Cardano Founder Responds to Monero’s “Backdoor” Allegation: Details

In recent tweets, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson responded to allegations from privacy-focused blockchain Monero about the newly launched Midnight having a “backdoor.”

@IOHK_Charles please explain allegation of @monero about cardano’s backdoor.

— Crypto Curious (@CryptoCurious33) November 19, 2022

On Friday, to the joy of its community, Cardano unveiled Midnight: a zero-knowledge data protection-based sidechain, and its upcoming token, Dust.

As much as the Cardano community was excited, the Monero team took to Twitter to point out “flaws” in the system, one of which concerned a “backdoor.”

A CoinDesk report quoted the Cardano founder as saying, “The system will walk the line between preserving privacy and allowing regulators and auditors a backdoor into the system when permission is granted.”

In response to a user and also Monero’s claims, Hoskinson answered, “Backdoor? We don’t have a backdoor.”

He further added that the word “backdoor” was a misquote.

Hoskinson explained what the Midnight project was about: “It’s a confidentiality platform with a rich identity framework built in via Atala prism. View keys are handled at the DApp level, not the protocol. You add involuntary disclosure as a feature for builders to use.”

The newly coined term “backdoor” became concerning in the wake of the FTX collapse, with founder Sam Bankman-Fried allegedly having a secret “back door” to transfer billions.

According to reports, “bespoke software” was used to establish a “back door” in FTX’s books that were unearthed during the financial discovery process.

More on Midnight

According to its official website, Midnight will be a data protection-based blockchain that safeguards sensitive commercial and personal data while preserving fundamental freedoms of association, commerce and expression.

Additionally, it will make it possible for programmers to create and launch data protection-first dApps fast using a variety of programming languages, starting with TypeScript, and it will let businesses communicate mission-critical information without worrying about leaks or censorship. Individuals will also be able to safely share their private information.