Neutrino protocol will enable preservation of a light wallet’s privacy, says Jim

[Pegasus]

As the new year begins, everyone is interested in predicting what 2019 is going to look like for cryptocurrencies and some major coins like Bitcoin. Tone Vays, former Wall Street Risk Analyst and Bitcoin enthusiast/influencer, hosted Jimmy Song, a developer on his latest episode of Bitcoin brief.

Song shed some light on his recent article in Bitcoin magazine, where the developer spoke about Neutrino, a protocol for light clients “to get the data that they need while preserving privacy and without trusting a central server”. Song told Vays and Giacomo about the protocol and explained how it is developed to preserve privacy for a light wallet. Song spoke about what it lacks in the current protocols of the light wallets and explained bit37. He said:

“Unfortunately, the current protocols that are there aren’t very privacy preserving. Bit37 probably comes closest, but even that require has some flaws, including denial of service vectors for the servers that serve up it 37 data. So I described Neutrino here, which is a new proposal proposed by the lightning labs developers and I think 158 has already been incorporated into bitcoin, but the 157 is what really makes it you know, compatible with Bitcoin Core”.

According to Song, this will allow wallets to preserve privacy. He explained the concept of client filtering, which instead of server filtering transactions for a client, clubs all the transactions on a block, compresses it and sends it to the client. The client will be responsible to “figure out if any of the transactions are ones it has transacted in”. While doing so, the client can then request the full block to verify any transaction if he feels is relevant. He added:

“Since this super-compressed block is the same for every light client, this removes the denial-of-service vulnerability for the server. This also means that the server gets no special information about the light client, other than what blocks it wants to look at, meaning that there are much fewer privacy leaks.”

According to Song, Neutrino provides privacy in the hands of the clients and will enable wallet developers to create wallets that are “self-contained” and will not depend on trusting servers.

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