Chelsea Komlo recently published about the importance of network privacy when it comes to ensuring user privacy online. Encryption protocols are used to prevent bad actors from learning the details of the network traffic directly. Privacy-preserving cryptographic protocols are used to hide identifiable information particularly details of user identities and transaction information on the blockchain.  Further details like user’s IP address can get to the hands of those who are trying to watch the network very keenly opening games for attacks.

ZCash Foundation tweeted:  “ZF’s chelseakomlo writes a more comprehensive analysis of the current state of network privacy in Zcash.”

With a focus on all of these facts related to the Zcash network privacy, the Zcash Foundation have come up with a comprehensive analysis of the existing state of network privacy in Zcash.  With their analysis they have identified “possible attack vectors and adversaries, and clarified where identifiable information about Zcash users can be leaked even when shielded transactions are used.”

The analysis also classifies threats of top-level priority, which they are to address in the near future and they have classified some threats as out of scope.   Zcash Foundation are considering a range of network privacy mechanisms and they are working on assessing their effectiveness to mitigating the listed threats.

Sydney Ifergan, the crypto expert tweeted:  “ZCash (ZEC) is very clear that security need to be upgraded very often as it does not stay robust as it is forever.  People find a way to break in.”

Zcash Improving the Security of the Product

The analysis is published in detail in GitHub.  They already seemed to have substantial and helpful discussions and feedback from the members of the Zcash community. They have also called for feedback from the community about the potential adversaries and attack vectors that they might have missed to consider.  They are very particular about this feedback because they feel that more eyes will further improve the security of the product.

The Network privacy improvements are expected in Zebra as next steps.

One of the community members expressed that the zcash teams have been very conscious to tackle privacy from the ground up, recognizing that on-chain privacy isn’t especially useful if you’re blowing your privacy on e.g. the p2p network. And further stated that they are one of the few communities doing things right IMO.

Yet another commentator stated, great to see at least some in crypto is investigating issues & options for hardening privacy at network layer.