What is Monero? Monero (XMR) is the top privacy-centric cryptocurrency based on the CryptoNote protocol, a secure, private and untraceable currency system. Monero uses a special kind of cryptography to ensure that all of its transactions are remain 100% unlinkable and untraceable. In an increasingly transparent world, you can see why something like Monero can become so desirable. Origins of Monero In July of 2012, Bytecoin, the first real life implementation of CryptoNote, was launched. While Bytecoin had promise, people noticed that 80% of the coins were already published. So, it was decided that the bytecoin blockchain will be forked and the new coins in the new chain will be called Bitmonero, which is was then renamed Monero, meaning “coin” in Esperanto language. In this new blockchain, a block will be mined and added every two minutes. Why Monero? #1: Unlinkability - Your identity is completely private You have complete control over your transactions. You are responsible for your money. Because your identity is private no one will be able to see what you are spending your money on. When you send funds to someone’s public address, what happens is that you actually send the funds to a randomly created brand new one-time destination address. This means that the public record does not contain any mention that funds were received to the recipient’s public address. In Monero, your public address will never appear in the public record of transactions. Instead, a 'stealth address' is recorded in a way that only you, the recipient, can recognize the incoming funds. #2: Fungibility Fungibility is interchangeability between one asset and another asset of the same type. Suppose you borrowed $50 from your friend, you can even return the money in the form of 1 $50 bill or 5 $10 bill, It is still fine. This shows that the dollar has fungible properties. However, if you were to borrow someone’s car for the weekend and come back and give them some other car in return, then that person will probably punch on the face. Cars, in this example, are a nonfungible asset. What is CryptoNote? CryptoNote is the application layer protocol that fuels various decentralized currencies. While it is similar to the application layer which runs bitcoin in many aspects, there a lot of areas where the two differ from each other. CryptoNote features an entirely new code base and is not a fork of Bitcoin. More info about CryptoNote can be found at their website. CryptoNote uses Ring Signatures to conceal sender identities via mixing and it also has unlinkable transactions that is achieved using 1-time keys for each individual payments. Ring signatures enable ‘transaction mixing’ to occur. Transaction mixing means that when funds are sent, the sender randomly chooses several other users’ funds to also appear in the transaction as a possible source of the funds being sent. The cryptographical nature of the ring signature means that no one can tell which of the funds were really the source of the transaction – not even the person that gave the funds to the sender in the first place. A system of ‘key images’ associated with each ring signature ensures that although no one can tell the true source of the funds, it can be easily detected if the sender attempts to anonymously send their funds twice.
Zebi is a young and innovative organization founded, mentored and managed by Oxford, MIT, Stanford, and IIT veterans and thought leaders from Silicon Valley with experience in Google, Uber, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle. Zebi specializes in providing Blockchain based offerings to governments and enterprises to leverage and protect their high value and sensitive data. India’s big data generation is increasing exponentially and is expected to reach 3 Zebibytes per year (Zebibyte = 1024^7 bytes) by 2020, driven by continued growth of internet usage, social networks, proliferation of smartphones, as well as the digital initiatives and structural reforms undertaken by the government. At the same time, incidents of data crimes such as data hacks, data leaks, data tampering, identity thefts are on the rise, which are costing Indian organizations and consumers more than $30 billion annually. Zebi specializes in providing blockchain based solutions to governments and enterprises to leverage and protect their high value and sensitive data. Zebi is one of the few enterprise grade product companies based in India offering best of the expertise of Silicon Valley at Indian prices Recognizing the need and opportunity to enable with technology the enforcement of data protection regulations, Zebi has created a Blockchain driven, unique and holistic solution to make high value and sensitive data readily available for legitimate use. Zebi safeguards data against hacking and tampering, while obtaining consent from individuals. The solution comprises of Zebi Chain™ to provide immutability to critical records, coupled with a central hub called Zebi Data Gateway which enables secure and instant data exchange through Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) APIs. Zebi’s innovative, proprietary solution set is one of the first in industry and is patent pending.