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Edward Snowden, the cybersecurity poster boy, and government surveillance whistleblower, has revealed that he was instrumental in the development of the privacy coin Zcash (ZEC).
The pseudonymous John Dobbertin, who was one of the six Zcash Ceremony attendees, turned revealed to be Edward Snowden all along.
In an interview with Zcash Media, Snowden described his role as one of the six people who had a piece of the Zcash multi-signature private key when the project was launched on October 23, 2016.
Snowden said in the video: “I’m Edward Snowden, and I’m a hacker,” he says.
“I took part in the first Zcash ceremony under the alias John Dobbertin.”
The secret behind Zcash
Edward Snowden, the cybersecurity poster boy, and government surveillance whistleblower, has revealed that he was instrumental in the development of the privacy coin Zcash (ZEC).
Edward Snowden is a whistleblower who exposed US government surveillance practices before fleeing to Russia.
Zcash is a decentralized blockchain that uses zero-knowledge proofs to execute transactions. Unlike the comparatively transparent Bitcoin, ZEC transactions cannot be tracked and the amounts sent cannot be established (BTC).
At the Zcash Ceremony, Snowden and five other people merged their halves of the Zcash private key to start the initiative.
To maintain the project’s premise of anonymity, none of the participants knew who the others were or what fraction of the key they had.
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To prevent coins or transactions from being counterfeited in the future, each person’s key piece has to be destroyed.
Bitcoin engineer Peter Todd, another ceremony participant, recalled the “legendary lengths the Zcash Ceremony participants went to in order to escape being hacked.”
Todd added that he bought a new computer and installed it with all of the essential programs for the ceremony before putting it in a faraday cage to keep unwelcome intrusions at distance. A faraday cage is an aluminum foil-lined enclosure that reflects wifi signals.
He then drove to a faraway place and destroyed his device’s portion of the Zcash private key with a blow torch.
The news of Snowden’s contribution had no impact on the price of ZEC, which is currently trading at $148, up 1.7 percent in the last 24 hours.
Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while pursuing his post-graduation major in blockchain development. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing, along with coding. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing skills, and a reliable craft at explaining the concepts such as blockchain programming, languages and token minting. He also frequently shares technical details and performance indicators of ICOs and IDOs.
