Topic: [ANN] TNNL - Privacy layer for Ethereum digital assets based on zkSNARKS (Read 219 times)

We're expecting to launch Q1 2019.  The really hard part is done, we have a working circuit and all of the contract code done.  Now we are developing the client.
We aren't listing a bunch of advisors, and nobody has paid us anything. We're building this because the world needs it, and it needs to be open source, not patented by some big accounting firms.

Satoshi was just one guy (or maybe 3).

Sounds interesting and I agree that you do not sell tokens or ico and only give them to miners. So when can TNNL be launched, is everything ready? I see on your site that the TNNL team only consists of 3 people, is that true?

Our whitepaper has been published: Read it on Github

Also you can learn about the team on our website tnnl.io

It's important to note that we will not be launching via an ICO.  Instead we will release the tnnl client and tnnl will become mineable at that point.  We also plan to quickly hit major exchanges where we will be trading tnnl tokens for other erc20 tokens; those tokens will be shielded in the tnnl system to provide a larger anonymity set.

The start is not bad. The principle was shown on the fingers, but you must submit a white paper with a description of the project, the site, the project team.

What is tnnl

tnnl is a privacy layer for all standards-compliant fungible tokens that exist on the Ethereum network. tnnl is derived from Zcash. In the same manner that Zcash uses zk-SNARKs to shield a practically arbitrary amount of a single basecoin, tnnl uses zk-SNARKs to shield practically arbitrary amounts of an arbitrary amount of basecoins.

How does it work?

Let's say Alice wants to send an amount N of OmiseGO to Bob privately…



SHIELDING TRANSACTIONS
In order to transition from a transparent system to a private system, a shielding transaction is required. First, Alice broadcasts a transaction to the OMG contract, assigning the amount N (or greater) to her account on the tnnl contract. Then, she broadcasts a shielding transaction, in which notes are appended to a note commitment tree.



PRIVATE TRANSACTIONS
Now that the amount N of OMG exists in the private system, a private transaction can occur! Alice creates a transaction that creates new notes that give Bob the amount N and it is routed through an onion router that preserves Alice's sender privacy, since normally she would have to pay for the gas (the execution cost) in Ether, which lacks privacy.



DESHIELDING TRANSACTIONS
Bob, if he so chooses to make the amount N of OMG public so as to use within the OmiseGO ecosystem, creates a transaction that is also routed via the same onion routing mechanism.

Whitepaper: The Darkpaper was released at Devcon4. Read the darkpaper on github.

FAQ
Q: How much gas does a transaction use?
A: Due to the current gas prices, a tnnl transaction costs about 1.45M gas. There is an EIP (1108) that should help reduce this cost.

Q: There are a few things in the procotol specification that are not instantiated. What are the these exact values?
A: Not all values have been decided on since implementation is not yet fully complete. We are open to suggestions from the community for much of these, so if you see a CONST or value not explicitly instantiated that does not yet have an existing issue, please open an issue to start a discusssion on the possible values it could be given.

Q: Does 'tnnl' stand for anything?
A: Not really, no. It's a decent mispelling of 'tunnel' that we were able to get a domain for. wink

Q: Will there be an ICO?
A: No. TNL — which is how we refer to the network token (with a defensive acronym of 'tnnl Network Laborage') — will be primarily distributed via a mining process. We're not fans of ICOs.

Q: Are there any hardware/software requirements?
A: Yes, but the exact specifications of the baseline requirements are to be determined as implementation progresses. Currently, it is estimated that 4GB of RAM is required for generating proofs. This proof generation program can be run inside a Docker container.

Q: Does tnnl suffer form the same problem as Zcash, where a trusted setup is required?
A: Unfortunately, yes. We will have to go through our own key generation ceremony since out circuit differs from Zcash's. It should be a blast.

Q: When will the code be made public?
A: There needs to be some cleanup and documentation before our code can be made public (there's some gross C++, and we recognize that some of our code is not yet comprehensible to mortals). That being said, we're frantically working on this to get this public ASAP, so other open-source developers can contribute.