Led by Dr. Duncan Wong, the co-inventor of Monero’s Linkable Ring Signature, Abelian is an Accountable Privacy initiative for the cryptocurrency industry. It is a collaborative effort between research institutes of Nanyang Technological University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and University of Wollongong. The development is handled by Hong Kong based blockchain development firm CryptoBLK.
“What I buy in a supermarket may not be a secret, but do I necessarily want everyone to know? Probably not”
Somehow privacy in the cryptocurrency space carries negative connotation. But privacy on our transaction record is indeed a very basic need for the technology to gain wide spread adoptions.
In ABE, proven technologies including linkable ring signature and cryptographic commitment schemes are incorporated into the design to offer users uncompromising privacy.
Accountability
“Today’s financial regulatory framework is built on years of experience. We need to adopt an openminded yet carefully balanced approach…”
Enabling and abiding by regulations, such as AML and taxation policies, in the design solves a lot of concerns from enterprises. They could in turn promote the technology to more users.
We achieve this by introducing a cryptographic primitive called verifiable encryption into ABE.
Quantum-safe
“Elliptic Curve Cryptography was invented in 1985. NSA endorsed it in 2005, and later on warned against it in 2015…”
Bitcoin, invented in 2008, is built on ECC. But if our target is to build something that enables widespread adoptions in a long term, it may not be wise to ignore the technological advancement trajectory over the past years.
The privacy and accountability features of ABE are built on Lattice-based cryptography, which enables post-quantum security.
Stakeholders
Individual
Custom level of privacy for each transaction can be set by the user from basic (like Bitcoin) to fully private (like Dash)
Quantum-Resistant cryptographic algorithms provides added safety in the future
Enterprise
Enterprise level applications can be built upon the ABE platform through the use of custom tokens
Organizations will have the option of opening up their transactions to specified third-parties
Regulator
An industry’s first endeavour on tackling the problem of accountability for cryptocurrencies
Organizations can prepare for regulatory acceptance of ABE by opening up transactions to specified third-parties
Community
The open-source nature of the project will allow the community to participate in enhancements of ABE
Research communities will be able to use the quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms for other projects
Meet the Team
Renowned researchers, Universities and collaborating parties
Dr. Duncan S. Wong
Co-Founder & CEO of CryptoBLK Co-Inventor of Linkable Ring Signature
