SafeCoin – Community Driven Blockchain Security
On the Seventh of February 2018, the world lost a champion and pioneer of Digital Rights, John Perry Barlow. A gifted lyricist, John brought the world some of the finest music of his generation. As a digital age approached, John was able to transcend his connection with humanity to a new landscape. John became a world-renowned pioneer in digital rights and freedoms at the very dawn of the internet itself.Much of the digital freedoms we take for granted today are a direct result of his tireless work and dedication.
In honor of John Perry Barlow’s passing and on this same day, the SafeCoin Genesis block was created:
“The future’s here, we are it, we are on our own.”
From that moment on, a growing passionate community at the SafeCoin project has done everything we can to grow and promote freedom and liberty through decentralized security. We will continue to evolve both our technology and our understanding of what humanity can become in a decentralized world and economy.
The development of SafeCoin builds upon proven cryptocurrency code and ideals with a goal of making a safe and global cryptocurrency ecosystem that can be used by individuals, businesses, and governments. SafeCoin begins with the belief that liberty, truth, and freedom in a digital age are built directly upon the foundations of strong decentralized security and privacy. For that, we are very thankful for the incredible contributions from which our work is built from. Komodo [2], for its dedicated and groundbreaking focus on security and continuous advancement. Zcash [3], for bringing the world’s first provable private blockchain transactions. Last and definitely not least, Bitcoin [1] for revolutionizing our generation with blockchain and decentralized store of value.
SafeCoin is a community driven project with a growing and dedicated team of talented and passionate individuals. We are aligned in the vision of building a safe, secure and decentralized foundation capable of realizing the full potential of what blockchain has to offer humanity and the environment we depend upon.
A fundamental value in our project and our community is that we are stronger together. Blockchain is for everyone. We support everyone who contributes to blockchain, and we believe that anyone with a dream to make this world better with blockchain should have a chance to realize that dream. We do not compete with blockchains. We compete with fiat. At all possible turns we choose to work with other blockchain projects to make them stronger. We work with businesses to give them the tools to prosper in a decentralized multifaceted economy. We work with individuals who strive to see their innovations realized. This philosophy is in every interaction we have, every feature we add, every goal we set, and in all the code we write. It is never enough to have a single point of security. We believe in a diverse thriving network of innovation that allows creativity and inspiration to be realized in a store of value anywhere in the world at any time. We are working to foster a stronger, safer blockchain community through cooperation, collaboration, and innovative networking solutions that provide the security for dreams to be realized.
“We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.”
– John Perry Barlow – A declaration for the independence of cyberspace[6]
Challenges
To improve blockchain technology, we must look at the challenges that the current fiat currency and centralized banking options present to the end-user, and what can be improved over Bitcoin and subsequent cryptocurrencies.
Security
- Cryptocurrencies, while decentralized, are prone to single points of failure in their consensus mechanisms. Most notably, malicious double-spending exploits inherent in proof of work projects.
- Most cryptocurrencies suffer from at least one form of centralized dominance,which can be regional, investor based, or founder based. As such, any single blockchain no matter how large may be prone to collusion [8]
- Banks have security that is good at protecting their assets, but they don’t protect their customers. Banks thrive on fees and customer mistakes, so the customer does not have security from the bank.
- Cryptocurrencies have suffered from security breaches regularly since Bitcoin was released. The loss, theft, and false mining of millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency have occurred.
Privacy
- Privacy is a growing concern as our world and lives become more interconnected.Banks, governments, and corporations all trade customer data as a commodity and our habits and wealth (or lack of) are known and marketed to.
- Much of our personal information, and maybe even passwords, are potentially available online, and many people aren’t aware of this.
Sustainability
- Existing methods of Cross-chain linking have an expense – Because of the expense, cross-chain linking has numerous limitations.
- Inflation and emission rates can keep a coin from being usable as a store of value.
Accessibility and ease of use
- There is still a user-interface barrier to most cryptocurrencies. A project must have useful and intuitive wallets, including mobile wallets, without a security trade off.
SafeCoin was developed to meet the needs of users and has addressed as many of the challenges as possible.
Privacy & Anonymity
“When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.”-an anonymous quote (of course), widely attributed to John Perry Barlow.Translates to: “When cryptography is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy.”
Often these terms are used interchangeably, but they differ significantly. A transaction is “anonymous” if no one knows who you are. A transaction is “private” if what you purchased, and for what amount, are unknown. Credit card transactions are not anonymous nor private. Your information is fully available to the issuing bank, the merchant, the credit card network, and law enforcement – if subpoenaed. In this regard, bitcoin is anonymous but not private. Identities are not revealed in the blockchain – but every transaction is visible. A bitcoin user connecting with their personal information to centralized exchanges or using online wallets has now inadvertently given up their right to both privacy and anonymity. As a result, there is little difference in anonymity between using Bitcoin and using a bank to transact.
