- Sui founder Adeniyi Abiodun has announced a new feature that grants privacy by default to all stablecoin transactions.
- This privacy feature will be expanded to other assets on Sui in due time, including crypto and tokenized bonds and stocks.
Sui is testing a new feature that makes all stablecoin transactions private, revealing only the essential details to the sender and recipient, founder Adeniyi Abiodun has announced.
The need for privacy in crypto is once again taking center stage after years of regulatory crackdowns. Zcash, one of the two leading privacy coins alongside Monero, has been one of the best large-cap performers this year, gaining 230% since the start of March.
Abiodun wants to bring the benefits of privacy to Sui, and he’s starting with stablecoins. In his announcement, he noted that blockchain’s main offering, transparency, is also its biggest challenge. While it curbs crime, it also exposes all financial data to everyone on the internet, hindering widespread adoption. If a bank exposed every transaction you have ever made since you opened the account every time you pay for your coffee, you would abandon it immediately, Abiodun says.
The Mysten Labs CEO stated:
“With Sui, we’re going to enable a feature that effectively lets all transactions with stablecoins become private by default. If you send $5 to a friend in Namibia, or $20 to Kazakhstan, you no longer need to worry about the history of your transactions being exposed to the entire internet.”
The sender and recepient will be able to view the amount sent, but no other history will be shared between the two parties.
Sui’s Approach for Privacy That Works
Privacy in crypto is not a new concept. The entire sector was built on the cyberpunk movement whose core belief was that the government should have minimal insight into private citizens’ financial and digital affairs. Bitcoin was thought to be private money, but blockchain analytics have made tracing BTC transactions easy.
Then came privacy coins like Zcash and Monero. These offer total privacy, but it borders on anonymity, which regulators have been adamant against. Zcash has been working on upgrades that adhere to regulatory requirements, but it has yet to get there. Monero has been delisted on most major exchanges as regulators ramped up enforcement against it.
Sui is treading the line between these two approaches. The users will get privacy by default, but the transactions will not be anonymous. Where needed, auditors and regulators can access these transactions, which Abiodun describes as “privacy that works.”
He says that Mysten Labs has deployed the privacy features on the testnet and it has worked. It plans to deploy it on the mainnet “very soon.” While it will start with stablecoins, the new privacy feature will extend to crypto assets like SUI and later, into tokenized assets like bonds and stocks.
SUI trades at $1.04, dipping 1.3% over the past day and over 30% since hitting $1.38 two weeks ago.
