Privacy is a topic that is unfortunately often discussed without enough differentiation. We should differentiate between the following points:
- Privacy in the context of infrastructure: At infrastructure level, no privacy restrictions are envisaged for Safe and privacy improvements should be actively promoted.
- Privacy in the context of asset allocation (especially funding initiatives): When it comes to the direct transfer of assets, there is a trade-off between privacy and legal requirements. Crypto asset allocations do not fall outside the legal realm. Besides compliance requirements, no one can have an interest in supporting money laundering or terrorist financing. If privacy-enhancing technologies (such as VPN) means that compliance with legal requirements cannot be guaranteed, a decision must be made based on the respective risk appetite. The use of VPNs does obviously not imply that every user is involved in money laundering or terrorist financing, but rather that it cannot be ruled out with sufficient certainty due to a lack of sophisticated solutions. In this context, the exclusion of VPNs is not a decision against privacy, but a consequence of missing solutions.
The proposal under discussion is too undifferentiated and would only achieve its goal at a high opportunity cost. Instead of discussing how to limit initiatives that could be beneficial for the Safe ecosystem without having a focus on privacy - we should be discussing how we can better support privacy-focused initiatives.