the advancement of crypto-currency anonymity, they have not been unique in their approaches. Everybody is looking at the same solutions – ring signatures, centralized mixers, etc. StealthCoin has broke this trend, and has taken a really unique approach to crypto-currency anonymity.
StealthCoin
Stealthcoin (XST) is a brand new crypto-currency, but they have been developing the coin a lot. Stealthcoin is the only proof of stake (POS) anonymity focused crypto-currency on the market. The coin has been integrated with Tor, the anonymous network, since the beginning. A simple, but very effective feature, and an obvious feature missing in a lot of coins. As of October 6, stealth addresses have also been included into the official StealthCoin wallet, making it one of the few coins providing blockchain analysis resistance (stealth addresses) and network analysis resistance (Tor anonymity network). Stealth addresses are temporary public addresses that are derived from a single hidden public address. It is considered good crypto-currency hygiene to create a new public address for each transaction to avoid transaction linkage and forfeit transaction anonymity. Doing this manually takes time and is a hassle, but stealth addresses do this automatically. No public address used by a stealth address scheme will be used again. If someone is looking at these transactions, they would see different addresses with no link to each other, but do you will feel and act if you had only one public address. StealthCoin’s integration of Tor and stealth addresses, while simple, provide effective and practical anonymity that isn’t a hassle.
One of the coins earliest achievements was the successful development and deployment of StealthText. StealthText is an original way to anonymously and securely send Stealthcoins through your smartphone without access to mobile data. Your phone connects from the Stealthtext app to a service like Google Voice, which bridges the gap between cell and the internet. Then it connects to the wallet through a email client. It then sends the amount of SteathCoins you chose, to the desired recipient and that transaction, like all StealthCoin transactions, will go through the Tor network. The process is also encrypted with AES encryption, bank grade security. This protects the sender from any snoopers seeing the contents of the transaction. It makes sending and transacting in Stealthcoin easy, simple, and hassle free. Stealthsend uses 2-factor authentication requires a passphrase, and pin numbers. You can use StealthText for free, except for the standard transaction fee.
StealthSend
StealthSend is going to be the second crypto-currency launched by the team behind StealthCoin. The coin will feature two key features – chandran signatures and a proof of work (POW) mining algorithm. Chandran signatures serve the same purpose as CryptoNote’s Ring signatures – blockchain obfuscation. People will have a much harder time analyzing the blockchain, because these transactions use multiple private and public keys in the transaction. These keys are chosen at random from the whole network. An investigator will know two of the 6 keys were included but not which ones. Since the keys are chosen at random there is way to eliminate choices that might be connected.
Chandran signatures differ in a big way from Ring signatures. They have a much smaller block size and are less of a stain on the blockchain. Crypto-currencies based off the protocol, CryptoNote, suffer from bloated blockchains because of Ring signatures. The CryptoNote based coin, Boolberry, has solved this problem to a degree, by going back and actually pruning the blockchain making the strain less. This is not ideal though, the original blocks are way too big, and there is extra having to back to prune the blocks. Chandran signatures are much smaller because their size is the square root. If the size of the Ring signature is 36KB, a Chandran signature is 4KB.
The reason why Stealthsend will be POW instead of POS, is because POS requires known ownership. Since in a POS scheme, you have the ability to stake your coins and gain interest, to avoid fraudulent abuse of this system, ownership of the coins must be known. This ownership doesn’t include your name or any identity information of that kind but is can de-anonymize your transactions and lead to full doxing. Since in a Chandran scheme there can’t be known ownership (Chandran signatures don’t allow it), it is not compatible with POS, and only compatible with POW.
They have not said they had plans or show any signs that are going to discontinue development on Stealthcoin. They did say that StealthCoins will be able to exchange for StealthSend on a 1:1 ratio. These conversations will account for 85% of StealthSend’s money supply, the remaining 15% will be mined through a sooth emission algorithm. All of the money supply is predicted to be in circulation in 2 years. They have not disclosed what the total money supply of StealthSend will be yet.
Open Bazaar
While the development team is called after their first project, StealthCoin, they are working one so much more. One of them most inquiring projects is Open Bazaar. Open Bazaar, which they plan to launch in late December. It will be an anonymous, decentralized marketplace. The open source marketplace will facilitate the sale of goods without any central control or ruler and will have the same resiliency of crypto-currency. The marketplace will based on StealthSend technology. The details of the project have been kept quiet but they will release more information as they reach the date.
StealthCoin’s RoadMap
1. New StealthCoin Wallet Functionality and Analytical Tools – Mid October 2014
2. Publish StealthSend Whitepaper – Early November 2014
3. Release StealthSend Wallets – Mid November 2014
4. Release Open Bazaar Platform Based On StealthSend – Late December 2014
Whitepapers
*They will release a full version in November.
Wallet, StealthText, and Exchanges
Social Media and Website
Updated: 2014-10-16