This is the second of a series of articles covering the results of the #2023privacyproof poll: final longlist announcement before publishing shortlist. Explore the “Projects” category selection.

The selection of the Major news & events was made by 100+ privacy enthusiasts, developers, researchers, cryptographers, cypherpunks, and community builders from the DarkFi, Nym, Swarm, Logos, HOPR, Railgun_, Circles UBI, Rotki, Puzzle, Espresso Systems & many other organisations.

Major news & events

• KZG Ceremony

• Signal support for usernames

• Ethereum nodes censoring transactions from OFAC lists

• Tornado Cash still working - the power of distributed frontends

• Namada RPGF Airdrop

• Zcash Orchard to MIT

• Metamask IP logging

• Various Ledger issues (SIM Swap / Ledger Connect NPM attack / Firmware upgrade = mnemonic exposure)

• Monero switching to full anonymity set membership proofs

• OpenAI violating privacy

• NFT can actually doxx

• Validators censoring blocks & RPCs logging IP

• Aztec Connect shutdown

• Rise of testnets & communities with @AleoHQ, @AutoEcologies & @namada

• Growing Use of generative AI to make fake content from real persons.

• Increase in data breaches because of poor web2 privacy (social engineering)

• Billions of Intel processors (i.e. most your devices and the Internet) have a critical weakness allowing attackers to steal passwords, encryption keys, private data, etc.

• Plans to drop 3rd party cookies announced by major browser vendors

• Launch of ChatGPT

• Launch of Worldcoin

• Growing privacy lawsuits against Open AI (e.g. New York Times)

• KYC being enforced on Bitcoin miners

• The overall rise of privacy-focused projects as well as general public awareness

• Harper v. Werfel

• Tornado Devs Arrested

• Meta / Facebook products rolling out e2ee for their apps

• the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act

• CoinCenter lawsuit challenging Tornado Cash ruling is dismissed

• The proposal of the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act in Congress by Elizabeth Warren

• EU's MiCa rules for un-hosted wallets

• UK's FATF Crypto Travel Rule

• Changes on X / Twitter

• Record-level health data leak from NZ

• Do-Not-Track is back on track!

• The introduction of new compliance regulations for cryptocurrency mixers

• Alex Perchev's release via Bail in April 2023 and his trial

• Tornado Cash contract put on OFAC

• GDPR expansion to US companies collecting data of EU citizens to comply regardless of their location.

• DoJ vs. Tornado Cash

• Countries start banning Worldcoin iris scanning over privacy concerns and predatory practices in the global south

• Advances in Financial Technologies 2023 @ Princeton University

• Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands data breach

• a) Ashton Kutcher lobbying the EU to roll out mass surveillance via client-side scanning, supposedly to “protect the children”, but definitely to sell his product. I kid you not. This is one of the first big examples of how cryptographic advancements like FHE unfortunately will enable a dangerous form of “privacy washing” in policy and public debates.

  b) The hard work of EDRi to counter this and prevent the worst of the bill from going through.

• European Parliament rejects 'Chat control' proposal

• Privacy winning over transparency: Bankrupt crypto companies are convincing courts to keep their customers’ data under seal

• OFAC

• Canadians rejecting Bank of Canada's ability to issue or manage a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)

• The Online Safety Act

• EU Digital Identity Wallet plans announced, to bake this into one of the world’s largest markets

• Privacy coins being delisted from Binance & other exchanges

• ETHDam 2023

• Ephemeral_001 by Black Sky Society

• The ETHRome hackathon

• The Web3Privacy Now conference in Rome

• Monerotopia in Mexico City

• MoneroKon in Prague

• EthBrno cancelled

• Hackers Congress Paralelni Polis (HCPP)

• Zuzalu

• Web3Privacy Now Summit in Prague

• So many Web3 privacy-focused hackathons in 2023 (W3PN note: count as 1 selection)

Observations

51% of the news - regulator-related. Tornado Cash case, Privacy coins delisting & anti end-to-end encryption cases bother majority of the privacy enthusiasts.

19 of the 51 news are “positive”, while “32” (or 62.7%) have negative connotations - a clear signal from the pro-privacy community.

Notes

The majority of the contributions are public & can be found on Twitter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 etc.

• Read the “Projects” category final longlist here

• And the next article featuring “Exciting innovation” (longlist) will be published tomorrow.

Follow #2023privacyproof updates: Twitter/X, GitHub, Matrix