Alice acquires a treasure map drawn by pirate
Jack Sparrow. Understanding that some pirates
may be untrustworthy, Alice digs up the treasure
and moves it to a different chest in another
location. She copies the map and updates it with a
new ‘X marks the spot’, crossing out the previous
one and discarding the old map. Alice loses her
new map to Bob in a game of chance. Bob,
suspecting that Alice may have kept a copy of the
map, moves the treasure, makes a copy of the map
himself and updates it with a new ‘X’, again
discarding the original. He later uses the new map
as payment for Catherine. In such fashion, the map
and the location of the treasure change hands
many times over. However, if care is taken when
passing each map on, then there is no evidence
for the identity of any of the previous owners. The
only thing we know for sure is that the treasure and
the first map once belonged to Jack Sparrow.
Teleport uses packages called telepods to send all
the information required to make a transaction to
the desired recipient, over a secure connection
outside of the blockchain. Telepods are cloned by
the recipient to prevent double spending, and sent
to the next recipient when desired – or else emptied onto a previously-used account on the blockchain again. The contents of the telepod are therefore recorded on the blockchain at the point of cloning. However, if a completely new address is used every time, there is no way to know who has held the telepod over the course of its lifespan. The only thing that may conceivably be inferred is the original creator of the telepod.