Zcash founder helped create this anonymous calling service

A new anonymous phone service has been launched in the United States, allowing consumers to sign up for mobile communications services by simply entering their postal code.

The new mobile phone company, called Phreeli, does not ask customers for any other personal information and allows customers to pay their monthly bills without sharing their credit card or banking data with the company.

Zooko Wilcox, co-founder of privacy coin Zcash, served as a consultant on the project and advised Phreeli on how to apply zero-knowledge proofs to bill payments.

“The phone companies are greedy,” he said. decryption. “They basically sell everything about you, including basically ‘every step you take’ (your detailed location information), to more or less anyone who will pay them.”

Mr. Wilcox also added that he currently pays for telephone service in cash under a false name, and that what Mr. Freeli was offering “could be better than that!”

Zcash’s founder declined to delve further into Phreeli’s expertise or similarities with Zcash, but recently wired In the article, the company explains that Wilcox proposed the use of a “zero-knowledge access path,” which resulted in the implementation of a new cryptographic system based on ZK proofs called “Double-Blind Armadillo.”

Using this system, Phreeli can prove that a phone number has paid a charge without retaining any payment method details.

Customers can prepay their bills using a credit card or using privacy coins such as Zcash or Monero.

Phreeli also gives you the option to provide your email address when signing up, so you can also adjust a certain level of anonymity. This allows you to recover your account even if you lose your phone.

You can also physically receive a SIM card by specifying the address or by downloading an eSim from a site hosted by Phreeli on the Tor network.

talk to wiredPhreeli founder Nicholas Merrill said the company is not trying to respond to individuals breaking the law, but rather to the vast amount of data that major phone companies collect and share about their customers.

“We are trying to help people live more comfortable and normal lives without feeling like they have done nothing wrong and are being watched and exploited by mass surveillance and data mining operations,” he said. “I think it’s safe to say that that’s what the majority of people want.”

Phreeli was incorporated in 2019 and has received $5 million in funding over the past year, primarily from one anonymous angel investor.

The company uses T-Mobile as its underlying infrastructure provider, but everything else, including its approach to customer data, is handled internally.

What is Zcash?

Launched in 2016 under Electric Coin Company and Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, Zcash is a privacy coin designed to hide sensitive transaction details.

Transactions in Zcash can be made transparent as follows: Bitcoinor privately using zk-SNARKS, a type of zero-knowledge proof, to verify transactions without exposing the sender, recipient, and amount transferred.

Similar to Bitcoin, Zcash has a fixed supply of 21 million coins and the block reward is halved every four years.

Zcash has seen an impressive rise in recent months, rising more than 660% since early September to its current price of $384. In Myriad, decryptionAccording to its parent company Dastan, users expect the price of Zcash to exceed the price of fellow privacy coin Monero 53% of the time on Christmas Day.