A reading from the book of OG:
Privacy. Why it’s important, and why Phonon is the best at it:
From the libertarian roots of Bitcoin, privacy has always been a core feature of cryptocurrency’s attractiveness. Privacy is a human right. Every human deserves to be able to move money when they like, how they like, and if they so please, without anyone else knowing.
Much to the dismay of politically/financially driven critics (government officials, data harvesting giants like Zuckerberg), privacy is a right that is legitimately required. A right that has been eroded away from society in the name of terrorism and money laundering.
Privacy protects us from arbitrary and unjustified use of power by states, companies and other actors. It enables us to build our lives in freedom and have control over data that could be weaponized by malicious actors.
Bitcoin fought back against the centralized, intensely monitored payments channels. But as adoption came in, it became clear that other blockchains could enhance the privacy of cryptocurrency far better than Bitcoin with its public ledger. Monero took digital p2p cash privacy to a whole new level and rose to a $8.7bn market cap. Mixers like Tornado Cash launched to enhance privacy on layer-1 blockchains.
The IRS is funding bounties to destroy these channels of privacy. $625,000 to anyone that cracks Monero. No one knows when they might succeed. But we can be sure that their desperation to crack will only grow over the years.
Monero and ETH mixers have fought valiantly to protect the right of payment privacy to our society, and establish a foundation for future decentralized systems to build from, but they are not complete solutions—A truly private system is needed.
Phonon takes privacy to a new level. No public ledger (even encrypted) to find historical transactions in. No mixer smart contract to trace transactions to and from. Transactions occur between 2 secure hardware devices, are completely private and not recorded. No one can trace transactions, no one can ‘crack’ Phonon to unveil the network’s transaction history, no one outside of those directly involved in the transaction can know you are transacting. This is not just enhancing privacy, this is truly private.
Phonon is a societal need. Join the Phonon DAO.