Railgun ($RAIL), is a privacy focused crypto, and it has just received a significant endorsement from none other than Vitalik Buterin, who transferred 100 ETH to the platform, and has publicly announced he has been engaging with the platform’s protocol for the past six months.
At the core of Railgun's recent ascent is its innovative privacy pools protocol. This protocol enables users to showcase regulatory compliance without exposing their entire transaction history. A huge and benefit which aligns with Buterin's vision of a more privacy-centric yet practical blockchain ecosystem.
Railgun boasts two key advantages in achieving privacy and anonymity:
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Enhanced Anonymity Pool: The implementation on the mainnet increases the size and noise of the anonymity pool, meaning finding correlations between transactions become much more challenging, enhancing user privacy.
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Asset Preservation: Users can retain their assets in their original form within Railgun, facilitating private transactions and storage. This reduces incentives for external transfers.
Despite the recent accolades though, Railgun has also faced criticism as well. The Lazarus Group, allegedly linked to the North Korean government, reportedly employs Railgun for laundering stolen funds. Eliptic's January 2023 report, which you can see below, suggests that the Lazarus Group transitioned to Railgun following US Treasury sanctions against Tornado Cash. Show Less
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