Polkadot Privacy Project Manta Network Seeks Largest Trusted Setup Ever in Crypto

Another reliable system for crypto is being developed, and it involves everything from blowtorching computers to employing radioactive dust from Chernobyl. This is the biggest one so far. Manta Network’s development team, P0xeidon Labs, has revealed that they would be using a trusted setup ceremony to introduce their private payments app.

Using zkSNARK technology, users of MantaPay will be able to move cryptocurrency between networks based on Polkadot and Kusama anonymously. Like a launching pad for Polkadot products, Kusama provides a testnet to try out new innovations.

According to Manta Network, there will be around 5,000 attendees from as many as 133 countries, and the event will extend for up to two weeks, making it the biggest and most distributed trusted setup in Web3’s history.

In crypto, trusted setups are one-off activities carried out to guarantee the invulnerability of a brand-new privacy network. Members of the setup build the network’s cryptographic rules (public parameters) at random and may even destroy the machine used to generate them.

Kenny Li, co-founder, and COO at Manta Network stated:

“We’re witnessing an overwhelming amount of interest in participation in our trusted setup—about 5,000 registrations so far. I think it indicates just how critical privacy is for Web3, and the ecosystem is recognizing that.”

Using Polkadot’s Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS) consensus architecture, Manta Network is creating a layer-1 blockchain that will let users perform private transactions across any parallel chain of assets.

A team member clarified that MantaPay would not have its own token. There are, however, preparations being made to introduce one to the Manta Network. Participants in the ceremony, known as provers and verifiers, will use Manta Network’s trusted infrastructure to produce Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), which are essential to Manta Network’s claimed ability to preserve user anonymity. In this way, transactions may be validated without having to expose sensitive data to the public blockchain.

A complex computation will be carried out between the prover and verifier, with each party agreeing to keep a “shared secret” that will be utilized to construct the visible parameters. When a prover and a verifier exchange private keys, they create a shared secret.

In the process of keys computation, cryptographers generate what they term “toxic waste,” which must be disposed of.

Todd, a pseudonymous cryptographer at P0xeidon Labs stated:

“Toxic waste could be described as secret numbers that would allow someone to produce fake ZKPs. Anyone who knows those numbers can produce tokens out of thin air in our protocol.”

According to them:

“The reason for a trusted setup ceremony is to break that waste apart into thousands of pieces and give each participant a piece. If you destroy your piece then an attacker can never figure out the toxic waste.”

Trusted Setups

In 2016, Zcash (ZEC) stood out as one of the most trusted setups in the blockchain sector. Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, was instrumental in the development of the privacy coin since it was the first practical implementation of a zero-knowledge proving mechanism.

In 2021, almost a thousand people contributed to Aleo, another project working on web privacy solutions. Until now, the biggest trusted setup has been performed by Tornado Cash, a U.S.-approved Ethereum mixing service. A total of 1,114 people attended the event, all of whom were instrumental in the platform’s 2020 debut.

As Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, stated earlier this year:

“To the extent that trusted setup ceremonies are necessary, it is important to remember that not all trusted setups are created equal. 176 participants is better than 6, and 2,000 would be even better.”

The developers of Manta Network have noted that the minimal criterion for participation is a key factor in the project’s readiness to break the current record for trustworthy installations.

Li stated:

“The criteria is very low, we have no hardware requirements because with ZKP, it is hardware agnostic. We support major operating systems including Ubuntu Linux, Apple, and Windows OS.”

Li claims that anybody may take part in the event if they pay attention to and follow the directions given.

Li added:

“The registration process is a few steps, and if you can get through that you can also complete the contribution phase once it starts.”

One participant in the setup, who wished to remain anonymous, said that user anonymity is still highly valued by Manta “Web3 is the frontier of new technology and privacy is critical to building that infrastructure. I’m concerned about the protection of personal data, especially financial information. The trusted setup allows me to contribute to a future that I believe in.”

The chief operating officer of the Manta Network emphasized that, except for a non-fungible token (NFT) as proof of their contribution and a Discord title in the Manta community channel, participants in the trusted setup ceremony get no monetary compensation. This means that building Manta Network’s trusted setup was a community effort.

Li elaborated further:

“Privacy isn’t just about keeping transactions secret; rather, it’s about your entire on-chain identity: every application you interact with, every wallet you interact with, any piece of data that you record on the blockchain is permanent and publicly available. Without privacy solutions, blockchain becomes a massive surveillance tool.”