Particl, the Blockchain team behind an open source, decentralized privacy platform for person-to-person (P2P) transactions built on Bitcoin codebase, has added support for confidential cryptocurrency transactions.
Particl developers, contributors and privacy advocates can now take advantage of this important, new privacy feature for Particl’s native PART token as the amount of coins and parties involved are hidden from the public. By not tying the transaction amount to the address, customers can make private payments for goods and services — similar to cash.
“When we go to the grocery store or make a car payment using cash, that transaction is known only to the parties involved. Confidential Transactions (CT) let PART currency users maintain that same level of privacy when conducting financial transactions online,” said Paul Schmitzer, Communications Lead with Particl. “Every application built for the Particl platform can leverage the privacy built into PART, validated by cryptographic proofs like those found in CT.”
PART is designed to seamlessly shift between its default pseudo-anonymous state (similar to Bitcoin) and two levels of extremely private confidential transactions. Available immediately on Particl’s mainnet, CT hides the amount of coins sent, ensuring a transaction is only visible to the parties involved. CT outputs can be spent in multi-signature scripts like BIP65 smart contracts used in their two-party trustless escrow mechanism.
Combining ring signatures with confidential transactions, RingCT provides enhanced privacy features, allowing users to hide both addresses and amounts during a transaction. RingCT is currently in testing in the team’s sixth test cycle, TESTNET6. A full audit of the RingCT implementation code is in process prior to release to the mainnet.
Both CT and RingCT have been adapted into Particl Core to deliver a complete privacy framework. When used together, CT and RingCT offer holistic privacy for PART transactions. “Privacy is in our DNA,” said Schmitzer.
Additionally, Particl is leveraging CT and RingCT technology to layer a platform governance mechanism onto the codebase. Currently live, the alpha versions introduce a distributed voting system and a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. These features provide network control to users, who in turn work for and get paid by the network, securing transactions by running nodes.
