DeepOnion: An "unbiased" Review, Part 2

It has been a little over a month since I did "An 'unbiased' coin review of DeepOnion". I have had some request to follow this up and also some questions raised that I would like to answer:

Do my arguments still stand up?
Do I still see DeepOnion as a good investment?

So welcome to "DeepOnoin: An "unbiased" Review, Part 2". If you haven't read the original article you can find it as a Steemit Article or as a DeepOnion Thread. To prevent this article from becoming unbearably long I will assume that you are already familiar with the topics brought up in Part 1. If not, I would suggest having a look in one of the links and get back here when you are all caught up.

For those that just need a short reminder:
“DeepOnion is a crypto currency that is natively integrated into the TOR network and ensures anonymity of the users by hiding their IP address to the other nodes. It is a combined PoW and PoS coin with most of the coins being "pre-mined" and distributed through AirDrops and Bounty campaigns”

New and Previous Questions on the DeepOnion Project

In the last article I brought up some points that people had lifted in regards to why they (at the time) avoided to invest in DeepOnion:

The development team is anonymous
The technology isn’t unique
There is no whitepaper

Except to follow up on my conclusions on these points I would like to raise another two points, that people have raised to me, which made them hesitant to invest in DeepOnion

DeepOnion isn’t fully secure since it is integrated to an old version of TOR
TOR integrated cryptocurrencies are not always a possibility since some countries are blocking access to TOR

Anonymous Development Team

I will mention that the DeepOnion team is still anonymous and I don’t see that changing. This is something that should be taken into account as a potential risk before deciding to invest.

DeepOnion has announced that at least two new developers have joined the team in the last month and work is ongoing.

To remind the readers, there are ways to validate the work/progress of a team, even if they are anonymous, and it is something that I already covered in the last article and won’t rehash what has already been said. If you want to find out more I suggest you check out the previous article.

The technology isn’t unique and there is no Whitepaper

I am combining these bullet points to one since the major change for DeepOnion since the last article is that they have released their Whitepaper. I mentioned that the release was imminent and “lo-and-behold” a week later it was available for the public.

If you haven’t read it I certainly recommend you do. It is a fairly easy read and clearly shows that DeepOnion is very open and honest with the parts of the technology that isn’t unique and that by "using existing industry-leading standards, within cryptography and network security, provide security on multiple levels".

The “industry-standards” (TOR, Zero Knowledge, CoinJoin + Multi sig -> DeepSend) isn’t anything unique but the multi-layered approach chosen by Deeponion, by combining these, is very much unique and interesting.

I think the whitepaper proves exactly the point I wanted to make in Part 1. “Is not the whole greater than the sum of its parts?”

The “whole” that DeepOnion is trying to create is something unique, a privacy platform where DeepOnion Native Apps can be developed and used safely, securely and completely anonymous: DeepVault, WooCommerce plug-in, Mobile Wallets and more…

Is DeepOnion really secured via TOR and what about blocked regions?

In ANN threads and in comments I have read some input detailing that the DeepOnion wallet use an old version of TOR and is therefore not fully secure. Some also noted that even if a TOR update occurs not everyone will be able to benefit since TOR traffic is blocked in certain regions/countries. These were actually legitimate concerns that I hadn’t considered in my first review and that I started to look into. As it turns out it seems that the DeepOnion development team beat me to the punch, so-to-say.

This week (2018-29-01) DeepOnion launched a new Desktop Wallet which is natively integrated into the latest TOR upgrade (0.3.3.0) and also supports OBFS4.

The integration of OBFS4 into the latest DeepOnion wallet makes it possible for people, even in blocked regions, to use the TOR network. This is because OBFS4 obfuscates the message protocol details so that all traffic looks random and it can’t be identified as TOR traffic. This will allow apps to connect to TOR from anywhere.

In answer to this I will begin by starting off to quote the DeepOnion whitepaper:

“We incorporate the latest privacy standards into our technology stack, such as the inclusion of the latest TOR protocol to ensure that our community members remain secure and anonymous in all aspects of their finances”

I think everything in this section goes back to something I brought up in the previous article: How to evaluate an anonymous team? . Two of the points I covered were:

How well does the coin adhere to the roadmap?
What is the status of the features that are already launched?

