Schedule at block height 300,000, the Abelian network will undergo a hard fork for introducing two groundbreaking features: multi-level privacy (MLP) and Abelian User Token (AUT) protocol. The hard fork will also feature a new key management system for better recovery of wallets.

Multi-Level Privacy (MLP)

Multi-Level Privacy (MLP) offers users two privacy levels for $ABEL wallets: a full-privacy wallet / address ensures that the value of coins in the wallet is concealed. When spent, they are mixed within a set of coins, making it impossible to trace the specific coins that were being used. This level of privacy is ideal for users who prioritize discretion and security.

Abelian protects the full privacy of users with advanced cryptographic techniques. Lattice-based linkable ring signatures are used to protect the wallet addresses of senders from being known. Quantum-resistant commitment schemes hide the content of each transaction from the public. A randomized cryptographic technique called Stealth Address hides the wallet addresses of receivers. Additionally, a quantum-resistant lattice-based zero-knowledge proof system prevents double spending. All these technologies are based on the standardized public key cryptography most recently published by the NIST.

On the contrary, the coins in a pseudonym-privacy address works in a manner similar to that of Bitcoin, the value of the coins would be public, and the spending of the coins is transparent and traceable. Compared with the full-privacy addresses, a pseudonym-privacy address is much shorter, which further allows up to 100 outputs to pseudonym-privacy addresses in one single transaction. This also helps improve the throughput of the Abelian network by 5x times.

It is also important to highlight that for coins before height 300,000, only full-privacy addresses are supported, and the number of outputs is limited to 5.

Abelian User Token (AUT)

The Abelian User Token (AUT) protocol allows users to create and issue user-customized tokens within the Abelian ecosystem. The framework for these tokens will adhere to a set of rules that will be elaborated in future announcement. These rules are constructed around pseudonym-privacy addresses. As always, the AUT-based tokens are also quantum-resistant.

New Key Management System

The hard fork introduces a new key management mechanism which greatly improves the user experience of wallet recovery. When using a new full-privacy wallet or a new pseudoynm-privacy wallet, a user does not need to recall the maximum sequence number of recoverable wallet addresses anymore when re-importing the wallet from its mnemonic list.

It is important to note that coins generated before height 300,000 will remain supported. Users can continue accessing these assets.

More information will be announced shortly. Please stay tuned.

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