MONERO GOES FOR MORE PRIVACY: LAUNCH KOVRI TO HIDE THE GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION OF ITS USERS

An ambitious project called Kovri has been launched in its alpha version by the developer team of Monero, the cryptocurrency designed for anonymity.

Kovri is a project that places Monero on a much higher level in terms of the anonymity of the distributed platforms. This implementation allows any interaction or transaction of any cryptocurrency can not be related to any geographical location, through a route via I2P, the same as the Internet browser Tor. Kovri may be used later this year.

The risk of relating a geographical location to a cryptocurrency transaction is that if enough data is collected, such as the IP address and the time in which the transactions are made, this information could be contrasted by authoritarian governments or third parties with malicious intentions. determine the definitive identity of the user, something totally undesirable for many users of cryptocurrencies and, in particular, for users who are loyal to Monero.

In a Reddit publication, the launch of the project was announced and acknowledgments were given to more than 80 developers who participated in its construction individually.

For a compatibility issue with Monero, the implementation is written in the C ++ programming language, although I2P routers are usually written in Java.

In the Reddit forum, some users asked questions that the developer OsrsNeedsF2P answered. One of the questions raised why to use I2P instead of using Tor, to which he replied that I2P is much better to avoid attacks of time analysis, in addition to being more decentralized.

With respect to why the need to implement this project arises, he responds:

"Let's say you live in China. You want to learn more about the Tiananmen massacre, a horrible incident where the armed force shot hundreds of students at a protest in Tiananmen Square. For your research, you want to buy the documentary Moving the Mountain, however, if you do, you will be imprisoned for a long time. Kovri would hide your transaction as if you had never used a cryptocurrency."

Monero hides the destinations of the transactions and the amounts used in them. The problem that Kovri attacks is that, when a transaction is issued, the network is indicated to be included in the closest block, but the IP address and other metadata are included, although not registered forever in the blockchain. This data can be used by malicious factors to determine the location of the user who sends the transaction.

In another related topic, it is worth mentioning that new internal implementations of the chain are already approaching, such as the Bulletproof protocol, which closes the doors by hiding exit addresses and converts Monero transactions into anonymous end-to-end transactions .

THE BIRTH OF KOVRI:
The origins of Kovri date back to 2015, when the original author of the i2pd implementation (alternative version to I2P) whose name is not specified, was passed as the only collaborator of this proposal on GitHub, which generated a deep discontent among the other developers and the project lost momentum. However, months later, a developer, known as: Anonimal, rescued the project and started working on it, while recruiting more interested collaborators. Thus were held meetings in which it was decided to fork the base code of the i2pd implementation and convert it into what is now Kovri.

In an episode of OpenHours, said developer explains that this project will provide much more anonymity to the transactions of Monero, even beyond what this platform is capable of doing, since it works with another layer of internet connection and not with implementations directly made in the blockchain.

Regarding the comparison with Tor, Anonimal explained that Kovri is an excellent alternative to the well-known navigator. Although, he expresses his complacency with Tor and says that "I would defend him with teeth and nails", he recognizes that some aspects of this are worrisome.

It should be noted that Kovri, despite having been developed by the Monero team, is not an exclusive project of this platform, because it can be used by anyone wishing to be more anonymous when making transactions with any cryptocurrency. However, the ability to hide the identity of its users has become the perfect excuse for governments when implementing strict regulations in this regard.