MIT ChainAnchor Wants to Expose Bitcoin User Identities
The MIT ChainAnchor Project would offer this functionality on an opt-in basis at first, but if not enough people would get on board, the system administrators can force others to register if they want to remain a part of the Bitcoin network. A recent post regarding the MIT ChainAnchor project is raising a lot of questions, and very few answers. Based on the information in this post, Bitcoin users will soon be forced to link their identity to an address. What could MIT hope to gain by doing so, and to what lengths will they go to see this project come to fruition? The MIT ChainAnchor....
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In a surprising development on Wednesday, Bitcoin developer Peter Todd released information around MIT’s ChainAnchor project. ChainAnchor supposedly involves enticing miners with additional compensation to ensure that only transactions from a list of identified and registered users are included in blocks. The news comes at a time of accelerating initiatives to adopt facets of Bitcoin’s Blockchain technology into traditional banking and trading of other digital assets or securities. The uses all fall under AML or KYC regulations that ChainAnchor would help with. Identity has long been at....
ChainAnchor is an MIT project that was brought to the attention of the Bitcoin community last week by Bitcoin Core contributor Peter Todd. In his blog post, Todd questioned whether this project may have been an attempt to bring Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance to Bitcoin. MIT Connection Science Managing Director David L. Shrier responded to Todd’s blog post directly on Reddit, saying, “ChainAnchor was never intended for [B]itcoin.” When first asked about why a preliminary version of the ChainAnchor paper discussed Bitcoin, Shrier pointed Bitcoin Magazine....
Why does a seemingly abandoned MIT project from 2016 still matter in 2021? Because MIT ChainAnchor serves as a model for future attacks to the Bitcoin blockchain. A decentralized, permissionless, and uncensorable network is a threat to the status quo. The value and freedom that Bitcoin brings to the world comes at the expense of […]
Using bitcoin over the anonymity network Tor leaves users at greater risk of having their identities revealed, according to academics at the University of Luxembourg. If that seemingly paradoxical finding isn't enough to scare privacy-loving bitcoiners, the researchers also determined that an attack could be mounted on an "economy" budget of just $2,500 a month. Such an attack could expose the identity of a bitcoin and Tor user, and allow the attacker to meddle with the victim's transactions, they said. Ivan Pustogarov, one of the two researchers working on the issue, explained: "The....
A blockchain project being developed by MIT researchers gained new attention this week following criticism of its alleged design elements, though the veracity of these claims has been denied by those involved. The inciting incident came on 21st April, when Bitcoin Core developer and blockchain consultant Peter Todd posted what he positioned as "leaked copies" of documents relating to an MIT Connection Science research project called ChainAnchor. In the post, Todd, an expert on threat analysis who has done work with bitcoin and non-bitcoin companies, denounced the project for what....