Cypherpunk (Cypherpunk) is the name of a group that started its activity with the aim of maintaining the security and privacy of users on the Internet. The term Cypherpunk is composed of two words cypher (cypher) meaning encryption and punk (punk) which refers to a cultural movement. In this article, we are going to take a look at the history of cypherpunk and learn about the goals of this movement and the most famous cypherpunks.
History of the cypherpunk movement
The cypher punk movement does not have an exact date of birth, but its beginning can be attributed to Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Cryptography They used to transmit messages secretly. However, what we know as modern cryptography is actually from world war I Started. Machine Enigma (Enigma It was a device that was developed during the First World War. This machine was built with mechanical motors and electrical components that could combine 10 x 114 characters. This feature made random decryption methods impossible until World War II. At that time, Alan Turing discovered a method to break Enigma codes; A method that was very efficient in cryptography.
Cypher punk in the 1970s
Before World War II, encryption was rarely used and was mostly used by military forces and intelligence agencies. In the mid-1970s, the United States government published the Data Encryption Standard (DES). After that, an article about public key cryptography called New directions in cryptography (New Directions in Cryptography) by Martin Hellman (Martin Hellman) and Whitfield Diffie (Whitfield Diffie) was written which was the starting point of the evolution of cryptography.
Cypher punk in the 1980s
In the 1980s, Dr. David Chaum in an article named Security without identification (Security without Identification) talked in detail about topics such as anonymous digital cash and pseudonymous credit systems.
Cypher punk in the 1990s
In 1992, three friends named Eric Hughes, Timothy May and John Gilmore decided to form a group to discuss problems in the world of programming and cryptography. This three-person group was called Cypherpunk and it was decided to hold a meeting like this every month to achieve greater security and protect people’s privacy.
Then the Cypherpunk mailing list was created in 1992. 2 years later, the list had more than 700 subscribers, and in 1997, its members reached more than 2,000. In this mailing list, people would express their thoughts and discuss them. They were also able to create a decentralized email system that would let people know if something went wrong on their server.
In 1997, Dr. Adam Back (Adam Back), hash machine (Hashcash) as an anti-spam mechanism. In fact, this mechanism would make spamming uneconomical due to the additional costs (such as time and computing operations) of sending e-mails. He believed that using HashCash is much easier than DigiCash, because HashCash does not require creating an account and is safe from double spending.
In 1998, a person named Wei Dai proposed B-money. Bimani was a practical solution to enforce contractual agreements between anonymous parties.
Cypher punk in the 2000s
In 2004, a person named Hal Finney created Reusable Proof of Work (RPOW) based on hashing. Reusable proof-of-work mechanisms were unique cryptographic tokens that could only be used once, just like Bitcoin’s unspent transaction output (UTXO). But validation and protection against double spending was done by a central server.
In 2005, Nick Szabo proposed Bit Gold. BitGold was a digital collection based on Hal Finney’s usable proof-of-work scheme. Sabo’s proposed mechanism did not limit the total Bitgold units, he believed that the units should have different values based on the amount of computational work.
Finally, in 2008, an unknown person named Satoshi Nakamoto (Satoshi Nakamoto), published a Bitcoin white paper citing HashCash and Immanence. In fact, Satoshi Nakamoto stated in an email that he learned about insomnia from Dr. Adam Beck. Nakamoto made a big breakthrough by creating a system that could be used, extended, and forked. The Bitcoin network also helped to continue the activities of organizations such as WikiLeaks through the donation of BTC digital currency and strengthened the Cypherpunk movement.
What is the purpose of the cypher punk movement?
The most important principle mentioned in the cypher punk manifesto is the importance of privacy. They believe:
Privacy is one of the needs of a free society in the digital age and it does not mean hiding. A personal issue is something that a person does not want everyone to know about, but a hidden issue is something that a person does not want even one person to know about. Privacy means that each person voluntarily discloses his identity and information to the world.
The Cypherpunk movement seeks to achieve a society where users can decide whether to hide or reveal their information without government and corporate interference. Many cypherpunks believe that governments have massive amounts of information on citizens, and the revelations of people like Edward Snowden are a confirmation of this. In general, it can be said that the cypher punk movement advocates the non-interference of the government and central banks in monetary transactions and believes that such institutions cannot prevent fraud, embezzlement and money laundering.
