Edward Snowden, the famed National Security Agency whistleblower, helped launch Zcash in 2016, a consultant of the Zcash inventors Electric Coin Company instructed Decrypt.
Snowden joined Zcash creator Zooko Wilcox, Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd, Coin Center’s Peter Van Valkenburgh and two others in launching the Zcash blockchain. In a course of often known as “trusted setup,” the six members every acquired a sliver of the non-public key wanted to create the cryptocurrency. Previously, the id of the sixth participant was recognized by the pseudonym “John Dobbertin.”
The fruits of the creation ceremony concerned destroying the keys.
“If anybody has access to this key, they could counterfeit Zcash without anybody knowing,” Electric Coin Company SVP Josh Swihart instructed Decrypt. “So what it required was a setup where the key could be generated by six different parties, and if any party was honest and destroyed their part of the key, then it would be safe from counterfeiting.”
The information was first reported by Forbes based mostly on a leaked video from Zcash Media of Snowden, through which he discusses the necessity for a privacy-centric different to Bitcoin. “Bitcoin quite famously is an open ledger,” he states. “The problem with that is you can’t have truly free trade unless you have private trade. And you can’t have a free society without free trade.”
Zcash is named a privateness coin as a result of it harnesses zero-knowledge proofs, a type of cryptography that can be utilized to confirm {that a} reputable transaction befell with no need to see the small print.
Snowden has been dwelling in exile in Russia since being charged by the U.S. authorities with espionage in 2013, after he leaked paperwork concerning the NSA’s surveillance program to the press. Before he may very well be arrested, Snowden fled to Russia, looking for asylum. He’s now a resident.
Despite his involvement within the privateness coin, Snowden reportedly wasn’t into Zcash for the money—and Electric Coin Company says he wasn’t given crypto or another compensation for his involvement.
“He did it as a service as a public good in believing his privacy,” stated Swihart.
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