January 11, 2021 - RAILGUN project channel started.
Introducing Railgun, an upcoming privacy and anonymity system built directly on Ethereum.
Users will be able to deposit ETH, USDC, renBTC, renZEC, and other tokens to become anonymous and to take actions in private.
Thanks to the power of zero-knowledge proofs, users will be able to transfer these assets to each other without revealing amounts or identities.
Users will also be able to interact directly with existing DeFi applications, swapping, lending, borrowing, and interacting with each other.
By being able to utilise assets within Railgun, users are able to invisibly keep their assets there long-term. This is what really creates privacy.
This all contributes to a larger and more noisy anonymity pool: One that will also be incentivised to grow and be noisy.
All of this built straight on Ethereum. No custom chain. No side-chain. No L2. Just pure Ethereum goodness.
Users will be able to deposit ETH, USDC, renBTC, renZEC, and other tokens to become anonymous and to take actions in private.
Thanks to the power of zero-knowledge proofs, users will be able to transfer these assets to each other without revealing amounts or identities.
Users will also be able to interact directly with existing DeFi applications, swapping, lending, borrowing, and interacting with each other.
By being able to utilise assets within Railgun, users are able to invisibly keep their assets there long-term. This is what really creates privacy.
This all contributes to a larger and more noisy anonymity pool: One that will also be incentivised to grow and be noisy.
All of this built straight on Ethereum. No custom chain. No side-chain. No L2. Just pure Ethereum goodness.
:RAILGUN PROJECT:
With recent advances in zkSTARKs the contributors to the Railgun Project are investigating and testing the use of SNARKs and STARKs. They are developing both systems in parallel.
SNARKs are more efficient in verifier cost and proof size which are the key metrics for use in Ethereum smart contracts; leading to the lower gas cost estimate.
If the tradeoffs on verifier cost and proof size prove to be minor, developers may elect to use STARKs in anticipation of an 'Eth 3.0' quantum secure upgrade in the far future, but we don't anticipate they will provide much benefit currently due to Ethereum not being Quantum Secure and the availability of multi-party setup ceremonies such as Perpetual Powers of Tau.
Perpetual Powers of Tau, linked below, makes insignificant the major risks formerly ascribed to the "Trusted Setup issue." Please see the external link below for more details.
Perpetual Powers of Tau: https://github.com/weijiekoh/perpetualpowersoftau/
With recent advances in zkSTARKs the contributors to the Railgun Project are investigating and testing the use of SNARKs and STARKs. They are developing both systems in parallel.
SNARKs are more efficient in verifier cost and proof size which are the key metrics for use in Ethereum smart contracts; leading to the lower gas cost estimate.
If the tradeoffs on verifier cost and proof size prove to be minor, developers may elect to use STARKs in anticipation of an 'Eth 3.0' quantum secure upgrade in the far future, but we don't anticipate they will provide much benefit currently due to Ethereum not being Quantum Secure and the availability of multi-party setup ceremonies such as Perpetual Powers of Tau.
Perpetual Powers of Tau, linked below, makes insignificant the major risks formerly ascribed to the "Trusted Setup issue." Please see the external link below for more details.
Perpetual Powers of Tau: https://github.com/weijiekoh/perpetualpowersoftau/
: RAILGUN PROJECT :
Traditional hash functions like SHA256 and Keccak256 are unacceptably inefficient to compute within zero-knowledge circuits and so project researchers dismissed them for use in RAILGUN. They considered 2 SNARK-friendly hash functions: MiMC Sponge (Feistel variant) and Poseidon (binary tree t=3 and quinary tree t=6 for 128bits of security). Both MiMC and Poseidon offer orders of magnitude better computational efficiency over SHA256 and Keccak within SNARK circuits making them suitable for our use-case. Poseidon offers lower gas costs, higher efficiency in SNARKs, and is generally understood to provide greater cryptographic security than MiMC. We tentatively chose t=3 over t=6 as it results in lower gas costs while only marginally increasing SNARK circuit complexity.
Traditional hash functions like SHA256 and Keccak256 are unacceptably inefficient to compute within zero-knowledge circuits and so project researchers dismissed them for use in RAILGUN. They considered 2 SNARK-friendly hash functions: MiMC Sponge (Feistel variant) and Poseidon (binary tree t=3 and quinary tree t=6 for 128bits of security). Both MiMC and Poseidon offer orders of magnitude better computational efficiency over SHA256 and Keccak within SNARK circuits making them suitable for our use-case. Poseidon offers lower gas costs, higher efficiency in SNARKs, and is generally understood to provide greater cryptographic security than MiMC. We tentatively chose t=3 over t=6 as it results in lower gas costs while only marginally increasing SNARK circuit complexity.
RAILGUN privacy does not need you to install any new program nor own any new coin. All you need is ETH. It operates on Ethereum purely as a smart contract. Any DApp or wallet can integrate RAILGUN, and contributors will be releasing developer tools to help existing projects add RAILGUN privacy as a feature.
: RAILGUN PROJECT :
Railgun is a privacy smart contract, custom-built for you to privately trade through a dex, stake, farm, or lend.
You do not need to use a layer 2. You don't need a wallet app. You don't even need to use a special coin. You can use Railgun even only with ETH or USDC, and it's all on-chain with full Ethereum security.
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: Functions :
Railgun includes a number of transaction types or methods of interacting with private assets.
ADD transfers assets from a public address into RAILGUN. This action doesn’t hide the sender or amount because it originates from outside RAILGUN, but it is the first step to creating privacy.
REMOVE transfers assets from within RAILGUN to a public address. This doesn’t hide the receiver or amount as it leaves RAILGUN.
SPLIT transactions are transactions that stay completely within RAILGUN. Senders, receivers, and amounts are all hidden.
ADAPT is a special composition of REMOVE and ADD. It uses an ephemeral key pair allowing users to interact with other contracts/DeFi. Amounts are necessarily revealed to interact with the external contracts, however the sender/receiver are hidden preserving overall privacy.
SWAP atomically exchanges assets between users, hiding amounts, type of assets, and owners.
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Railgun is a privacy smart contract, custom-built for you to privately trade through a dex, stake, farm, or lend.
You do not need to use a layer 2. You don't need a wallet app. You don't even need to use a special coin. You can use Railgun even only with ETH or USDC, and it's all on-chain with full Ethereum security.
---
: Functions :
Railgun includes a number of transaction types or methods of interacting with private assets.
ADD transfers assets from a public address into RAILGUN. This action doesn’t hide the sender or amount because it originates from outside RAILGUN, but it is the first step to creating privacy.
REMOVE transfers assets from within RAILGUN to a public address. This doesn’t hide the receiver or amount as it leaves RAILGUN.
SPLIT transactions are transactions that stay completely within RAILGUN. Senders, receivers, and amounts are all hidden.
ADAPT is a special composition of REMOVE and ADD. It uses an ephemeral key pair allowing users to interact with other contracts/DeFi. Amounts are necessarily revealed to interact with the external contracts, however the sender/receiver are hidden preserving overall privacy.
SWAP atomically exchanges assets between users, hiding amounts, type of assets, and owners.
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