The anonymity of cryptocurrency wallets has been called into question with the recent $7.5 million investment into Addressable.io. The company specializes in connecting social media accounts to crypto wallets, thereby removing the anonymity of the wallet. The goal of the company is to bring targeted marketing to the Web3 sector by unlocking a new opportunity to match users to their crypto wallets and target them according to their balance.
The company claims it is not trying to de-anonymize cryptocurrencies by “matching” users, who have ventured into blockchain marketing and advertising, with their social media accounts. Instead, the company claims it is running fine threads between Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 to familiarize the space and provide better marketing opportunities for those in the sector.
The investment has raised privacy concerns within the crypto community, as the industry values privacy as a feature and not a bug. The identity of millions of users could be jeopardized by handing it over to companies for “marketing purposes” without their consent.
The crypto community has been working to enhance the privacy of cryptocurrencies, with the Ethereum ecosystem even exploring the implementation of zero-knowledge proof and similar technology to improve user privacy. In the Bitcoin ecosystem, miners approved the “Taproot” upgrade to enhance privacy in the blockchain.
While Addressable’s investment may increase a company’s marketing return on investment (ROI) by several orders of magnitude, it challenges the fundamental principle of privacy in the crypto world. It remains to be seen how the community will respond to this move and whether the anonymity of crypto wallets will indeed be at risk.
Addressable’s investment into de-anonymizing crypto wallets for marketing purposes raises serious privacy concerns and challenges the principles of privacy in the crypto world. The community will have to weigh the benefits of targeted marketing against the potential risk to their privacy.
The technology behind Addressable is bound to have a lasting effect on the crypto community, even if there are setbacks along the way. It seems that we will see more of these services in the future, providing innovative data solutions for marketing firms and brands. On the other side, investors are also working on tech that can protect user’s identities and prevent their information from being leaked. The more this problem is explored and addressed, the better off cryptocurrency users will be.