{"id":12867,"date":"2022-08-08T20:35:52","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T20:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nftandcrypto-news.com\/nft\/vitalik-buterin-wants-to-make-nft-ownership-anonymous\/"},"modified":"2022-08-08T20:35:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T20:35:56","slug":"vitalik-buterin-wants-to-make-nft-ownership-anonymous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nftandcrypto-news.com\/nft\/vitalik-buterin-wants-to-make-nft-ownership-anonymous\/","title":{"rendered":"Vitalik Buterin Wants to Make NFT Ownership Anonymous"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin wants to implement stealth addresses for ERC-721 tokens \u2014 or Ethereum\u2019s current token standard for NFTs, according to a Monday tweet<\/a>. With the implementation of this feature, users can transfer, mint, and burn NFTs with relative anonymity, as described in the ethresear.ch page Buterin linked in his initial tweet.<\/p>\n

Anton Wahrst\u00e4tter \u2014 researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Distributed Ledgers and Token Economy (WU), who also researches at the Research Institute for Cryptoeconomics \u2014 wrote the research behind Buterin\u2019s tweet. In turn, Wahrst\u00e4tter drew inspiration for his proposed stealth addresses from a January blog post by Buterin that described the need for private proof of attendance protocol (POAP) NFTs in a Soulbound Token-enabled world. For medical treatments as divisive in certain areas as vaccination, Buterin argued that enabling users to hide these tokens at will wouldn\u2019t just be a privacy measure \u2014 but an essential facet of a user\u2019s overall security measures online.<\/p>\n

But not everyone\u2019s a fan of the proposal.<\/p>\n

Different angles of security<\/h2>\n

Although the discussion on implementing stealth addresses seems mostly informed by Buterin\u2019s vision of a decentralized society (DeSoc), some users expressed concern online<\/a> about Buterin\u2019s co-signing of stealth addresses. Considering the state of the NFT ecosystem, stealth addresses could offer thieves and other bad actors a way to make the retrieval of stolen NFTs near-impossible. Without a publicly available address that investigators can look into on the blockchain, tracking down stolen NFTs becomes an even harder task than it already is.<\/p>\n

However, as mentioned in the whitepaper for Soulbound Tokens and on Buterin\u2019s blog, the mass adoption of the social recovery wallet might overcome the issues brought on by providing ERC-721 tokens with stealth address functionality.<\/p>\n

Under this model, users may assign their wallets to five \u201cguardians\u201d \u2014 people in whom the users place a great deal of trust. These \u201cguardians\u201d will be able to change the private keys of the wallet they are entrusted with, should it become compromised. Doing so grants a user\u2019s crypto wallet another point of failure, thus an added layer of security. This, along with ease of use and accessibility, make up the three core features essential to a genuinely secure crypto wallet, according to Buterin.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that Buterin\u2019s blog entry on the importance of establishing better security features for crypto wallets was published in January of 2021 \u2014 a few months removed from the NFT market\u2019s bull run throughout the calendar year. More than a year later, crypto wallets can still be subjected to large-scale hacking attacks, which happened when Solana users were attacked, leaving more than 8,000 crypto wallets compromised and emptied.<\/p>\n

Some may argue that Buterin\u2019s idea breaks with core concepts of blockchain technology: creating a new, decentralized economy based on publicly accessible records \u2014 one of the primary features of NFTs and cryptocurrency. Additionally, even with progressively more companies participating in the long-term development of Buterin\u2019s planned DeSoc, work towards establishing this future Web3 society can\u2019t begin in earnest if the wallets that house our financial assets and sensitive information on the blockchain remain heavily vulnerable to foul play.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n