👁 How anonymous is the blockchain: what can other people find out about your transactions?

⚫️ This is a #howtoton post, it's unlikely to tell anything new to TON old-timers, but it might be useful for newcomers. When people hear that cryptocurrencies are “anonymous”, it's unclear: what exactly does this mean?

⚫️ The TON blockchain itself is quite transparent: with the “explorer” tools you can view all the transactions in it. If you enter the address of any non-custodial TON wallet into an explorer, its balance and activity are visible (here's an example). Most other blockchains work the same way.

⚫️ Why do people talk about “anonymity”? By default, it is not known who owns which wallet. If John sent 10 Toncoins to Michael, an outside observer will be able to see in the explorer “10 Toncoins were sent from one address to another”, but not the names of John and Michael. This approach is sometimes called “pseudonymity”: the identities are not blurred into a single “anonymous”, but are hidden behind different “pseudonym addresses”.

⚫️ In some cases the “pseudonym” might be revealed. If someone knows your wallet address and publishes it on the Internet, then everyone will be able to see the history of all your transactions made with that wallet. People who don't want that to happes usually create a number of wallets. If one of the addresses “leaks”, it will allow everyone to see only part of the activity (so it will be impossible to understand, for example, “how much money a person has in total”).

⚫️ The situation is different with custodial wallets like @wallet or @xrocket. These are centralized services that tell less info to the blockchain, but often collect even more of it themselves. Some require you to present documents to complete the KYC procedure, while others simply know your Telegram account.

⚫️ In this case, the information is less public and an outsider cannot see the full picture through an explorer, but there are risks. For example, if such a service is hacked, hackers can obtain (and publish) the data telling “which user did what”.

💡 So, it could be said that partial anonymity is available in TON. If you invested a small amount in Toncoin and have already told everyone about it, then you have nothing to fear. But if you make a lot of transactions and worry about your privacy, then you should consider the restrictions and think about the information that may be available to others.

@thedailyton