Bitmain co-founder speaks about the dilemma between privacy and security

Bitmain co-founder speaks about the dilemma between privacy and security

On 21 September, Jihan Wu, the co-founder of Bitmain spoke about the privacy and security aspect of the blockchain technology, during the World Digital Mining Summit, hosted by Bitmain and BitKan.

Bitmain is a private company headquartered in Beijing, China. It is known to be one of biggest Bitcoin mining biggest company and the largest ASIC chip producer in the world.

Jihan said that the dilemma of privacy and security was one of the first areas which the blockchain technology development had to address over the next decade. According to him, finance continues to be the first major application of the blockchain technology. However, the contradiction between privacy and security would be the first major point of attention in finance.

Jihan spoke about the security models used in the blockchain industry, he stated that the UTXO model used for Bitcoin [BTC] had been functioning since the time BTC was created.

The UTXO security model also had several flaws in them which had to be addressed. One of the problems with the model was that the network did not have privacy, this was because all the transaction could be tracked on the blockchain network. Jihan stated that the problems with the UTXO model was addressed by the community by focussing on the implementing a new technology.

ZK snark was one of the alternatives which claimed to offer better privacy in the network. He further added that the problem with ZK snark, when compared to UTXO, was that vulnerabilities in the blockchain could not be identified immediately. This could have resulted in a lot of damage.

According to Jihan, technology neutrality was also very important for the blockchain industry. Regulation of blockchain in the financial market was necessary because the financial applications were becoming more widespread. This ,in turn, resulted in participants across international borders. Thus, it was important to rectify the legislative issues in the blockchain industry.

He stated that when bitcoin was born no one was ready to take the responsibility to respond to the regulatory issues. However, as the system grew bigger the issues could not be ignored and had to immediately be addressed.

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