Manta

MantaPay is a private payment system on the blockchain that is still in development. It is intended to be launched on the Calamari network for private parachain transactions. It can be used with a compatible Polkadot wallet and supports ERC20 tokens.

The team behind Manta has developed the Dolphin testnet, which allows users to test and experiment with protocols before they go live on the Calamari and Manta networks. It can be used by connecting to the Polkadot.js wallet, and its most recent version is incentivized, which qualifies users for an airdrop.

The network's governance token is called $MANTA, and its initial coin offering (ICO) took place in November 2021. The ICO was on Tokensoft, with 80,000,000 of the 1,000,000,000 tokens available to the public. Holders of the token can propose improvements for the network, vote on proposals related to the network, and express opinions related to the progress and direction of the Manta protocol.

Manta Network, also known as Manta, is a privacy protocol for decentralized finance (DeFi) and also acts as a privacy hub for Web3.It is built on Substrate and uses Polkadot's cross-consensus messaging (XCM) mechanism. According to the company's whitepaper, Manta Network is being developed to consist of a multi-asset decentralized anonymous payment scheme and an automated market maker (AMM) based decentralized anonymous exchange scheme.

The Manta Network is being built for on-chain privacy for Web3, DeFi, non-fungible tokens, gamefis, and other emerging blockchain technologies. It is intended to enable privacy for any parachain asset existing in the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystem. Manta's use of zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) allows the aforementioned cryptocurrency assets to be privatized.

One of the features of Manta is its interoperability, which is due to the utilization of Polkadot's cross-consensus mechanism, which allows Manta to communicate with other layer-1 decentralized networks that are within the Polkadot ecosystem. Updates and features are often released on Manta's canary network, Calamari, which exists on the Kusama network.

MantaPay is a private payment system on the blockchain that is still in development. It is intended to be launched on the Calamari network for private parachain transactions. It can be used with a compatible Polkadot wallet and supports ERC20 tokens.

The team behind Manta has developed the Dolphin testnet, which allows users to test and experiment with protocols before they go live on the Calamari and Manta networks. It can be used by connecting to the Polkadot.js wallet and its most recent version is incentivized, which qualifies users for an airdrop.

The network's governance token is called $MANTA and its initial coin offering (ICO) took place in November 2021. The ICO was on Tokensoft with 80,000,000 of the 1,000,000,000 tokens available to the public. Holders of the token can propose improvements for the network, vote on proposals related to the network, and express opinions related to the progress and direction of the Manta protocol.

Manta Network is focused on building a better Web 3.0 with privacy guarantees designed from the first principle: applying cutting-edge cryptographic constructions such as zkSNARKs to deliver end-to-end privacy guarantees for blockchain applications. The project delivers this guarantee while prioritizing interoperability, ease-of-use, high performance and auditability. What this translates into for the user is on-chain privacy in transacting and swapping any parachain assets. This means that users are able to privatize parachain assets like DOT into private DOT, and privately swap for other parachain assets or privately send to other wallet addresses.

The problem we see today is that blockchain lacks privacy, interoperability, and usability, which leads to many other problems. That's why we are building the Manta Network, a private protocol for the DeFi stack, with decentralized exchange that preserves privacy, as our first use case. We are building it as a Tier 1 solution, which means that privacy will exist in the underlying architecture, not as a feature on top of another blockchain. By using Substrate, we can take advantage of the functional ecosystem that Polkadot offers.

"We believe that one of the biggest problems that needs to be solved exists in decentralized exchanges," said Shumo Chu, CEO and co-founder of Manta Network, in an email.

"Volume on decentralized exchanges is high and growing, but DEXs are also a hotbed of advanced opportunities because of the transparent nature of blockchain. Someone can see your transaction before it's recorded and validated, and make the same transaction with a higher fee to get priority and pass that transaction before you do."

According to the survey, nearly three-quarters of the 404 respondents (73.2%) "either hesitated or completely avoided making a transaction in the past because they were worried about the privacy implications of the transaction."

In addition, 84% of respondents expressed concern that their wallet addresses were linked to their real identity. Part of this concern was due to the fact that the nature of blockchains allows people to see address balances.

In fact, more than 90% of respondents said they looked up someone's wallet address to see that person's assets and/or transactions.

The survey adds weight to the notion that privacy is a central issue in the cryptocurrency space, and the Manta Network is one of many different projects in the DeFi space working to improve privacy functionality.

Why privacy matters

The implications for transparent transactions are not limited to someone knowing how much money is in an address. It can have tangible downstream effects, given that information is power.

In traditional finance, if you want to view your bank account information (including transactions and total cash), you must prove that you own the account. No one else has the right to view your information without your consent.

Blockchain is different - anyone who knows your wallet address can view your transactions, track your transactions, and see all your assets

The lack of privacy leads to a host of other problems that arise when scaling blockchain options. Automated monitoring and parsing leads to unauthorized data collection, opening up potential opportunities for blackmail. In corporate use cases, trade secrets can be exposed by tracking transactions in the chain.

In decentralized exchanges, this transparency opens up advanced opportunities. People take extra steps, which increases friction in use, just to make transactions more confusing.

The availability of privacy products is a secondary concern for DEX, which is one of the reasons the Manta Network should operate on a plug and play basis.

The Manta Network aims to strengthen privacy in DeFi, partly by obfuscating wallet addresses, but with the overall goal of allowing users to make transactions and share privacy. Parachain in the Polkadot ecosystem , Manta Network's first major project is a privacy-preserving automated market maker (AMM) DEX called MantaSwap.

