Neo: Support for Anonymous GAS for privacy on Smart Contract

[vncoelho]

During our investigation on Privacy for NEO Smart Contracts, we noticed that an intrinsic need is to have anonymous GAS support.

Currently, network_fees and , system_fees are payed using the Utility of GAS.

The need for native support to an Anonymous GAS is of crucial importance for the creation of Privacy on NEP5-Tokens or any other Smart Contracts that requires such level of interaction with users, such as SciChain (a Smart Contract focused on peer-review of scientific materials).

@igormcoelho @PeterLinX

[erikzhang]

Homomorphic calculation?

[vncoelho]

Can be it, @erikzhang.
The point is that we need it to be native, otherwise a bridge will always leak information according to the pool and use.

[erikzhang]

I have done some research on this, but I feel that the priority of this matter is not the highest.

[vncoelho]

I understand, @erikzhang.
In our case it is important because of two aspects: 1) it is part of our previous research directions in agreement with NEO Foundation, thus, it is our duty to advise the project to move in the most effective direction. 2) we also would like to move the non-profit SciChain project to a viable working version, we believe that Science on the Blockchain is a great project that we need to startup as soon as possible.

We believe we need to keep this in mind in order to consider the next steps and design.
Maybe we could firstly design some possible needs of neo-vm for supporting Homomorphic calculation effectively.

[igormcoelho]

I think this is manageable only until we have free tx... after that, it will be very complicated to not have an anonymous gas. Agree that its not top 1 topic, but it would be nice to keep this possibility in mind.

[EdgeDLT]

@vncoelho I agree with you, this is very important for many use cases.

I think we should be considering having all transfers on Neo private by default, with the ability for users to reveal specific tx data manually (like Monero view keys) or in some cases declare their identity up front through NeoID.

This way we can have all the benefits of privacy on Neo without needing secondary tokens or protocols and no action on the user's part. Users will simply have privacy and safety by default whenever they use Neo (no one looking at their balance and sizing them up :dagger:). If they need to comply with some governing body (e.g paying tax or a legal dispute) they can use the read key to provide proof as required.

It is also think that "opt-out" privacy is much better "opt-in."

[vncoelho]

Hi @EdgeDLT, great to have you thinking on this as well.

NEO as private by default I am not sure yet. One thing is that we need the mechanisms for creating private NEP5, which could be private by their default.

The GAS will, as the mechanism for paying fees, a key piece for achieving this desired privacy.