Why Privacy and Mobility Go Hand in Hand

In the world of finance, the first to innovate are the ones to watch. In the world of cryptocurrency, it seems many rest on their laurels or are merely keen on borrowing someone’s code, slapping on a new label, and saying, buy me!

We all know that all crypto coins trace their heritage back to Grandpa Bitcoin. But some projects, like Alias, aren’t satisfied with antiquated code, slow transactions, and high fees, even if it means minimal real-world adoption. Sure, Bitcoin is “#1” but as a currency, it has some major limitations. And even within the most recent explosion of privacy-focused currency, very few are being used for everyday spending. The reason? We see a big one, but let’s first tackle the privacy reputation issue first.

Regulators and government financial rule-makers can’t seem to get a grip on digital cash and most recently, privacy currency. Here’s the thing; user data protection is not about spending and sending in secret, or using it to buy drugs, guns, and terrorism. Government-issued currency has that wrapped up with a bow.  And to be fair, fiat currency is private! But we shouldn’t limit user freedom and freedom of privacy for the sake of not being the only one in finance to hide transactions. (Yeah, we’re talking to you big gov, big bank and big media). It’s about selectively choosing what’s best for the user in making your transactions public or private. Even in this scenario, hiding your transactions from some entity (cyberthieves, competition, media, big corp, etc), there are only a few coins that can still offer the opportunity of KYC/AML compliance. With Alias it’s possible to leverage the freedom of user data protection while still delivering on Satoshi’s original vision of transparent and fungible currency for all as a direct response to the failing traditional financial system.

But privacy technology takes Satoshi’s vision, “a purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash [that] would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution”, and extends the need for a more discrete and secure means of transaction. No longer is it about saving costs and potential errors due to the “middle-man.” In 2021, we now have to be concerned with cybertheft, corporate sabotage, manipulation and proliferation of media to leverage our transactional data for their gain, as well as nefarious governments around the globe being about to reach into your bank account to seize your wealth.

A number of coins are delivering on solid networks a means to privately transact. But, how many of us do our transactions ONLY on our laptops or desktops? And so now we address the real problem to solve in the cryptocurrency space and the gateway to massive adoption – mobility. It’s only been in the past few years that we’ve seen a decent effort to adopt new technology to make crypto transactions possible using your mobile device. This has to be a number one priority for any currency worth its salt. In November, Raynor de Best posted an article showing the massive explosion of mobile payment use.  He states,“In 2023, it is estimated that there will be 1.31 billion proximity mobile-payment transaction users worldwide, up from 950 million users in 2019.”

The bottom line; to go mainstream means to go mobile. And to blend Satoshi’s dream along with the need now for more user-data protection means we have to marry mobile with privacy.

Enter, Alias.

Alias is proud to deliver the world’s first 100% private mobile wallet, just in time for Christmas!
This mobile wallet is the first of its kind. It has all the power and features of the desktop version but in the palm of your hand!

Full user-data protection to send and spend, as well as earning rewards while on the go.

This app uses no central server but connects directly to the Alias peer-to-peer network, and its exclusive usage of Tor guarantees your network identity is always protected. This full node cryptocurrency app allows you to INSTANTLY and PRIVATELY spend or send funds SAFELY to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Requirements:

• Android 8
• 3 GB RAM (4GB recommended)
• At least 4GB of free internal storage for bootstrap installation (After setup, less than 2GB is used)
• Flat rate internet connection recommended for initial sync or bootstrap download.

Mobile features:

• Power saving mode with hourly sync when not staking
• Biometrics
• Download blockchain bootstrap for fast setup
• Reset local blockchain data if wallet has syncing problems
• Create a new wallet with seed words
• Recover wallet from seed word
• Import private keys from existing wallet.dat file
• Backup wallet.dat
• Send coins publicly or privately
• Receive coins publicly or privately
• Transfer coins from public to private balance and vice versa
• Stake public or private coins and earn rewards
• Integrated blockchain explorer

Missing desktop features:

• Coin-control dialog
• Debug dialog

Due to its robustness, here are a few things to be aware of:

• Please be aware that the bootstrap download is over 1.6 GB of data and might lead to additional network traffic costs.
  It is strongly advised to use a flat rate internet connection for the initial setup.  With any innovation, there are at times, some limitations, but we are pioneers and the Alias Devs are working on more ways to shrink the size of the syncing as well as bring other new features to the mobile experience. For bootstrap download, a stable internet connection without network drops or changes is required. Bootstrap download is split into chunks of 50MB. So if the internet connection fails, it can be restarted after the last successfully downloaded 50MB chunk.
• Syncing the complete blockchain from scratch without bootstrap might take days
• Blockchain rescan after wallet recovery from seed words can take multiple hours, it is recommended to import an existing wallet.dat

Please join our Discord to offer edits, report bugs that need squashing, or any other issues. We will collect new feature requests, but for now, we just want to see this world’s first wallet stable and active! This is yet another first for Alias as they continue to pioneer in privacy and proof-of-stake technology. We recognize that the ability to trade with other coins via the same technology is the ultimate goal, but for now we offer this amazing proof of concept product.  The project’s goal is to create user-friendly currency to help all manage their wealth with superior user-data protection.