Polkadot Privacy Project Manta Network Eyes Crypto’s Largest Trusted Setup Ever

From burning computers to using radioactive dust from Chernobyl, crypto is getting another reliable setup. This time it’s the biggest one.

P0xeidon Labs, Manta Network’s development team, today announced a trusted setup ceremony that will be used to launch the private payment app.

MantaPay allows users to privately send crypto across others Polka dot– and Kusama-based networks using zkSNARK technology. Kusama is akin to a testbed for all things Polkadot.

The ceremony is expected to last up to two weeks and will have around 5,000 participants from as many as 133 countries, making it the largest and most distributed trusted setup in Web3’s history, according to Manta Network.

Trusted setups are unique events in crypto and are performed to ensure that a newly launched privacy network can never be compromised. Members of a setup randomly generate cryptographic rules for a network (public parameters) and sometimes even destroy the machine on which these rules were created.

“We are witnessing an overwhelming amount of interest in participating in our trusted setup – approximately 5,000 registrations so far. I think it indicates how critical privacy is to Web3, and the ecosystem recognizes that,” Kenny Li, co-founder and COO of Manta Network, told Decrypt.

Manta Network, which is developing its own layer-1 blockchain using Polkadot’s Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS) consensus model, says it is building the future of Web3 with privacy, allowing users to conduct private transactions between any parallel chain of assets .

As explained by the team, MantaPay will not have its own native token. However, there are plans to launch one for the Manta Network.

Dispose of Manta Network’s “Toxic Waste”

Manta Network’s trusted setup will see participants in the ceremony – known as provers and verifiers – generate Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), which Manta Network says is at the heart of its privacy-preserving functionality. This guarantees the validity of transactions without posting private information to the blockchain.

The prover and verifier will perform a complex computation, committing to a “shared secret” that will be used to generate public parameters. A shared secret is a set of verified private keys received by the prover and the verifier.

The computation of the keys produces what cryptographers call “toxic waste” that must be discarded.

“Poisoned waste can be described as secret numbers that will allow someone to produce fake ZKPs. Anyone who knows these numbers can produce tokens out of thin air in our protocol,” Todd, a pseudonymous cryptographer at P0xeidon Labs, told Decrypt.

According to them, “the reason for a reliable setup ceremony is to split the waste apart into thousands of pieces and give each participant a chip. If you destroy your chip, an attacker can never figure out the toxic waste.”

Reliable setups

Some notable examples of trusted setups in the blockchain space include Zcash (ZEC) in 2016. This was the first practical implementation of a zero-knowledge proof system, with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden among those who helped launch the privacy coin.

Aleo, another project developing privacy tools for the web, had about 1,000 contributors for the ceremony in 2021.

US-sanctioned Ethereum mixing service Tornado Cash is considered to have performed the largest trusted setup to date. The ceremony ended with 1,114 participants helping to launch the platform in 2020.

As Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said earlier this year, “to the extent that trusted setup ceremonies are necessary, it’s important to remember that not all trusted setups are created equal. 176 participants is better than 6, and 2,000 would be even better.” »

As the Manta Network prepares to set a new record for reliable setups, the team behind the project emphasized that this was made possible thanks to the low requirement for participation.

“The criteria are very low, we have no hardware requirements because with ZKP it is hardware agnostic. We support major operating systems including Ubuntu Linux, Apple and Windows OS,” Li told Decrypt.

According to Li, as long as someone can follow the ceremony’s instructions, it is very easy to participate.

“The registration process is a few steps and if you get through it, you can also complete the contribution phase once it starts,” he added.

Privacy as a core value

User privacy remains key to Manta, with an anonymous participant in the setup saying that “Web3 is the frontline of new technology and privacy is critical to building that infrastructure. I’m concerned about the protection of personal data, especially financial information. The trusted setup allows me contribute to a future I believe in.”

Manta Network’s COO also emphasized that there are no financial incentives for the participants in the trusted setup ceremony – apart from earning a non-fungible token (NFT) proving they have contributed and a Discord title in Manta’s community channel.

This makes Manta Network’s trusted setup a true community effort.

“Privacy is not just about keeping transactions secret; rather, it’s about your entire identity on the chain: every application you interact with, every wallet you interact with, every bit of data you record on the blockchain is permanent and publicly available, Li said. Decrypt. “Without privacy solutions, blockchain becomes a massive surveillance tool.”