We are thrilled to announce the finalists of the #2023privacyproof annual privacy tech poll made by the community. Enthusiasts, developers, researchers, cryptographers, cypherpunks, and community builders from the Logos, DarkFi, Swarm, HOPR, Railgun_, Nym, Circles UBI, Rotki, Puzzle, Espresso Systems & many other organisations made their choice.
The community contributed with the diverse selections from IMEI-anon solutions to progress with Fully Homomorphic Encryption. Mentioning regulators, CEXs, projects, and personalities.
Favourite pro-privacy project/product of 2023
Observation: community articulated demand for the resilient privacy stack that could be built over time (like L1s, mixnet & OS) while having practical use-case specific solutions (“transactional privacy”) here & now - Railgun
Top-voted: DarkFi
Runner up*:* Railgun
Honourable mention: Nym & Graphene OS (the same # of votes)
Summary
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DarkFi
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Railgun
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Graphene OS / Nym
Explore longlist: “Projects”
The major news or key event
Observation: the tornado Cash case resonated with the majority of contributors. It goes hand in hand with privacy coins delisting from exchanges. The privacy community feels big regulatory pressure negatively impacting their human right. On a positive note, project-centric progress or regulatory-centric cases were mentioned as a counter-argument to the above-mentioned pressure.
Summary
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Tornado Cash case
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Privacy coins being actively delisted from CEXs
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Sismo shutting down
note: Tornado Case case was 4x times more often mentioned compared to Privacy coins delisting. It covers a broad range of “news” (devs arrest, Pertsev release via bail).
Explore longlist: “News & Events”
The most exciting innovation
new research, protocols, or approaches supporting privacy
Observation: technological progress is the backbone of privacy. Zero-knowledge proofs, Fully Homomorphic Encryption, hardware acceleration and intents promise potential breakthroughs in privacy. However, some of them originated within the Big Tech R&D or are backed by compliant VCs. Diversity (78 different submissions!) in projects & papers has proven a great range of research interests within the privacy market.
Top-voted: DarkFi stack
Runner up Privacy Pools
Honourable mention: progress with Zero-knowledge proofs
Summary
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DarkFi
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Privacy Pools
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Progress with ZKP
Explore longlist: “Innovations”.
Doxxer of the year
any project, person, or organisation that sought to reduce privacy within the space.
Observation: anti-Arkham solidarity showed strong sentiment against massive de-anon practices on-chain. This contrasts with Chainalysis members contributing to the Privacy Pools paper. Additionally, the decentralisation ethos reflects an anti-government stance (especially, emerging from the EU & The USA).
Anti-privacy doxxer of the year: Arkham
Runner up: Ledger
Summary
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Arkham
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Ledger
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Worldcoin / Metamask / Friend.tech (same # of votes)
Explore longlist: “Doxxer”
Longlist selections
Explore longlists (full unique selections made by the community) in 4 different categories:
Final note
Huge thanks to everyone who contributed & supported the #2023privacyproof. Especially, Alan from Railgun & Nicklaz who boosted the early stage.
#2023privacypoll clearly proves solidarity between different actors from developers to community builders. They actively support the creation of the privacy stack for web3 & are worried about the criminalisation of open-source code development.
Meanwhile, emerging papers & extensive PoCs within privacy are proving that the right to privacy can be empowered by researchers from the USA to China. The question remains open: how to bridge builders & progressive pro-crypto legislation?
Methodology
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We outreached to the majority of privacy projects, communities & activists.
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Some of them contributed to the poll (while the majority were on vacation, had “ticketing”-type of community communication on Discord or ignored activity in general) - we gathered selections via DMs on X, Matrix, Twitter, Telegram.
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We published the majority on Twitter, but some opted to remain anonymous in their submission.
Appendix
Disclaimer: #2023privacyproof doesn’t represent an accurate “voice” of the market, but serves to highlight a plurality of takes on privacy. Explore projects, news & and anti-privacy services within a personal quest for privacy.
Want to contribute to the privacy market building: follow us on Git, X or Matrix