Cryptocurrency
Garbled Circuits 101: What Could They Enable for Blockchain Privacy?
Blockchains were originally designed to be transparent, with every wallet and transaction on public display. Many supporters see this ‘trustlessness’ as a strength, but there are some obvious drawbacks, such as the security risk of having all of your financial activity available on-chain.
We can see this in the rates of illicit activity around blockchain, with bad actors accounting for $39.6bn of transaction volume in 2022.
We are also seeing a growing tactic of frontrunning for personal gain, where users with the technical skills to do so, reorder trades before they are committed to a block. By doing this they can ensure their own trades are always profitable.
These are just two examples of why transparency is often seen as a bug, and it’s also why the search for blockchain privacy is heating up. We are now seeing a flurry of innovation within the ecosystem to push for privacy solutions, arguably the last frontier for blockchain.
Blockchain Privacy Solutions
You may already be familiar with Zero-Knowledge proofs or ZKPs, one of the first blockchain privacy solutions to gain widespread adoption. ZKPs allow data to be shared between two parties without revealing any sensitive information. However, they fall short when handling more complex computations.
In many instances blockchain applications need multiple parties to compute solutions together, known as Multi Party Computation (MPC). This is where Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) came into play. About four years ago, FHE emerged as an elegant solution to solve the MPC problem. FHE enables multiple parties to carry out computations on encrypted data without needing to disclose or know the underlying data points in order to retrieve the end result. However, FHE faces significant scaling issues given its high computing costs.
Garbled Circuits, High-speed, Lightweight Blockchain Privacy
Garbled Circuits – a technology developed by Soda Labs and implemented exclusive by COTI – aims to solve the MPC problem with much lower costs to run and far better performance.
In essence Garbled Circuits can be used to make confidential multi-party computations of varying complexity with any number of participants providing inputs. This makes it suitable for complex applications on blockchain protocols including private smart contracts. However, tweaks to the technology today mean that it is less computationally intensive, giving it the ability to scale.
How do Garbled Circuits work?
The concept of Garbled Circuits actually dates back to the late 80s, when it was proposed as a solution to Yao’s Millionaires’ Problem by famous cryptographer Andrew Yao. Imagine that there are two millionaires, Alice and Bob, who want to know who between the two of them has more money. The problem is that no one wants to reveal how much they have exactly. Instead of revealing the amount of money each of them has, they can solve their dispute with the help of Garbled Circuits.
Alice and Bob each write down their net worth in encrypted text, as a string of letters and numbers. Both of them put this piece of paper into a black box, and after a split second, a piece of paper is ejected with the name of the richer person. In this example, the black box is the Garbled Circuit, a powerful computer program that can perform complex calculations on encrypted data without leaking any information.
Garbled Circuits introduce new levels of confidentiality to Web3, protecting data and metadata to enable confidential payments, private/blind auctions and the secure management of sensitive information on-chain without sacrificing performance. COTI has demonstrated the technology’s effectiveness ahead of its integration with Ethereum-based Layer-2 network, COTI V2, which launched in April.
Web3 Use Cases for Garbled Circuits
As blockchain applications grow more complex, a privacy solution is needed that can handle secure MPC without any limit to the number of inputs. In these instances, Garbled Circuits have huge potential.
Confidential DeFI: Garbled Circuits enable confidential transactions, allowing Decentralized Finance (DeFi) apps to maintain regulatory requirements while solving losses from MEV by encrypting transaction data, shielding them from sandwich bots. Just some of the DeFi use cases of GC include private Automated Market Makers (AMMs), undercollateralized lending, dark pools and hybrid exchanges. These can leverage both centralized and decentralized elements while keeping trade details confidential.
Dynamic Decentralized Identification (DID): Garbled Circuits facilitate identity verification and personal information sharing, calculation, and storage without revealing actual data to other parties, ensuring KYC compliance while maintaining user privacy. For instance, decentralized lenders can now establish someone’s suitability for a loan without the individual exposing their wallet address or personal information. The GC breakthrough preserves privacy whilst fulfilling regulatory requirements.
On-Chain Sensitive Data Management: Garbled Circuits allow for encrypted data storage on-chain, enabling analysis of sensitive information without compromising privacy. Data can be safely shared across sites, preventing companies from scraping and selling it. Some of the applications that become possible include confidential on-chain voting systems and healthcare services. By storing encrypted data on-chain, GC satisfies stringent data protection standards whilst still providing the benefits of blockchain data storage and analysis.