In my opinion this last month gives a strong indication that the DeepOnion team is very much active and listening to the inputs of the community. And also that they are working to live up to the roadmap and promises in the whitepaper.

Note: If you think the TOR update will involve downloading a new wallet every time TOR makes an updates, this is currently not in the plan. The plan is to keep the integration to the current version, unless any specific need for another update is discovered, so that won’t be a cause for continuous wallet updates.

If you want to find out more about the DeepOnion wallet update feel free to check out this thread in the DeepOnion forum: https://deeponion.org/community/threads/introducing-deeponion-1-5-0-wallet-for-windows-integrated-with-obfs4.27626/.

If you want to find out more about what OBFS4 is and how to set it up I found this thread on the Deeponion forum: https://deeponion.org/community/threads/deeponion-has-integrated-with-obfs4.28106/

Price Movement

As a final topic I would like to look on the price movement of DeepOnion in the last month and what a ride that have been. At the time, when I wrote Part 1, DeepOnion price was at: $3/$ONION (BTC = $14 000). Since then it soared up to a staggering $20/$ONION, as ATH, and has since experienced a correction down to $7/$ONION which is the price as of writing today. It is worth noting that some of these movements have been due to big fluctuations in BitCoin price which had an ATH at $20 000 and is now down at around $10 000.

Still DeepOnion has had a good run with over 100% gain in the last month and this is despite an overall drop in BTC (-30%). The DeepOnion price has now dropped 65% from ATH and it might be a good time to step in if you think BTC has reached the bottom and that this project has merit.

Final Words

Do I have nothing negative to say about this coin?! Nothing that stands out but what bears mention is that the major functions such as the Zero-Knowledge Proof, DeepSend and Private Smart Contracts have not yet been released. These are the functionalities that will act as the base for the multi-layered communications protocol and on which all the native Apps will operate. No one can predict the future whether Deeponion will be able to fulfill on delivering this "privacy platform" and should always be taken into any risk assessment.

Personally I see great potential in the Deeponion project and I am comforted by the fact that they are using tried and tested technology, which in my opinion reduces the risks involved (compared to when developing something entirely new).

Those of you who might think that with the recent releases it might be quiet for a while, and there will be time to step in later, might end up regretting those thoughts. The word is that the DeepOnion Android Wallet release is imminent (I even saw the first transfer done during the last Live Q&A session, held last week) and VoteCentral has been promised to follow in a close second. Following those releases development is said to continue with iOS wallet, Zero-Knowledge integration, the DeepSend feature and Private Smart Contracts. Who knows, in a month or two I might make a Part 3 with further updates.

Lets now think back to the questions that I stated in the beginning of this article

Do I still consider DeepOnion a good investment?
The answer is maybe obvious: Yes!
Since this ended up being a lot more “pro-ONION” than I had initially planned. I had this whole thing set up, with positives and negatives to remain objective by lifting up the issues that I had researched with outdated TOR version and blocked regions. Since these were the only “questionable” points I had found so far, in regards to DeepOnion, I must admit that I was perfectly foiled by the recent Wallet update.

Do I think my arguments still stand up?
I would say yes and even stronger than before, especially regarding verifying the work of an anonymous team and the promise of the whitepaper release. The argumentation in regards to “not having unique technology” was very well addressed in the whitepaper and concurred with my own views. DeepOnion has chosen tried and tested technologies for a reason and are combining these to something new.

Some might think I should change the title to a “biased” DeepOnion review but I can’t really change my conclusions just because it came out very positive for DeepOnion.

This time I won’t apologize this time for the long article but rather say Thank You to all of you that made it all the way here to the bottom and I hope you enjoyed the reading.

For more information on DeepOnion check out:

DeepOnion Homepage
DeepOnion Whitepaper
DeepOnion Community Forum
DeepOnion BCT ANN Thread
Join DeepOnion AirDrop

Disclaimer: I am no financial advisor so you should always do your own research before choosing to invest in any project