The loss of privacy: Why we must fight for a decentralized future By Cointelegraph

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The loss of privacy: Why we must fight for a decentralized future

If you’re into cryptocurrency or blockchain, there’s a good chance I don’t have to spell out the benefits of decentralization. You’re a first-generation user of a technology that will increasingly define the future of the internet, and you have front-row seats to the world premiere of Web3.

The internet’s use and control were always as centralized as we see now. In the early days, under the stewardship of the United States Department of Defense, the network needed not to rely on one core computer. What if a terrorist attack or missile strike took down the principal node? Individual network parts had to communicate without relying on a single computer to reduce vulnerability.

David Chaum is one of the earliest blockchain researchers and a world-renowned cryptographer and privacy advocate. Known as “The Godfather of Privacy,” Chaum first proposed a solution for protecting metadata with mix-cascade networks in 1979. In 1982, his dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley became the first known proposal of a blockchain protocol. Chaum developed eCash, the first digital currency, and made numerous contributions to secure voting systems in the 1990s. Today, Chaum is the founder of Elixxir, Praxxis and the XX Network, which combine his decades of research and contributions in cryptography and privacy to deliver state-of-the-art blockchain solutions.