One of the main characteristics of Garbled Circuits is their efficiency. Benchmark tests have shown that Garbled Circuits are much faster, lighter and cost-effective than any other privacy-preserving technology available today. This makes GC highly scalable, ensuring that the technology can grow alongside expanding markets such as Real World Assets (RWA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Confidential Transactions for Payments, Stablecoins and RWA. Garbled Circuits maintains fund flow transparency while encrypting transaction details, ensuring regulatory compliance for payments, stablecoins, and real-world assets (RWA). RWAs include assets like real estate, commodities and securities that require high levels of privacy. GCs ability to ensure privacy, meet regulatory requirements, enhance security, and scale efficiently makes them an ideal choice.
Confidential Machine Learning & AI. Garbled Circuits also enables secure, private interactions with AI and large language models (LLMs), safeguarding data model confidentiality and data source privacy as required by law. GC can be used to enable decentralized and democratic ML model development and opens up new possibilities for privacy-focussed data marketplaces allowing researchers and businesses to work with datasets without exposing sensitive information.
Summary
To summarize, Garbled Circuits are revolutionizing privacy in blockchain applications, offering solutions that cater to various sectors, including DeFi, identity management, sensitive data handling, and AI. With their increased performance and scalability over other privacy solutions like FHE, Garbled Circuits are set to play a pivotal role in the future of Web3.
Authored by: Shafah Ban-Geffen, CEO and CO-Founder of COTI
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Cryptocurrency
Is Ripple (XRP) Gearing up for a Christmas Rally? (Analysts Weigh in)
TL;DR
- Ripple (XRP) fell from $2.50 to under $2 but recovered to $2.25, with analysts eyeing a substantial rally in the coming weeks.
- XRP whales bought 120 million tokens over the past week, reducing supply and potentially setting the stage for a price pump.
Final Push for the Year?
Ripple’s XRP was among the leading cryptocurrencies that were the worst affected amid the latest market correction. Its price tumbled from over $2.50 on December 17 to less than $2 three days later. The bulls managed to recover some ground in the past few days, with XRP currently trading at approximately $2.25 (per CoinGecko’s data). Still, that represents a 10% decline on a weekly scale.
Despite the fluctuations and the recent pullback, many analysts remain optimistic that XRP could experience a substantial rebound in the near future. Crypto Bitlord, an X user with almost 400,000 followers, thinks “the final pump for 2024 is loading.” The market observer predicted a price rally to as high as $12 next month, suggesting that “the rise starts now.”
JAVON MARKS was also among the bulls. They touched upon XRP’s 4-hour chart to envision the confirmation of a “Hidden Bullish Divergence” that could take the valuation to over 2.90 and a subsequent jump to a new all-time high.
For their part, CrediBULL Crypto claimed that “the XRP/BTC chart below looks absolutely fantastic” and “the most bullish-looking chart in the entire space.” As such, the analyst said they will look to open a long position once again for another trade in the following days.
Whales on the Move
The latest correction of the crypto market, which started shortly after the Fed announced another interest rate cut but also hinted at a pause of the policy for next year, seems to have been welcomed by XRP whales.
On December 20, X user Ali Martinez revealed that such large investors have purchased around 80 million tokens in the span of three days. Earlier today (December 24), he claimed that whales have stacked up on an additional 40 million coins.
Such actions reduce the circulating supply of XRP, which could be followed by a price rally (assuming demand stays the same or heads north). Massive whale purchases may also trigger excitement among smaller investors who could also hop on the bandwagon, thus creating further upward pressure on the price.
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Cryptocurrency
Veles Unveils Backtesting Solutions for Crypto Traders
[PRESS RELEASE – Dubai, United Arab Emirates, December 24th, 2024]
Veles, a leader in algorithmic trading solutions, has introduced a sophisticated backtesting toolset tailored for cryptocurrency traders. These tools empower users to evaluate and refine strategies by leveraging advanced technology to uncover market inefficiencies and enhance trading outcomes.
- Custom Strategy Configuration: For parameters to match specific trading goals.
- Comprehensive Historical Data: To conduct tests using minute-level datasets.
- Position Management: Optimization of entries and exits.
- Insightful Analytics: In-depth reports for strategy optimization.
- Advanced Indicators: To analyze market conditions, including volatility and volume.
Veles’ backtesting solutions offer traders the ability to optimize strategies while minimizing risks. The platform integrates with top cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Bybit, and OKX, ensuring seamless connectivity and comprehensive support for dynamic markets.
About Veles
Veles provides advanced tools for cryptocurrency trading automation. With a focus on enhancing efficiency and profitability, Veles equips traders with reliable solutions for navigating market complexities.
More details at veles.finance.
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Cryptocurrency
BYDFi Market Overview: UFD,HYPE and USUAL’s Growth, PENGU’s Stable US$1,800,000,000 Market Cap
[PRESS RELEASE – Mahe, Seychelles, December 24th, 2024]
On December 24, 2024, the BYDFi crypto exchange officially launched new tokens, including PENGU, HYPE, UFD, and USUAL. These are different Memecoins and DeFi tokens, enriching the categories of assets on the platform and giving global users more investment opportunities.
