One of the aspects of crypto I have always found the most fascinating is the public nature of the blockchain. The ability to track funds shifting around the world is completely unique. Jump onto Etherscan, and within seconds you will know the balance of any wallet.
Of course, there are downsides to this as well, and many a fervent debate occurs within crypto circles (and indeed wider mainstream media) about the proponents and downsides to both the anonymity that crypto offers, but also this publicly trackable ledger that we call the blockchain. Should you really be able to see exactly how much my wallet contains when I send you some ETH?
RAILGUN is a decentralised smart contract project which works amongst this sector – dealing with anonymity and privacy on the blockchain. Today, they have announced the launch of RAILGUN Privacy System 1.0, which they advertise as the first crypto wallet to offer privacy and an anonymity shield, which is built on-chain on Ethereum.
“Imagine, for a moment, if everyone at a pharmacy knew what medicine you were buying, and how often, the moment you purchased it – along with your entire medical purchase history”, their press release states, “Or, if a corporation’s supply chain payments could be seen at any time, by anyone, including competitors. If these transactions were on a blockchain, they would all be public. With RAILGUN’s Privacy System, this problem is solved”.
It’s an intriguing concept, but as we hinted at above, there are lots of interesting questions around this. I interviewed Kieran Mesquita, RAILGUN’s Chief Scientist, to get his thoughts on some things I was wondering on the topic, as well as Ethereum and the world of cryptocurrency at large.
CT: Did you ever consider building RAILGUN on other Layer-1s, or was it always Ethereum?
KM: RAILGUN is already deployed on three chains currently in beta: Ethereum, BSC, and Polygon. The DAO has already established that RAILGUN will be deploying on Metis Layer-2, Solana, and Polkadot as well.
The core contributors to the RAILGUN Privacy Project were very intentional in how they developed RAILGUN. Any smart contract chains with the ability to do alt_bn128 calculations are compatible with the Railgun protocol. EIP196 and EIP197 are the 2 EIPs that added alt_bn128 operations to Ethereum. The current smart contract code is EVM based, but can be ported to other languages.
The goal for RAILGUN isn’t to try and predict where DeFi is going, but rather…