For Web3’s ideals of decentralization and anonymity, there is a privacy crisis that lies beneath the surface. The public nature of blockchain information makes anonymity particularly important to Web3 culture. Because for many, keeping their identity and financial data separate has become an essential requirement. Behind every NFT profile picture and anonymous identity is a real person who would rather not have their financial transactions tied directly to their real name. The nature of metadata and the dark truth of how wallets connect to Web3 applications make this anonymity difficult to maintain. As a result, privacy remains a very important issue for Web3. However, one analyst suggests that some Web 3.0 coin projects could solve this critical problem.
Metadata leaks threaten Web 3.0
Metadata leak poses a threat to Web3’s privacy and security. Therefore, we must first discover what exactly metadata is. Metadata is essentially data about data. That is, information such as file sizes, creation date, who sent data to whom and when. They are often quite different from heavily encrypted data. Accordingly, metadata is generally public and very easy to access and store. There are some very legitimate past and current use cases. However, metadata is used by people who want to compromise your identity and security. Companies, governments, and other groups use metadata to learn about users. The content of our Internet communications is usually well encrypted.
Metadata alone provides an alarmingly complete picture of every user. Even when a bona fide central organization collects highly sensitive information, this data is collected. It is then put on a server that is highly vulnerable to being stolen by a more malicious entity. Web 3.0 coin projects use decentralization to bring control back to users. Thus, it aims to solve these problems. Unfortunately, implementing this poses more, not less, a risk to user privacy. This is because decentralized networks are generally more vulnerable to attacks. In fact, individual network members are even less reliable than Web 2.0’s central powerhouses.
“These Web 3.0 coin projects could solve privacy issue”
But there is another way to protect users by putting privacy first and treating metadata as valuable and vulnerable as data. A mixnet combines disparate user data until it is indistinguishable from other data passing through the network. One of the notable Web 3.0 coin projects popularizing something similar is the router known as TOR. However, TOR’s incentive structure and current node architecture raise important questions about the extent of their security. Maintaining a node in a TOR network is very expensive. Also, no rewards are given for node maintenance. Therefore, questions arise about the motivations of those who run the network.
The leading privacy-themed Web 3.0 coin project HOPR ensures that every node runner is appropriately rewarded. For this, it has a unique incentive structure that uses cryptocurrency. As we reported as Kriptokoin.com, every node in the HOPR network is rewarded with the local token HOPR. However, they only get rewarded when they complete the data transfer job to the next hop on the network with possible verification. Known as Proof-of-Relay, this extra step supports privacy and incentives by holding back mixnet technology iterations.
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