PIVX’s, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that allows for full anonymity during transactions, is transforming to a fully-fledged cryptocurrency exchange platform by November this year. PIVX offers full privacy by essentially erasing a coin’s transaction history after each subsequent transaction. According to the operator’s announcement, its cryptocurrency exchange platform, ZDEX is set to be a privacy-enabled decentralized exchange.
Zerocoin
PIVX is built on the Zerocoin protocol technology developed by Prof. Matthew D. Green in collaboration with two of his former students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technololgy. Green’s Zerocoin was initially developed as an alternative for the traditional mixing service for potentially traceable Bitcoins. It sought to address distrust issues with the mixing services where efficiency relied on the mixing service operator’s subjective trustworthiness.
Now with Zerocoins, it was intended that Bitcoin itself (without dependence on 3rd party mixing services) would annihilate identifiable tokens then mint fresh coins with no transaction history thus allowing traders to transact incognito. Unfortunately, Bitcoin turned down the proposal prompting Prof. Green and team to launch their protocol as an independent cryptocurrency.
Anonymity
PIVX uses the Zerocoin protocol on its exchange platform thus allowing users to trade in untraceable tokens, preventing anyone from having a birds-eye view of where a particular coin has been through its transaction history. PIVX is pioneering a new era of private decentralized exchange services that will go a long way to frustrating governments’ efforts to regulate cryptocurrencies; they can’t fight what they can’t see.
PIVX is not building entirely new infrastructures for its upcoming exchange platform. ZDEX will utilize existing PIVX masternodes. Through the 1,350 masternodes making up the PIVX network, users can trade in zPIV and other diverse digital assets.
PIVX is researching other uses of the zerocoin technology. In June, the company announced that it had come up with a private in-wallet that leverages zerocoin technology.
With the zDEX wallet, users will save on transaction fees, have uncompromised privacy as the coins cannot be traced to their source as well as avoid government regulations. The company also has several works in progress that are zerocoins-based.
The cryptocurrency space has not quite seen the kind of exchange solution like one offered by PIVX but one could only envision that the service will be embraced considering the fact that traders place high value on their privacy.