The role of cypher punk in digital currencies
Despite the fact that the world of digital currencies has grown over the past few years, it seems that privacy concerns have not been addressed as much as they should have been. Many early adopters of Bitcoin thought that their identity would remain completely anonymous, but this is not the case.
To learn more about digital currencies, read the article on the difference between digital currency and cryptocurrency.
Evidence suggests that law enforcement can de-anonymize Bitcoin users during their investigations. But with all this, if we want to see the glass half full, many systems and methods have been developed over the years to increase the privacy of digital currency users. Some of them are:
HD Wallet (HD)
HD based wallet Standard BIP32 built and its main difference from other wallets is the connection between public and private keys. In fact, this type of wallet creates unpredictable and backup-free patterns for private and public keys. These wallets were first introduced by Gregory Maxwell and are mostly used to store Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Circular signature
Ring signature is a digital and encrypted signature that was introduced in 2001 by 3 people named Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Yael Tauman. This concept is somewhat similar to multi-signature transactions, except that there is no way to identify the actual signer of the transaction. The original purpose of ring signatures was to reveal confidential information, especially to government officials, without revealing who leaked it. for example, Monroe (Monero), is one of the cryptocurrencies that uses ring signature. In the Monero blockchain, the signatures of all members are collected and then the transaction is confirmed. In this case, no one can tell who the signature belongs to and the identity of the sender remains hidden.
Proof of zero knowledge
A zero-knowledge proof protocol is a method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another (the verifier) that something is true, without revealing any information other than that fact. This process eliminates the need to disclose information or have a witness to prove the truth of any claim and greatly improves privacy. Zikash (ZCash) was the first digital currency protocol that used a zero-knowledge proof-of-concept algorithm. Therefore, when you transact with this digital currency, you can create cryptographic protection for your data while using the desired blockchain consensus algorithm.
addresses ECDHM
ECDHM addresses are Bitcoin address schemes that enhance privacy. These addresses can be shared publicly. Also, senders and receivers of transactions use ECDHM addresses to trace traditional Bitcoin addresses that blockchain observers cannot predict. As a result, ECDHM addresses can be reused without losing privacy.
Getting to know the most famous cypher punks
Julian Assange(Julian Assange): WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the most famous cypherpunk on this list. The website was founded in 2006 and gained global prominence in 2010, but Assange says he joined the movement in 1993 or 1994.
Jacob Applebaum (Jacob Appelbaum): Jacob is one of the developers of the Tor browser and a spokesperson for the WikiLeaks website.
Bram Cohen (Bram Cohen): He is the founder of the BitTorrent file sharing platform, as well as the founder of the Chia Network and the developer of the Chia digital currency.
Satoshi Nakamoto (Satoshi Nakamoto): Nakamoto is the founder of Bitcoin, the king of digital currencies in the world. Unfortunately, other than this case, there is no more information about his identity.
Zuko Wilcox O’Hearn (Zooko Wilcox-OHearn): is a computer science engineer known for creating secure and flexible network protocols for storing and transferring cryptocurrencies. He is also the developer of DigiCash and the founder of the Zcash network.
Maxi Marlin Spike (Moxie Marlinspike): He is the founder of the Open Whisper Systems software organization and the developer of the Signal software.
Flip Zimmerman (Philip Zimmermann): is the creator of PGP (PGP 1.0) full privacy.
Eva Galperin (Eva Galperin): Malware researcher, security advocate and activist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Adam Beck (Adam Back): Adam Beck, Hashcash inventor and co-founder block stream (Blockstream).
Robert Hettinga (Robert Hettinga): He is the founder of the International Conference on Financial Cryptography and the originator of the idea of financial cryptography as a practical subset of cryptography.
What is the meaning of cypherpunks?
When you go to a store and buy a magazine and hand the cashier cash, no one needs to know who you are! When you ask your email service to receive or send your messages, it doesn’t need to know who you are or who you’re talking to. He just needs to know how to deliver the message and how much you owe him for the service. But when your identity is revealed by implicit mechanisms, you no longer have privacy. This is the view of the cypher punks, who were the brains behind the creation of digital currencies and blockchains, and the expansion and development of cryptocurrencies is also a testament to the success of their movement. Although there are still many concerns about the privacy of crypto users, the future prospects are positive due to the continuous efforts of Cypherpunks. What do you think about privacy in financial markets?
Who are the cypher punks? The role of Cypherpunk in digital currency appeared first on Wallex Blog. appeared.
