# Protecting your Privacy within the Blockchain Ecosystem - Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon) - Date: 2018-10-07 - Duration: 11:05 - Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-1WrdRbsCEAA - YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WrdRbsCEAA ## Description Visit the https://archive.devcon.org/ to gain access to the entire library of Devcon talks with the ease of filtering, playlists, personalized suggestions, decentralized access on IPFS and more. https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/3/protecting-your-privacy-within-the-blockchain-ecosystem Robertas Visinskis gives their talk titled, "Protecting your Privacy within the Blockchain Ecosystem" Speaker(s): Robertas Visinskis Skill level: Intermediate Track: Privacy Follow us: https://twitter.com/efdevcon, https://twitter.com/ethereum Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/ Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/ Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. Devcon 3 was held in Cancún, Mexico on Nov 1 - 4, 2017 Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation, with the support of our sponsors. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/ ## Transcript [Music] testing testing hello everybody all right nice to meet you my name is Robert I would mysterium team and I guess this this Def Con has been a lot about privacy and you have seen a lot technical talks about privacy and this is ending Def Con is ending so I would love to leave you with some fundamental thoughts about what privacy means what does it mean in our daily lives what does it mean in our everyday use of blockchain and internet apps and if it's even possible to protect it so let's start off what is privacy what is anonymity are they different are they the same and how do they apply on our everyday life privacy well what does it mean to have privacy when you engage in an activity let's say an online activity you log into your bank account you log into your Facebook account you log you you you talk to somebody you go into the bathroom when you engage in an activity privacy means having control of who has access to that activity together with you if anybody when you're creating your private keys for the wallet you don't want to give access to anybody unless I don't know it's your wife but when you log into Facebook you give Facebook the right to change things but you trust Facebook to not change things beyond what you tell them to like clicking on the like button and if there is any entity a third-party entity an authorized entity which is monitoring your actions that means you've lost your privacy and if that entity can monitor your actions and even change things like block you from going into Facebook if you're in China for example well that means you really lost your privacy unanimity on the other hand is a little bit different concept unanimity means you go out into the world and you want the world to see what you're doing you just don't want the world to know who you are and like like we're sending eaters on blockchain we everybody can see those eaters being sent nobody knows who is the person sending them or who is the entity doing that and both concepts are really important privacy is there for us to be calm to calm down and anonymity is there for the society it's a it's a catalyst of change without one we would not have freedom of speech or at least we would be very afraid to do so so on the fundamental level anything that happens on the Internet is basically communication right entity a is talking to entity B and they create a communication channel and over the last couple of decades this channel has been well I don't know how to say breached to be the least you can monitor what's happening and sometimes even even in interrupt the the communication let's talk about the same example Facebook app to Facebook server when you're on in certain countries you just can't reach that server why because somebody can see that that communication channel being opened up and they cut it right there so the question is is it possible to even protect this channel between those two entities and those two entities can be anything it could be a device talking to a server app to app app to server server to server anything so is it possible to protect to protect identities of these two that would mean anonymity to protect the content of the of the communications happening between those two that would mean privacy and we believe it is and that that's what we set out as a mission for ourselves to protect the identities and to protect the content so that no third-party unauthorized third-party entity could take a look see who is talking and understand what they're talking about so protecting privacy and anonymity the question is of course how to achieve this and we suggest to do it in couple phases as a phase one we're gonna be building a decentralized network of VPN nodes which means basically that anybody can become a VPN now just download an open-source app run it on your computer and that's it anybody can connect through you if they need that communication and you'll be paid to serve this service on top of it we're gonna add a couple errors for example a decentralized discovery mechanism so it wouldn't have a single point of failure a an anonymous identity management so that you would know like if entity a is using those three nodes they would know whom to pay and of course an anonymous payment mechanism so that again it could not be tracked in this case entity if they want to talk to an entity B that's a Facebook app server they would connect our first node and let's let's imagine I don't know cattle and situation and let's let's let's think there's a bit of a crisis taking place right now and if the communication would be blocked so they would connect first node somewhere in the cattle and then the connection would be encrypted and that the the contents would be hidden identity would be hidden from this note it would go to the next note I don't know here into Mexico finally to the third note right next to Facebook headquarters and then right unencrypted in this place all the way up to the third note the traffic is encrypted and after the third note third note has the keys as well as entity a they decrypt the traffic and it goes to note B it's an amazing technology it can open up borders it can go around I forgot the word basically you cannot block content anymore because you cannot see what is what is taking place but of course there is a little bit of like the final stretch is still not fully protected because you still have like for example a third note can still become the note that's rogue and can contribute to the cause of tracking data and blocking date and man-in-the-middle attacks and and and and all the other things happening and between this node and and final destination there could be an ice piece which again act as malicious ones and vice versa so is it possible to completely protect the channel between a and B so that it would not be possible to see who is talking and what they're talking about and we believe it is and that's what we are offering basically after were after phase one when we're building this infrastructure when this is done what we're gonna do is we're gonna open up a protocol and any app developer who is who is wishing to protect their users talking to each other to protect their servers talking to each other protect their users talking to servers we'll be able to do so by integrating this protocol at this stage Network the messages going out from the first place would be encrypted here shredded sent through multiple nodes recollected at the exit node at the destination place with private keys which a and B have they could be reassembled into a coherent message and consumed a and B trust each other so they have no problem of sharing this information everything from outside would look like lots of gibberish every node would have for example note 5 would just see note 4 as as some note and they would relay the message to B without ever knowing if B is another note or the final recipient and and the same way goes for the note for note 4 would never know if a was on just another note or Ori original sender in this case what we would have is we will have a private privacy protected because of the communication content is not recognizable for any third party not even a note not us not anybody anonymous because identities would be protected because only them would know who is each other and trustless because no note would ever be possible to take this information and make any meaning of it so yeah this will enable any app developer to integrate this private communication channel entered their apps and making well making an unstoppable app so that's it thank you and let's work together [Music]