Overview

What is RAILGUN?

RAILGUN is code that exists on every Ethereum node. It's a privacy system built directly on-chain for Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, and Arbitrum. It uses Zero-Knowledge (ZK) cryptography to enable private use of smart contracts and DeFi, all without leaving the security of the user’s preferred chain. The RAILGUN code has no owner. Interactions on your chain of choice are made private, and cannot be traced using Etherscan, Arbiscan, or any similar resource. Independent wallet providers can then choose to integrate the RAILGUN protocol, head here to select from a list of wallet providers. RAILGUN is 100% non-custodial.

The user experience is similar to using a public wallet like MetaMask to interact with Ethereum/EVM chains, just with the added ability to interact privately.

As RAILGUN is simply on-chain smart contract code, privacy is achieved without the risks of moving to a separate chain. This provides 2 main advantages:

1. Security & Decentralization - No centralized control, no extra validators or bridges, no additional risk by using any EVM chain that Railgun can be deployed on.

2. Full Ecosystem - Rather than an isolated ecosystem on a standalone privacy chain, RAILGUN users have full access to all the economic activity and functions that the chain provides, and are able to benefit from the rich history of existing dApps and builders. RAILGUN does so whilst enabling the option to shield tokens and wallets from the open blockchain, whilst still providing the necessary proofs to the chain in order to transact.

RAILGUN has 2 main components:

1. RAILGUN-Integrated Wallets - EVM wallets built by separate independent community developers through which users can use the RAILGUN protocol. A list can be found here.

2. Developer Tools – includes TypeScript SDKs for building RAILGUN privacy into existing/new wallets or a privacy enabled dApp. Head to the developer guide to start building with RAILGUN.

RAILGUN’s code is verified and publicly viewable, and its repository can be found here.

Benefits and use cases of RAILGUN

Different interactions in the RAILGUN system

As the diagram shows, looking from the outside in, when cryptocurrency is moved into RAILGUN’s smart contract, it appears to have entered a “void”, where tokens and wallets become indistinguishable from one another, despite not being mixed whatsoever within this void. Because of this, all transferring, swapping, lending, borrowing, and dApp calls within the private system increases every user’s anonymity by creating more “noise. These DeFi interactions allow RAILGUN to function more privately than other protocols with a similar amount of tokens and users. Read this article for more on how privacy works in the RAILGUN system.

More rigorous privacy is achieved with RAILGUN with less liquidity and in a shorter timeframe than with other privacy systems. Arbitrary dApp interactions within RAILGUN’s privacy system also incentivizes users to hold their tokens for longer in RAILGUN as there is less reason to move tokens out of RAILGUN’s shield.

Potential use cases:

1. Alpha Protection: Traders who want to keep their alpha secret can trade freely and maintain their hard-fought informational advantages. RAILGUN’s privacy system enables users to trade without running the risk of hard-fought trading strategies and patterns being discovered and ripped off by freeloading actors, who can obtain such data on the open chain by tracing interactions, then running them through analysis software to reverse engineer said strategies, without doing any of the actual work.

2. Compliance with Law: Businesses and professionals must use privacy tools, such as RAILGUN, to make sure that financial data is not leaked when making and storing interactions. Lawyers, doctors, and psychologists, for example, are not allowed to reveal that their clients have paid for advice, and must protect the identity of the person engaging their services, as set out in common law, professional rules of conduct, European and British GDPR, the USA’s HIPAA and other data protection legislation. Other businesses and professionals also have strict laws that apply to them to protect the financial information of their customers & staff. RAILGUN is used to comply with these laws.

3. Private Payroll: The privacy features of RAILGUN are needed for payroll services, when companies pay in cryptocurrency.

4. Censorship Resistance: RAILGUN enables donations to causes by citizens who live in countries with unfriendly or corrupt governments officials and/or banks.

5. Anonymized Analytics: The privacy system counteracts services like Nansen or Etherscan, where notable wallets are labelled or known, meaning that some large investors and their interactions are personally identifiable.

RAILGUN is a revolutionary toolkit and is objectively the most uncompromising and complete privacy solution for DeFi. Private DeFi will enable new business possibilities for the cryptocurrency industry that are not possible on public blockchains. All other privacy solutions have some trade-offs, such as requiring users to trust custodial bridges or trade with fragmented/non-existent liquidity.

Developer Guide

If you're a developer looking for the SDK documentation. You can find it here.