What is a Mixnet?
The OMNIA Protocol will provide the means that will allow for blockchain transactions while remaining confidential in both the content and the metadata (i.e., date, time) of the transaction. The technology that can do that is called a mix-net.
How does mix-net work?
Imagine you have just made an NFT minting request using the Polygon network. Besides you, thousands of other users are using Polygon for the same purpose. Then are a few people who are not regular consumers on Opensea but rather eavesdroppers who want to spy on others transactions. The eavesdroppers can closely monitor the transactions data and know who is sending information to whom.
With a mix-net, the transactions on blockchains like Polygon or Ethereum are enclosed in camouflaged, cryptographically secure packages. As a result, no one can understand which computer initiated the blockchain transaction and the transaction’s end of destination. You practically go “invisible” once you use mix-net while accessing blockchain services, and the mix-net is the “invisibility cloak” that helps you do such a thing.
OMNIA solution
OMNIA leverages mix-nets, a better version of Tor’s underlying technology. Mix-nets are not used in isolation; they are used in networks to distribute trust and do not have a single point of failure. In addition, mix-nets utilize additional traffic obfuscation measures and delay injection to mitigate Tor’s known issues by making the in & out traffic correlation impossible.
Each privacy relayer contributes a part of the obfuscation and routes the request to the next relayer. Finally, after a few hops, the request is routed to an actual blockchain node that will serve that specific request.
Why should you protect your privacy?
In this day and age, privacy is a human right, yet few people express concerns about giant corporations capitalizing on their private information. Many companies have been harvesting data from users behaviors through different means, notable through smartphone apps usage and geolocation. Companies can then use the gathered data to deliver advertisements, tailor content, or entice various behaviors that benefit said companies.
People have thought of blockchain as the movement to a decentralized financial system and information freedom in recent years. But unfortunately, this is not the case, as most blockchain infrastructures are very centralized and vulnerable to malicious attacks. This drawback is why the demand for privacy protection has increased over the years, and we desperately need to protect users’ rights.
You can start protecting your privacy using OMNIA to become untraceable while accessing blockchain applications. Ultimately, we should not let anyone on the internet or any malicious actors access our information without consent.
