This is the second part of our December cover story. Click here for part 1.Where 2017’s dizzying price highs embedded “hodl” into the public consciousness, 2018 was the year that “buidl" became a trend in the crypto-industry — and Bitcoin was no exception.Anticipated in Bitcoin Magazine’s first cover story of the year, Bitcoin’s technological progress only accelerated in 2018. Improving Bitcoin from around the world, developers and entrepreneurs furthered Segregated Witness adoption, rolled out the Lightning Network, released privacy solutions, realized sidechains and made progress on a Schnorr signature solution — all of which were still around the corner only a year ago.Following up on January’s cover story, 2018’s closing two-parter cover story explores how these five technologies progressed.In part two: privacy, sidechains and Schnorr signatures.Privacy SolutionsTwo of the most promising privacy solutions that were proposed over the past few years — TumbleBit and ZeroLink — were both on the verge of release at the start of this year.The first is TumbleBit, a coin-mixing protocol first proposed in 2016 by an academic research team led by Boston University’s Ethan Heilman. TumbleBit uses a (centralized) mixer to create off-chain payment channels between several participants in a mixing session. Everyone ends up with each others’ coins, breaking the transaction trail for all. Importantly, clever crypto...
