[ad_1]
Guy Zyskind is CEO and co-founder of Enigma, a secure calculation protocol that integrates with blockchain.
The following is an exclusive contribution for the 2018 year of CoinDesk under consideration.
In 2018, two important long-term trends finally clashed in a very public way.
The first trend was the excessive centralization of online platforms. For years, Facebook, Google and others have accumulated power and influence by centralizing user behavior. The products supplied to "free" users have created closed systems and eco rooms designed to keep users inside isolated ecosystems. In turn, the platforms repackaged these captured users into profitable advertising products, creating an online oligopoly.
The second trend was the erosion of data privacy. A complete lack of transparency about the way data was used, shared and protected by platforms and institutions has led to dramatic revelations. First of all, Cambridge Analytica informants have revealed how Facebook data was used improperly to target people during political campaigns. The rest of the year was filled with news of massive data breaches, hacking violations and yes, even more terrifying revelations on Facebook.
So why did everything explode in 2018? The truth is that these trends have been converging for a very long time. Many of the most terrifying news stories of 2018 concerned vulnerabilities that have existed for years. The only thing different about this year is that we finally started to notice. And maybe this is the scariest thing of all.
No easy solution
It is easy to see how centralization and data privacy are connected. Without proper supervision, monopoly platforms are not held responsible for their use of our data – or how they are protected. Furthermore, keeping data in centralized databases under the control of a single entity creates a juicy goal for opportunistic hackers who may lose, exploit or redeem data.
What is not simple, however, is the creation of decentralized alternatives that adequately address the data privacy problem. There have been countless articles written in the last year that exalted the merits of the blockchain and how it could have disrupted Facebook's business forever by enabling decentralized social platforms. Most of these articles, however, contained a fundamental misunderstanding about how the blockchain worked or neglected its existing limitations (such as scalability and privacy). As a result, they did not foresee how difficult it would be to tackle this problem.
This is where the third main trend of 2018 comes into play: the (above) correction of the hype blockchain cycle.
The enthusiastic speculations about the potential of the blockchain have exploded to unsustainable levels in 2017 and reported this year. Magazine covers and thought leaders have promoted blockchain as a potential panacea. Almost all the problems could be solved by "throwing a blockchain", with WIRED notoriously categorizing 187 things the blockchain should solve. But when the market prices for the cryptoassets began to implode, this list has shrunk dramatically during the course of 2018, culminating with more claims by thought leaders that "blockchain is useless".
Although there may not be an end to the first two trends – the monopolistic platforms still lack supervision and transparency, and the worst data privacy violations probably do not come – there are signs that the hunk blockchain cycle has stabilized. Expectations are starting to align with reality – and real solutions are proposed.
Decentralized solutions for data privacy
We published an article on the Enigma blog in March (around the time of the original Cambridge Analytica story) on how the blockchain alone could not fix Facebook. As we wrote at the time:
"While blockchain is great for fairness and transparency, it fails in privacy.Today, by applying the blockchain to the financial system, we are able to see all the transactions that have ever taken place.In a future where we have decentralized social networks, we will see all the I like posts and connections, in other words, blockchains alone can not give people control over their data. "
This statement was our attempt to take a measured approach to problems of excessive centralization and data privacy. Rather than rejecting the usefulness of blockchain, we hoped that people would see blockchain for what was good to be – a decentralized level of verification, not a complete platform. Fortunately, many builders and space leaders have embraced this healthy perspective, including Vitalik Buterin and the Web3 Foundation.
We expect that 2019 will continue to focus on the non-blockchain levels of the decentralized web technology stack. These include oracles, decentralized storage, status channels – but perhaps the most important thing – calculation of privacy preservation. This allows encrypted data to be calculated from the nodes in a decentralized network, all without revealing the data to the nodes themselves.
Safe calculation has been a field of study since the 1980s, long before Satoshi offered bitcoins. It is often considered the "Holy Grail" of computer science – and with recent advances, we are finally starting to realize some of the potentials of safe computing.
When combined with other decentralized technologies such as blockchain, we can create basic platforms for unstoppable applications that preserve the privacy of their users. The dream of dapps has always been to put the needs and interests of the users first – protecting their data and identities and avoiding censorship. Decentralized privacy solutions are the missing element to realize this dream.
In 2019, we can expect to see more and more projects in the blockchain space that embrace privacy solutions, including the Ethereum itself.
There are many technologies to explore, such as evidence of zero-knowledge and zk-snarks / stark, reliable execution environments, secure multiparty computation, and completely homomorphic cryptography. Understanding some of these is a challenge and the development work supporting these technologies is still in its early stages. However, protocols based on these privacy technologies have the potential to remodel the world as a blockchain itself, if not substantially.
And now?
In 2018, the conversation about the potential of the blockchain quickly changed from "what can not they do?" To "what can they do?" Experts have begun to declare blockchains as a solution in search of a problem. But this ignores the very real problems surrounding us, from government censorship to failed financial systems to the frequent violation of privacy and data security.
In 2019, we believe that conversation resumes when people begin to understand the deep relationship between these problems and decentralized solutions. Specifically, we expect people to realize that the greatest data privacy risks always come from centralized platforms and architectures – and that this is by design, not by accident. We also expect people to understand the limits of the blockchain as a privacy solution, always by design. Trends have already coincided. It is up to all of us to help draw connections.
Our highest priority in 2019, beyond construction, must be education and defense. It is important to stress that this effort can not be limited to blockchain technology. We must also focus on other decentralized technologies and on the problems that can help to solve, such as censorship and data privacy. In that last area, there are already many incredible organizations that do a great job in education and defense, including the Tor Project and the EFF.
We want and need decentralized technologies to be implemented globally and have global relevance. To do this, we must all embrace goals beyond speculation.
Our goal is privacy. What's your?
Image of Facebook through Shutterstock
[ad_2]Source link
