Ecash creator David Chaum launches Praxxis cryptocurrency

The creator of the predecessor of bitcoin, the electronic currency Ecash, as well as one of the founders of the cyberpunk movement, David Chaum, is launching the new Praxxis cryptocurrency.

The famous cryptographer plans to release a new digital currency, Praxxis, which has such characteristics as security, speed and scalability, and can become a substitute for cash, as Chaum told The Block. The purpose of the new digital currency is to serve as a means of payment. Cryptoactive created on Elixxir blockchain launched
last year.

“Bitcoin is not cash. This is a digital currency. This is a means of preserving capital. But it lacks the key characteristics of money, ”said Elixxir president Jim Dolbear.

According to Chaum, existing blockchain solutions fell into the so-called blockchain trilemma, where scalability, decentralization and security cannot be completely satisfied with one protocol. Chaum believes that the time has come to get rid of the old paradigm, because the blockchains developed according to this model “really don’t work.”

“For many years, people have been promised scaling, sidechains, sharding, but these technologies have not yet been implemented,” Chaum said.

According to him, the inability to simultaneously solve the problems of security, scalability and speed also prevents cryptocurrencies from becoming a global transaction system. Praxxis, on the other hand, seeks to break this deadlock and ensure user privacy by deploying the so-called “denominated coin structure”. The scheme breaks down payments into smaller amounts and links them to other payments, so only the user knows how much money he spends on each transaction.

According to Chaum, the Praxxis protocol is also resistant to quantum computing. This means that the protocol can survive the attacks carried out by quantum computers, and Praxxis can be resistant to regular cryptanalysis initiated by hackers and even government agencies. Chaum said the government has standardized an encryption scheme that is widely used to protect digital information, including crypto assets.

However, this scheme is based on specific functions and can be hacked by the government. Instead, the Praxxis protocol “uses cryptography based on random functions … in this way it automatically becomes quantum-resistant, as well as resistant to conventional cryptanalysis.”

Hash functions, which are the mathematical basis of blockchains, are very difficult to change even with the help of quantum computers. At the same time, encryption using the private key, usually used for cryptocurrency wallets, is vulnerable to quantum attacks, hence the theoretical need for a quantum-stable digital currency.

At the moment, the technical specifications of Praxxis are almost unknown, but it is reported that the White Paper will be released later this year. Dolbyr said the company is currently funded by private investors. For example, last fall it became known that the co-founder of Ripple invested
into the project.