UFD’s Surge, PENGU on Hot List with $1.8B Market Cap
UFD, or Unicorn Fart Dust, is a meme coin in the Solana ecosystem that has been growing with the tag of a “social experiment.” A 54-year-old gold and silver trader was inspired to create his own meme token, UFD, based on Fartcoin, which had a market cap of $500 million. The creation of UFD symbolizes the innovative trend of the cryptocurrency market as well as the openness of the industry towards investors cutting across all age groups.
From GMGN data, on December 19th, UFD market cap has already passed $230 million , the 24-hour price increase was at 434%, and a 24-hour trading volume of $145.4 million.
According to Onchain Lens, one address that bought UFD early on changed $700 into $1.8 million in less than 7 hours. According to Lookonchain, a trader bought 12.98 million UFD tokens for 0.4 SOL two days ago. During the price spike, the trader sold over 80,000 UFD tokens twice, netting $4,500 while holding 12.9 million tokens in their account.
PENGU is the official token created by the Pudgy Penguins project, which contains 8,888 unique cartoon penguin NFTs. Each NFT generates randomly assigned qualities through the use of up to 150 hand-drawn components. These penguins have up to five different features, such as distinctive backgrounds, body shapes, clothes, and accessories.
PENGU is launched on the Solana blockchain in December 2024 with a total of 88,888,888,888 tokens. The overall market cap has crossed $1.88 billion, and the 24-hour trading volume is $360 million, with 62.86 billion tokens in circulation. The project intends to propel Web3 innovation through the Abstract public blockchain and developer incubator, and it has the support of the robust NFT community of Pudgy Penguins. Abstract recently raised $11 million, majorly coming from Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, and hence offers a lot of support towards developing the PENGU ecosystem.
On-Chain Speed and Stable Ecosystem: Dual Innovations of HYPE and USUAL
HYPE is the native token of the decentralized derivatives protocol Hyperliquid and is the core asset of the high-performance L1 platform. With a latency of less than one second and complete transparency in its order book, trading, and settlement, Hyperliquid focuses on totally on-chain operations. The Hyperliquid platform is a rising leader in the DeFi industry, with a total asset value of $2.173 billion, according to DefiLlama data.
HYPE’s price has increased in 1345% since it was launched from $2 to $28.91. The 24-hour trade volume for HYPE has now surpassed $15 billion, according to data by @HyperliquidX, which marks a new record.
USUAL is the native governance token of the Usual protocol. It aims to create a secure and efficient stablecoin ecosystem backed by real-world assets, or RWA. Among its core functions are:
- Governance: Transparency in decentralized governance and community leadership is ensured by allowing holders to take part in crucial protocol decisions like earnings distribution and collateral management.
- Yield: The users can benefit from the RWA investments of the protocol with yields on US Treasury bonds by staking USUAL.
- Stablecoin Ecosystem: supports the main products of the protocol, being USD0, a stablecoin, which RWA supports and USD0++, a variant of liquid staking, and holders can share revenue via management or staking.
It also ties the issuance of USUAL tokens to total value locked, where increases in TVL reduce the token supply, thus constituting a deflationary mechanism that can boost long-term value. As of December 18, USD0 minting was seen reaching a record-breaking 190 million units with the total supply rising beyond 1 billion units netting 136 million units. It can be established that the high level of capital attraction of the Usual procedure is by reaching the Treasury revenue of $5.89 million. The increase of USD0 and USD0++ will enhance TVL by raising USUAL’s scarcity and value appreciation. At the moment of writing, the token’s price is $1.39, up 34.2% over the previous day. At $838,695,117, the trade volume is more than it has been in the past.
Meanwhile, BYDFi has simultaneously launched additional tokens, including FUEL, VANA, SEND, and ARCSOL. Users can visit the BYDFi official website or the BYDFi app to stay updated on the latest market trends and detailed information about these tokens.
About BYDFi
Founded in 2020, BYDFi is considered among the top 10 best crypto exchanges around the world according to Forbes, and trusted by millions of users all over the world. It currently supports more than 600 tokens for spot trading, with options for leverage from 1x to 200x to suit every investment strategy. Besides, BYDFi has also simplified the procedure of buying cryptocurrencies by working with world-class payment service providers like Banxa, Transak,and Mercuryo, enabling its users to purchase coins at a low cost.
In the future, the upcoming “BYDFi Copy Trading” feature will automatically suggest the top traders according to the user’s risk tolerance and account assets. Users can easily activate the copy trading mode using only a tap and replicate professional traders’ strategies. BYDFi aims to provide a world-class crypto trading experience for its users.
Contact BYDFi
For inquiries and support, users can reach them via the following:
Twitter( X ) | LinkedIn | Facebook | Telegram | YouTube
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