Privacy in Blockchain: Building A Surveillance Free World

Importance of Data Privacy

The usage of the internet has grown tremendously. No one ever would have imagined it in the early ’80s or 90’s time. But within a very short period, the Internet has shown drastic growth. The use cases of the internet vary from person to person. Some use it for official purposes, while others for their personal use. The world runs on the Internet today. The increase in the usage of the Internet reduces our workload, makes our lives easy, and connects us with our family and friends living across the globe but at the same time, we are losing our privacy.

We use the Internet for various kinds of applications in our day-to-day lives. Today’s applications in the Web 2.0 era require users to signup for an account using their personal information. Only when you provide this information, you’re granted access to the application. The few people who created these applications control them. They can access all our data and we trust them to do so. But what if our data is commoditized or hacked in a data breach? Most applications today collect users' data for their personal usage too. They either share it with third parties or use it to promote targeted ad content. By storing our data, they are

essentially creating digital copies of us so they can analyze our interests and sell their products better.

Data privacy is the most important thing in this digitized world. People should not pay for their privacy as the cost of using the Internet. What happens if our data ends in the hands of criminals or fraudulent individuals? Most of us don’t know if our personal information has been leaked in a data breach or do not even care about its implications. Some people are lethargic and don’t think about what these corporations will do with their data. The sour truth is tasted only when it comes to fruition. So to secure our data privacy in the second iteration of the web, the web2.0, is a little bit difficult and in some cases, we can’t even access apps without providing our data. So what is the solution?

Balancing Privacy & Transparency

People need to balance privacy and transparency. Sharing one’s data with others or storing their information without their knowledge is piracy. Many companies have lost their grace due to privacy issues. The issue can be rectified by blockchain technology.

Blockchain-based apps do not collect any of your personal data to access your account. So you, the user, can truly stay private. Blockchain technology is not only used for building DApps but can be used for financial transactions too. But blockchains are inherently transparent. The details of the transactions are laid bare for everyone to see. The amount that was sent, and to whom it has been sent, will be recorded. This creates additional privacy issues in that anyone can see how much wealth you hold, where you’ve transferred money, and once again, create a digital footprint.

To prevent this, privacy-based blockchains were invented. These blockchains do not reveal the amount or the sender and receiver identity. Transaction hash is used to confirm whether the transaction has been verified. This means that your transactions and other activities will stay private while being transparent for verification. This is how privacy blockchains balance privacy and transparency.

Why We Shouldn’t Reinvent the Wheel in Web 3.0

Due to the loss of privacy and insecurity in Web2.0, blockchains are reinventing the world wide web as we know it. This new iteration of the web is called Web 3.0. In Web3, we should not repeat the same mistakes that we did in Web2. So to develop a decentralized privacy-first Internet, Beldex has proposed a solution. It is a privacy coin with a private ecosystem. We building an ecosystem of decentralized applications.

Each DApp has a different use case and ensures users' privacy.

BChat: It is a chat application with an integrated wallet. The user need not provide their personal information to sign up for the account. It is completely anonymous and end-to-end encrypted. No metadata like timestamp, location, or size of the message will be shared.

BelNet: It is a dVPN service that users can use to mask their IP address. In most cases, hackers track our IP addresses to monitor our activities. BelNet will mask the user's IP address and obfuscate their location. So no one can follow you like a shadow. Masternodes on the Beldex network help route traffic via BelNet.

Beldex Browser: We all know that we are fed up with annoying ads. Wherever we go, ads will follow us. There are even ads that show us ads based on our location and our interests. Haven’t you felt it odd that you receive notifications related to hotels and showrooms from nearby places? Businesses embed cookies onto your device to track your location whenever you visit their website. But on the Beldex Browser, there are no cookies, so your location, IP address, and other PI are safe while you browse the Internet.

Beldex Bridge: This is developed for interoperability between different blockchains. One can use BDX on another blockchain by using the Beldex Bridge. Users can swap BDX to wBDX, a pegged asset, to gain access to or leverage the benefits of DApps on other blockchains. It will increase the potential of the network. Currently, Beldex-Binance smart chain bridge is live. In the future, users can expect the Beldex-Ethereum bridge and Beldex-Polkadot bridge.

Beldex Privacy Protocol: By using the Beldex privacy protocol, one can anonymize the transactions of assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin. To accomplish this, the asset is first burned and minted as a pegged token. The pegged token has the properties of anonymity. Thus, the transfer of these tokens is untraceable. Once the pegged token is sent, the receiver can redeem the original asset.

Feature stepping of Beldex:

zk-SNARKs: Zero-knowledge proof is under research by Beldex. By doing this, the security will enhance and transaction speed is increased. So users can transfer BDX in a reduced time with a low transaction fee. The scalability of the BDX will be increased.

EVM: Beldex is integrating with the Ethereum Virtual Machine to develop smart contract functionality on the Beldex chain. The dApps on the Beldex blockchain will be private and have very low fees.

BNS Domains: The user can create readable domains in the Beldex blockchain. One can send BDX to others with the use of the BNS domain.

Consensus on Beldex

It is a proof of stake blockchain that consumes less energy and gives credits to its validators instead of miners. Validators play a major role in validating the transactions. The rewards will be distributed to all validators based on a reward queue so that the distribution is democratic. POS is also instrumental in reducing the carbon footprint of the network.

To Conclude

The use cases of the Beldex blockchain will meet the needs of people, crypto users, business people, and government authorities. User privacy is of prime importance to Beldex. It will secure user data, make your transactions anonymous, and pave the way for Web3.0.