Zcash Founder Helped to Create This Anonymous Phone Service

A brand new nameless telephone service has launched in the US, enabling customers to join cellular protection by offering nothing greater than their zip codes.

Named Phreeli, the brand new cellular service requires no different private information from prospects, who will pay their month-to-month invoice with out sharing bank card or financial institution knowledge with the corporate.

Zooko Wilcox, co-founder of privateness coin Zcash, acted as a marketing consultant on the challenge, advising Phreeli on tips on how to apply zero-knowledge proofs to invoice paying.

“Telephone corporations are rapacious,” he instructed Decrypt. “They mainly promote the whole lot about you, together with mainly ‘each step you are taking’ (your fine-grained location) to roughly anyone who pays.”

Wilcox additionally added that he at the moment pays for his telephone service in money underneath a pretend title, and that what Phreeli is providing “has obtained to be higher than that!”

The Zcash founder declined to delve additional into Phreeli’s technicalities or what similarities it might bear with Zcash, although in a latest Wired article the agency defined that Wilcox steered it use “zero-knowledge entry passes,” leading to its implementing a brand new encryption system based mostly on ZK-proofs referred to as “Double-Blind Armadillo.”

Utilizing this method, Phreeli is ready to show that telephone numbers have paid their payments, with out retaining any particulars associated to the tactic of cost.

Prospects can prepay their payments utilizing their bank card, or utilizing privateness cash comparable to Zcash or Monero.

They will additionally tailor their specific degree of anonymity, since Phreeli affords the choice of offering an e mail deal with at signup, in order that they will get well their account within the occasion of a misplaced telephone.

They will additionally select to obtain their SIM card bodily by offering an deal with, or by downloading an eSim from a website hosted by Phreeli on the Tor community.

Talking to Wired, Phreeli founder Nicholas Merrill stated that the corporate shouldn’t be seeking to accommodate people who break the legislation, however is fairly a response to the sheer quantity of information main telephone carriers acquire—and share—on their prospects.

“We’re making an attempt to assist folks really feel extra snug dwelling their regular lives, the place they don’t seem to be doing something incorrect, and never really feel watched and exploited by large surveillance and knowledge mining operations,” he stated. “I believe it’s not controversial to say the overwhelming majority of individuals need that.”

Phreeli was integrated in 2019, and has obtained $5 million in funding over the previous yr, principally from one unnamed angel investor.

The corporate is utilizing T-Cell as its underlying infrastructure supplier, however the whole lot else—together with its method to buyer knowledge—is dealt with internally.

What’s Zcash?

Launched in 2016 underneath the Electrical Coin Firm and Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, Zcash is a privateness coin designed to cover key transaction particulars.

Transactions on Zcash can both be clear, like Bitcoin, or personal utilizing zk-SNARKSs, a kind of zero-knowledge proof, which allows transactions to be validated with out exposing the sender, recipient and quantity of funds transferred.

Like Bitcoin, Zcash has a set provide of 21 million cash and block reward halvings each 4 years.



In latest months Zcash has posted spectacular features, rallying over 660% since early September to its present value of $384. On Myriad, a prediction market owned by Decrypt’s father or mother firm Dastan, customers place a 53% probability on Zcash’s value outpacing that of fellow privateness coin Monero on Christmas Day.