MAO is the Observer of Mixin

It's time for the inception of the first ever MAO, the Observer of Mixin.

All began with a humble idea, giving people the freedom of accessing financial and messaging system in a private way.

Since day one, we knew what we built should always be privacy focused, human oriented, and owned by people.

Inevitably, we chose Bitcoin and Signal protocol. We firmly believe BTC is the sole money truly owned by people, and end-to-end encryption is the only solution to privacy problems of the Web. On Christmas eve of 2017, we uploaded the first version of Mixin Messenger to Google Play and App Store.

We are not enthusiasts of Bitcoin or any specific technology, we are the advocates of privacy and freedom for people. We never apply the complications of Bitcoin and other blockchain ideologies to Mixin, there is not only one road to arrive Rome, and complication is not the unique face of cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin blockchain is too slow and lack of privacy protections for daily usage, but we should never fallback to centralized solutions despite this. So we designed Mixin Kernel on top of Bitcoin blockchain and UTXO technology. Not Lightning Network, not another layer 2, not even a side chain. It's Mixin, the network of blockchains, privacy by default, fast enough without sacrifices, a freely accessible financial system for people, in a way as it should be.

Based on early multi party computation researches, we developed TIP to assist people truly own their wealth. With a phone number, a human brain memorable PIN, and a recoverable contact or a secret, people are guaranteed technically for their ownership of their coins. With Mixin, human is not forced to go back to stone age, nor mutate to a computer to protect some 256 bit private keys without breaking them.

We believe and build, day and night, no stop, no doubts, always excited. People rarely hear about us, yet we grow from 100BTC to 20000BTC, from hundreds of early adopters to 100K active members. We are glad to see the whole crypto community is finally catching up with account abstraction, or social recovery to follow our day one design.

DefiLlama

Today people are managing more than $1B in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on Mixin, with confidence that they can sleep well during night, no fear of losing their BTC. And developers have made some notable applications that drive Mixin to 8th on DefiLlama by TVL.

1. BOX is a recurring investment service built with Mixin Trusted Group technology, people accumulate and hold Bitcoin in a decentralized way.
2. MixPay makes crypto payment finally usable after 14 years of Bitcoin genesis block. Merchants can receive any currencies, including fiat ones, while customers pay any cryptocurrencies with any crypto wallets, almost instantly.
3. Pando Proto offers comprehensive easy-to-use Decentralized finance(DeFi) protocols, built with blockchain-based technology. Similar to the combination of Uniswap, Compound and MakerDAO on Ethereum.
4. Exin offers unbeatable trading experience for all cryptocurrencies, with aggregation from both decentralized and centralized exchanges.
5. OptionDance reinvented options trading for investors, let anyone trade Bitcoin options like the gurus and in a decentralized way.
6. Quill provides writers and readers a platform to make revenue together. Writers sell a single article or a collection to BTC, readers buy and share future BTC income together with writers.

Without smart contracts, Mixin is fast and can always be faster on Bitcoin's innovative UTXO model. Furthermore, the lack of smart contracts makes decentralized application development on Mixin more secure with battle tested technology and programming languages. Smart contract is not the holy grail of decentralized application, Ethereum has proven it with countless hacks.

Mixin Safe

The upcoming launch of Mixin Safe is the last companion for Mixin Messenger and Mixin Kernel. Through the native Bitcoin multisig and timelock script, Mixin Safe offers uncomparable security to Bitcoin custody. Being decentralized, recoverable and inheritable at the same time, Mixin Safe is the choice for institutions and high net worth individuals, in the mean while, Mixin Messnenger is undoubtedly the best option for customers daily usage.

6 years journey, we hardly reached the destination yet, and Observer MAO officially marks the beginning of Mixin. A single person or a traditional organization is not able to guard the privacy and freedom mission of Mixin, the past decades of Internet from open to close is an unforgettable lesson. Mixin Autonomous Organization could be the answer.

All Mixin resources will be handed over to Observer MAO, including code and treasury. The future of Mixin will for sure grow faster and stronger overseen by a better organization form.