With this understanding that bitcoin is not anonymous, different methods and techniques have been utilized for those with sufficient motivation to obfuscate their transaction history with the help of mixes or tumblers. A mixer allows users to entrust a set of coins to a pool operated by a central party and then, after an interval, retrieve different coins with the same total value. Unfortunately, the mixer can still trace coins, and the mixer can also steal coins.
“We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.”-John Perry Barlow – A declaration for the independence of cyberspace[6]
Decentralization is a core principle of cryptocurrency. But what does that mean and why is it important?Modern banking with fiat currency is a centralized system. One entity controls the use and even the destiny of the currency. Even at a more personal or local level, your own bank controls your access and ability to transact with your money. The idea of a decentralized ledger takes away the ability for one entity to control the supply, distribution, or fungibility of the currency that is on the ledger.Decentralization also applies to the development of cryptocurrency, as all the involved parties (or nodes,really) have to have a majority agreement of even what software version is being used.
So, the benefit of decentralization also has some drawbacks. One is that because of the need for a majority of nodes to be in agreement, if there is another group of nodes that don’t want to agree with the first, but want to continue their own blockchain ledger, a “chain split” or “fork” occurs. Now the reare essentially two versions of a cryptocurrency. These forks have occurred over disagreements about what future development of a coin should look like, so these arguments can slow the development of a project and render it unreliable for significant transactions.
With that said, because decentralization is such an important, even the most important, aspect of cryptocurrency, every effort must be made to make a blockchain that is as advanced and yet as secure as possible early in its development. While there is no such thing as “future-proof,” SafeCoin has built on the strengths of others in the open-source cryptocurrency community and added and changed things to be as forward-thinking as possible, with the same open-source doctrine as other cryptocurrencies before.
SafeTrade
SafeTrade is a new cryptocurrency exchange developed by the SafeCoin team. SafeCoin is the main trading pair of the SafeTrade exchange. Our team is committed to utilizing the highest levels of account security to set the standard for service, reliability, and customer-centric driven updates. High deposit confirmations, low automatic withdrawal amounts, and two-factor authentication are the standard ways of keeping exchanges and users secure, but at the cost of convenience. As crypto projects become more secure using notarization techniques, SafeTrade will be able to make a user’s experience more convenient yet still safe. We will eventually be fully reporting to all appropriate government agencies with an eye towards complete compliance with all local laws.
SafeCoin Wallets
The primary wallet that many people will use is known as a “full node” wallet, and it contains everything that SafeCoin needs to send and receive SafeCoin, including a current synchronized copy of the blockchain, which enhances network strength, availability, redundancy and speed. The SafeCoin desktop wallet includes several additions and refinements. An example of these refinements is the ability to run a SafeNode in a simple and convenient way.Finally, SafeCoin has developed a multi-coin wallet based on the open-source Bitpay Copay wallet. The SafeCoin implementation can already be used with over ten cryptocurrency coins. This wallet works in a web browser, as an Android app, and as an iOS app. This wallet is one of the most comprehensive and easy to use wallets available. The SafeCoin team has a goal of this wallet, including every coin that is available on SafeTrade.
SafeCoin Community P2P / B2B
“We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonwealth, our governance will emerge.”-John Perry Barlow – A declaration for the independence of cyberspace[6]
SafeCoin’s most powerful resource is a fantastic and talented growing community of individuals who care about our future and privacy rights, and are working hard to make this world a better place through their contributions at SafeCoin. As a fully open and inclusive project, all kinds of contributions and support have flowed into our community from around the world.
We are growing by the minute, attracting talented developers, miners, traders, long-horizon investors,partner organizations, exchanges, bloggers, etc. Our community already has an enduring history not only of positive relationships and friendly interactions but also of spontaneous support and engagement emerging to prevent or solve disparate problems.
Future Development of SafeCoin
Forecasting is a challenging exercise, but we see a bright future for SafeCoin and the thriving and secure ecosystem we’re building. We believe that the decentralized, fully inclusive, voluntary, and flexible organization we’re creating will be the standard in the near future..
The advent of blockchain technology makes such a thing possible, and we believe many people already do and will share our vision for a better world, especially when they see how we can accelerate innovation and improve human welfare by empowering everyone with privacy, anonymity, and freedom to express their values.
We are dedicated to executing our Roadmap and doing everything in our power to see this vision come to fruition. There are sure to be challenges along the way. There already have been. However, flexibility,passion for our values, and peaceful cooperation will consistently carry us through adversity. We are fortunate to live in an age of incredible innovation in both technology and ideas.
References
[1] S. Nakamoto, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
[2] https://komodoplatform.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/2018-05-09-Komodo-White-Paper-Full.pdf
[3] https://whitepaperdatabase.com/zcash-zec-whitepaper/
[4] https://explorer.safecoin.org/block/09f5deffb9c816d82b8f696befa84681509274288c4529f213aeeac57999e8c9
[5] https://github.com/Fair-Exchange/safecoin
[6] J.P. Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspac:
https://nakamotoinstitute.org/literature/cyberspace-independence/
https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
[7] https://komodoplatform.com/security-delayed-proof-of-work-dpow/
[8] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2018/7/229033-majority-is-not-enough/abstract
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