MasterCard Blockchain Adoption A Sign Of Things To Come?

A patent has been filed by the massive payment providers, Mastercard. The patent covers a method and system for anonymisation of blockchain based electronic transactions.

The patent application was originally filed in the summer of last year but earlier this week, the US Patent and Trade Office published it.

The patent request refers to electronic transactions becoming anonymous through the blockchain. Specifically the use of one or more intermediary addresses to obscure the source and destination of funds in a blockchain to increase the anonymity of bodies which are involved with blockchain addresses.

It is common for it to be hard for the user behind a blockchain address to actually be identified which means that anyone can transfer or receive transactions utilising a blockchain whilst keeping a high level of secrecy.

Nevertheless, the nature of the blockchain as an immutable ledger is such that every transaction can be traced and followed back to the genesis block of the blockchain. It is possible to view all the transfers involved with a specific blockchain wallet by looking at the movement of digital currency in a blockchain through its transactions.

As reported by RTT, With all the existing communications and attribution structure of blockchain technology available, this is possible. For example, Bitcoin requires identification of where the transfers are coming from and going in order to maintain the ledger.

“The methods and systems filed for patent use intermediary addresses to obfuscate the source and destination of funds for transactions conducted via the blockchain.” Because of this, it results in showing the user only transferring funds to and receiving funds from a small number of addresses that are also involved in a significantly big amount of transfers with different users and therefore the data obtained is useless.

However, the amounts might be obscured through the use of multiple transactions which includes several addresses. This might increase the secrecy even more provided by the systems and methods for which the patent is filed.

Take all of this out of the equation and focus on MasterCard. This is a huge company used by millions across the globe and with them starting utilitie the blockchain and changing it their own way this is a sign of mainstream adoption of blockchain technology. You could say that MasterCard are trying to get ahead of the game before anyone else ‘steals the idea’.

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