Raze Network - Full Privacy Across Web3
Transact, bridge, mine and connect to dApps across multiple chains, without surveillance
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The first rule to keeping your cryptocurrency safe is is to never ever use the same email address you use for social media accounts to set up your wallets, secondly to use two-factor authentication and then thirdly—if you can help it— to never let others know besides your most trusted family members and friends that you even have cryptocurrency in the first place. Since the blockchain is a public ledger after all, the key to staying as far away from hackers, scammers and annoying spam is to maintain complete anonymity.
True, cryptocurrency was intended from its very inception to be completely anonymous. But “anonymous” here is somewhat of a misnomer. It meant that you could invest in it without needing to fill-up and sign a form like you would do in a bank. But it didn’t mean that your activity could not be seen and tracked which is a worrying thing for good reason. All it takes is for you to unintentionally give away your wallet address online and anyone who stumbles upon it would be able to see your balance and your entire transaction history.
This is the specific problem that Raze Network was developed for, to provide a cross-chain privacy protocol that would make transactions on the blockchain—on ANY blockchain—completely private and anonymous.
How Raze works
To understand how Raze works, we have to first see the scale of its vision. To say that Raze was designed to make transactions on ‘any’ blockchain anonymous simply means it has to be developed with the intention of making ALL transactions on ALL blockchains anonymous, so off the bat you see how this development could really be a big deal.
To achieve this, Raze is building a second-layer decentralized module for the entire DeFi stack. They will have deployments across all of the different layer-1 chains to allow for you to interact with tokens and Dapps on any chain. All of this will be accessed by the user from one single interface, making the process as streamlined as possible.
Now to solve the anonymity problem, Raze has come up with a ‘swappable privacy’ system which allows users to ‘mint’ private versions of any coin which can be redeemed later for the same face value. So Bitcoin can be minted as ‘anonymized Bitcoin’, Ethereum for ‘anonymized Ethereum’ and Cardano for ‘anonymized Cardano’ and so on. While the tokens are in their encrypted, anonymized state, the coins can be used for transactions across any blockchain without publicly revealing the sender or receiver of the transaction, or even the type of coin or the amount involved.
This is made possible by using a cryptographic proof algorithm known as zk-SNARKS or “Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge”. Now this may sound complicated (and it is), but this simply means that it’s a system for passing information without the system knowing what the information is—and without the system being capable of finding out what the information is, even if it wanted to.
How Raze is different from other zero-proof tokens
Raze certainly isn’t the first to use zk-SNARKS. Zcash had been using zero-proof algorithms since 2016 (hence, the ‘Z’ in Zcash) and other coins like Quorum ZSL and Nightfall followed suit. But drawbacks soon became apparent in the form of high gas fees, lengthy verification processes and compromised anonymity as setting up a transaction required a centralized third party node.
To eliminate the need for a trusted third party, Raze uses the privacy protocol Zether on smart contract platforms. Zether features a new zero-proof mechanism aptly named as Σ-Bullets, allowing for smaller proof sizes and much faster verification as it can independently generate proofs without consulting a third party. Zether further allows for interaction with any smart contract and can be used on any chain that uses smart contracts.
Features and Benefits
Raze is on schedule with its roadmap and is currently bridging with DeFi protocols and integrating more customized functions. The summary of its full features are the following:
Private transactions — any token can be transferred on any blockchain with full anonymity
Secret DeFi Bridge — compatibility with any DeFi product means that users can hide their trading history whether it be on Uniswap, AAVE, Compound, or on any Polkadot or Cosmos DeFi ecosystem
Anonymity Mining — mining the native utility token RAZE is also anonymous as well as access to the liquidity pool
RazeVM Integration — privacy functions can be implemented on any open protocol which means that even DeFi projects that have yet to be connected can be easily integrated with, expanding the network further
Interoperability — Substrate network ensures open-source interoperability and decentralization
How to use Raze
Setting up a Raze account is easy! All you need is a public wallet address of the chain you want to use, connect to the RAZE application site and follow the steps. Once your unique Raze address has been created, a user can deposit their BTC, ETH, or any token inside the Raze Vault. From there, the Raze Privacy Contract will mint the same amount of privacy coins on a 1:1 exchange ratio and send the privacy coins to the user’s account.
With the privacy tokens, the user can now transact anonymously with other Raze accounts. In a Raze payment channel, neither the buyer or seller in a transaction has access to any information regarding who they are transacting with, relying instead on a fully ‘trustless’ system to govern and verify the transaction. Even Raze Network does not know anything about the transaction, other than it being valid or not.
After tokens have been transferred, a user can now use the redeem function to return the privacy tokens back to their original state.
RAZE Tokenomics
The RAZE token is not to be confused with the minted “anonymized” version of users’ tokens but is instead the native utility token of the network which is used for governance, exchanged for services on the network, token burning and liquidity reward. The RAZE supply will be capped at 120 million. I encourage you to check out their tokenomics here.
Conclusion
As the name suggests, Raze seems to be at the forefront of clearing away the debris left behind by previous cryptocurrency projects on the road to true privacy and decentralization. Beyond guaranteed anonymity, what is perhaps most exciting about this project is how it’s ‘plug-and-play’ privacy framework allows for easy and universal adoption, creating a massive liquidity pool across all blockchains for much less costs!
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