Nocturn宣布停摆，为何隐私项目的征途如此艰难？
Original author: Haotian (X: @tme l0 211)
Editors note:On January 23, Nocturne, a privacy protocol invested by Vitalik Buterin, posted on the X platform that it would close Nocturne V1 and shift to application development.Why are privacy projects so ill-fated? Who can take on the encryption holy grail of the privacy circuit? In this regard, encryption analyst Haotian published an article on the X platform explaining the possible reasons for the implementation of the privacy project. Odaily summarized it as follows:
After three months, @nocturne_xyz, the privacy infra project that @VitalikButerin participated in, announced that it has been suspended, and the team will change direction and invest in other new products.After Tornado was punished and privacy coins were delisted from exchanges, we originally thought that privacy projects were expected to emerge in the on-chain environment, but now it seems that they are still too optimistic.Why, without going into details, let’s briefly comment on the possible reasons.
1) In a context where mainstream society still finds it difficult to rationally accept decentralized products such as public chains, digital wallets, and decentralized exchanges, decentralization should be embedded with a layer of privacy application scenarios. , it’s hard not to be the hardest hit area for compliance and scrutiny.
In this context, privacy projects will be regarded as accomplices of illegal activities such as terrorist financing and money laundering, and will receive key attention. Especially in countries with strong supervision of Crypto, they can easily be regarded as hostile existences. Based on this background, are those VC-driven projects strong enough to withstand government scrutiny? There is a high probability that the team will not be able to bear the pressure and give up.
2) Current privacy projects will build an independent black box environment. Users can transfer assets to the black box, and then perform token obfuscation through the Stealth address and Commitment Tree, ZK, etc. in the black box. Usually the size of the black box pool is The larger it is, the more users there are, and the more mature the conditions for privacy construction are. However, the way this kind of scheme handles compliance issues is usually,Methods such as blacklist screening and proof of innocence make it easy to solve the problem of deposits, but if there is any involvement with the stolen money link after the withdrawal, it will cause great trouble.
3) The key is that in order to switch the asset trading environment of this underlying architecture, commonly used privacy solutions are to build a set of private transaction mechanisms, and then the user must first deposit to the privacy environment before completing a series of subsequent operations. This requires the platform to bear the technical challenge of screening all possible illegal transactions on the one hand, and on the other hand it has to face the operational pressure of slow user development and difficulty in expanding the capital pool. Not only do we have to keep a sharp sword hanging over our heads to prevent any mistakes from being investigated and punished by regulators, but we also have to explain to the majority of users the fairness and impartiality of the platform (resistance to censorship). The latter will be even more difficult at this stage.
Regarding this issue, I exchanged opinions with Mr. Madao, who also belongs to the privacy track @ZKTNetwork, and we both agreed that a rigorous privacy product will be very complicated in the practical environment, and there is also the possibility that some privacy teams will choose to jump off the road due to RD pressure. ;
4) Nocturne said in the statement that layer 2 and AA account abstraction must occur before privacy application scenarios. Many people dont realize why, because layer 2 and AA are the basic infra of Mass Adoption implementation. The underlying meaning of this sentence is,Before the arrival of large-scale application scenarios, solutions to privacy problems are more likely to become accomplices of evildoers rather than solving real privacy needs.The logic of this sentence is not difficult to understand. After all, users in the existing market value more the financial attributes of industry DApp applications, and privacy issues are not the primary issue.
5) In my opinion, the compliance issues that privacy projects must solve must precede the privacy issues themselves, that is, there must be a comprehensive strategy to block the circulation of illegal assets first, and on this basis, we can then talk about privacy issues on the user demand side. . After the population of the layer 2 market expands on a large scale, the layer 3 application environment built on layer 2 will have a privacy solution that is highly recognized by both regulatory authorities and market users. After all, in the application environment, supervision is better penetrated, funds are better isolated, and users are better managed. By then, privacy applications will become an optional entry point for large-scale users to connect to the on-chain environment, and user preferences in the mainstream market will drive privacy DApps market is growing.
Rather than expecting privacy to bring Mass Adoption, is it more realistic to promote universal privacy after Mass Adoption?
In short, the privacy trading track essentially also has a certain degree of legitimacy traction. Under various factors at this stage, the strategic advancement of compliance > privacy can continue to be implemented.Who can take up the holy grail of encryption in the privacy field is destined to be a difficult journey.
Note: The privacy track is a niche and sensitive field. Will the other project @Railway mentioned by Vitalik be affected?
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