Every DeFi transaction you make is fully public, whether you like it or not.
Your wallet, your balances, your trades are all visible for anyone to look you up on Etherscan and judge you. Most of us have just accepted that as normal. We shouldn't have to.
Alan is a privacy researcher and long time contributor to Railgun. In a new episode of The Edge Podcast, he walks through how Railgun works, what he calls “the incognito mode for Ethereum” and why it's fundamentally different from Zcash.
Zcash shields ZEC, but Railgun shields every other asset: ETH, tokenized BTC, USDC, DAI, USDT, USDe, and then it lets you use any DeFi app privately from within your shielded balance. Morpho vaults, Uniswap swaps, Hyperliquid deposits — all of it, done privately via Railgun.
A few things worth knowing that really surprised us this episode:
Only 0.02% of DeFi transactions are private today. The opportunity ahead is enormous. Alan breaks down why that number is so low and what it will take for privacy to become a default part of how people use DeFi.
Railgun is not a mixer. It's not Tornado Cash. It's a private address standard, more like a safe where you put your assets and transact from within, with zero knowledge proofs proving you have the right to spend without revealing what you hold or where it goes.
Privacy should live at the wallet level, not the app level. Alan makes a compelling case for why making DeFi protocols themselves private would actually destroy the transparency that makes DeFi trustworthy, and why the right place for privacy is at the wallet, not the protocol.
The EF is building with Railgun, not competing with it. Kohaku, the Ethereum Foundation's privacy wallet SDK, integrates Railgun smart contracts. Alan explains the collaborative relationship and why the EF competing with DeFi protocols would be catastrophic for Ethereum.
Listen to the full interview on the latest Edge Podcast!
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🔗 Guest Links 🔗
► Railgun website: railgun.org
► Railgun on X: x.com/RAILGUN_Project
► Anon Inc wallet: anon.inc
► Railgun on X: x.com/tsu_kareta
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DISCLAIMER: Nothing said on The Edge Podcast is a recommendation to buy or sell tokens or securities. This content is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing shared here is financial advice. Any views expressed by hosts or guests on the show are solely their opinions. Always do your own research. DeFi Dad, Nomatic, and guests may have positions in the assets or other matters discussed in this podcast.
