A tiny step to protect the human right for privacy

The current Internet that started as a tool with the potential to democratize the information is very far from being censorship-free. Social bots populate the main social media and networks to influence the public’s opinion on particular subjects, while actual humans are silenced or simply remain unnoticed.

In the 21st century, who would not want to have for once a browser or a messenger with no tracking and endless advertisement? Who wouldn’t want to have a say in what happens with their personal data? Many users are deeply frustrated by the paradigm shift in the tech world: they are no longer the clients, they are the product sold out to the advertising companies at best.

That fueled the Web 3.0 movement envisioned as an array of the decentralized system strengthened by most recent technologies. Many companies are forming their missions around enabling people to freely exchange information and protecting the human right for privacy.

Status is one of such open-source projects “designed to be censorship-resistant and free from third-party control” with 3 main products: private messenger, Web3-enabled browser and cryptocurrency wallet for sending, storing and receiving cryptocurrencies in a safe way. Status features combine into a system that can deliver 100% dark operation. Even if every note in the Status network is compromised, the data itself stays safe.

The Ethereum creation in many ways was a revolutionary step forward to creating an ecosystem for decentralized applications by combining the existing Internet infrastructure with cryptography and blockchain technologies.

Status is built using Whisper protocol – a part of the Ethereum P2P protocol suite that is currently in the alpha stage of its development. Whisper protocol combines distributed hash tables (DHTs) and datagram messaging systems like User Datagram Protocol, used by Ethereum. The network design made it all possible.

Despite the obvious advantages, the application had a significant drawback. In this case, complete privacy came at a cost: in the form of the performance tradeoffs. The application was hungry for an ungodly amount of traffic.

The problem was clear. Users who value privacy also need to be able to receive timely messages, to transact freely with cryptocurrencies and browse the internet without interruptions.

The goal was to deliver a seamless user experience so the application would become suitable for a wide range of transactions: from simple private messaging to CryptoKitties and tokens’ exchange.

For that the traffic should be kept at the optimum level, so the usage of the apps would not add up to the internet bills. And here comes our deep passion for optimization.

Following our routine, our team has started to approach the case with the system assessment to identify the backend bottlenecks that kept usability afar.

Status was approaching the beta release and the development of the new protocol would mix up the deadlines and bring disappointment to stakeholders.

In many cases, reinventing the wheel is not necessary. The system clearly worked as expected. The only issue was scalability and efficiency. As we know, Vitalik Buterin does not rewrite Ethereum’s code with every new scalability solution.

As expected, our research has revealed that there is no need to rewrite all the system. It would be sufficient to implement the improvements for the current protocol to deliver the promised value of privacy for users without eating up their traffic and batteries and without messing up with the beta launch deadlines. Collaboration is the key not to be kept for yourself.

Open-source protocols are there for a reason. Since the developer’s community started to openly share the fruits of the work, the progress rate accelerated. So unlike the Bitcoin’s private key, the collaboration is the key that is to be used together for the greater good.

To solve this case, our team at Yourico Rocks opted to collaborate directly with the Ethereum Foundation. Together with Vlad Glukhovsky, a developer from the Ethereum Foundation we have started to improve the Whisper protocol, keeping in mind the bottlenecks identified at the first stage of the project.

Together we have designed a version 6 of the Whisper protocol that while delivering on the privacy promise is significantly less hungry for the traffic.

The final tests published on Github has proven that the unwanted network traffic has been eliminated and the users’ privacy has not been compromised.

More importantly, the solution helps the protocol to solve the scalability problem. The more users are in the network, the more significant is the improvement.

Eventually, the new version of the protocol was added to the Ethereum code. The collaboration between Status and the Ethereum Foundation has just started, but this bridge built at one project can trigger many more improvements to come.

The approach towards optimization instead of starting from the scratch allowed a fast-paced implementation of the protocol improvements. Since the new version of the protocol was in most areas compatible with the old version, the adaptation phase took only 2 days. That helped the stakeholders, but what about the end-users?

As a result, we have managed to reduce CPU and Network consumption for the Status Beta launch. For the end-users it means less traffic on the internet bills and more time without charging a battery.

The case has proven that the user-centric approach works for the new sector of Web 3.0 internet startups. A new generation of decentralized companies can successfully compete with the traditional big tech in their efficiency and usability.

For the users, it means a more feasible option or an actual choice to be a client or to be a product.