Quote “In this paper we study Privacy Pools, a novel smart contract-based privacy-enhancing protocol. We discuss the pros and cons of this protocol, and show how it could be employed to create a separating equilibrium between honest and dishonest users. The core idea of the proposal is to allow users to publish a zero-knowledge proof, demonstrating that their funds (do not) originate from known (un-)lawful sources, without publicly revealing their entire transaction graph. This is achieved by proving membership in custom association sets that satisfy certain properties, required by regulation or social consensus. The proposal may be a first step towards a future where people could prove regulatory compliance without having to reveal their entire transaction history.”
So, what do you peeps think?
What does unlawful sources mean? If you donated to a Russian band a few years ago, you were doing something lawful. Now, it’s unlawful in some parts of the world. Even remittances to your Russian family puts you in question. If you supported certain protests, you can be unlawful, but lawful the next government. Privacy pools only “work” if they are federated because laws throughout the world are not uniform, but being part of the “wrong” federation can make you unlawful. In the end, fear will prevent people from joining, and that fear will spread to the pool developers since at least one federation will do something another country does not like. I’ll fail before it gets started. Just use Monero.