The Manta Network is working on implementing ZkSNARK at the blockchain level. ZkSNARK is a cryptographic method that allows two objects to verify information with each other without having to share the underlying data associated with it.

Think of it in the context of logging into a website, for example. The site verifies who you are without sharing your password, geolocation data, or other information that could be used to get more information about yourself that you don't know you can give up.

Using Manta ZkSNARKS can ensure the privacy of your transactions and identity.

While you can still track your own transactions, no one else can. By taking this and applying it interoperably (via Polkadot), we can provide a ready solution for the entire ecosystem in the future

Right now, however, the team is focused on improving usability, given that their goal is to create a "plug and play" solution. In addition, they are working on transparency of both the code itself and the process. In terms of usability, we also want to focus on implementation security, which takes time.

The Manta Network, which was previously the winner of a Web 3.0 Foundation grant, closed a $1.1 million funding round led by Polychain Capital to create MantaSwap.

"Manta Network brings together an experienced team to address the critical and growing privacy challenges of blockchain," said Ben Pershick, a partner at Polychain, in a statement. "Its unique approach to building Polkadot's parachain allows them to offer plug-and-play privacy for a variety of uses and projects, starting with their own privacy-preserving DEX."

The funding will give the Manta Network a boost. The team is currently finalizing a prototype for submission to the Web3 Foundation. By the end of the first quarter, the company will deliver the first version of its test network. Future releases of the test network will introduce other assets as well as sharing features.

"Our goal is to launch the core network by the end of the year, but we recognize the importance of having the security aspects of our network thoroughly tested and considered before we decide to launch the core network," Chu said.

Zero-knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) is a powerful cryptographic construction that protect your privacy on chain-purely from the first principle. Unlike some other technologies (i.e. Trusted Execution Environment, which need to trust the hardware vendor), ZKP is purely based on mathematics principles. By using ZKP technology, we are able to scale out privacy in a hardware-agnostic and more decentralized (you don’t need to have a specialized hardware to run manta nodes) manner in the Web 3 world.

Manta Network isn’t building a privacy token. Instead, it is building a privacy utility. What this means is that the network is designed to enable the privatization of other cryptoassets, starting with the cryptoassets within the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.

Using Polkadot cross-consensus messaging (XCM) mechanism, Manta Network is able to communicate with other layer-1 decentralized networks within the Polkadot ecosystem. This access to native communication properties allows Manta Network’s technology to provide additional benefits of privacy as a plug-and-play feature that can be enabled for other networks.

Because ZKP implementation privatizes on-chain transactions, Manta Network’s privacy-preservation extends beyond token transactions, and can be applied for use in DeFi, metaverses, NFTs, GameFis, and other future use cases that emerge within the growing Web 3 world.

1. September 2020 : Project started
2. October 2020 : Manta Network receives W3F grant to build decentralized anonymous payment system
3. January 2021 : Seed round raised, led by Polychain Capital
4. January 2021 : Manta Network completes milestone 1 of W3F Grant for private payment
5. May 2021 : Manta Network launches ambassador program
6. June 2021 : Manta Network publishes whitepaper version two as IACR e-print
7. August 2021 : Calamari Network begins crowdloan to secure Kusama parachain
8. September 2021 : Calamari Network secures parachain on Kusama
9. October 2021 : Strategic round raised, led by CoinFund and ParaFi Capital
10. November 2021 : Manta Network publishes whitepaper version one as IACR e-print
11. November 2021 : Calamari Network launches community governance
12. December 2021 : Manta Network launches Dolphin Testnet
13. January 2022 : Collator program launches on Calamari Network
14. February 2022 : XCM Library design complete (halfway through)

Manta is a set of easy-to-use and secure (open source and auditable code) protocols based on Substrate frameworks. It uses zk-SNARK to provide complete end-to-end anonymity, high throughput, and high cross-chain interoperability (it supports Polkadot and its parachain mainstream cryptocurrencies and stablecoins). It includes a decentralized privacy payment protocol, a decentralized privacy token exchange protocol, and a decentralized privacy lending and synthetic asset protocol to be developed in the future. Manta’s founding team comprises many US cryptocurrency veterans, professors, and scholars whose experience includes Harvard, MIT, Algorand, and other institutions.

Compared with traditional finance, decentralized finance (DeFi) is more valuable since it is permissionless and anti-surveillance. Current DeFi services still have critical problems regarding privacy (transparent address and information traceability), scalability (limited by transaction fees and transaction speed), ease of use, and liquidity. Constrained by the consensus of the underlying public chain, all current decentralized exchanges can leak the addresses of users participating in transactions. Research shows that currently, user addresses can only provide pseudo-anonymity rather than real user privacy. Commercial competitors or malicious Internet users can use transaction graph analysis to match user identities with addresses. Furthermore, since blockchain information is immutable, the cost of user privacy leakage is immeasurable.

Although the emergence of anonymous coins has solved the above problems to a certain extent, current anonymous coins, such as Zcash, are subject to scalability issues, thus challenging to leverage for a DeFi service ecosystem. Users can use ZCash for digital payments, but not for a private token exchange. Also, the high volatility of a single anonymous coin makes it difficult for users to store their assets. Therefore, only when the existing major digital assets such as stable coins and WBT are anonymized with exchange protocols that support robust cross-chain interoperability and related DeFi service agreements, can the underlying value of DeFi be recognized. For more information, please refer to the article: “Why does DeFi need Manta?”

Manta’s underlying logic is to mint private coins/tokens with stable coins and other base tokens on the contract at a minting value ratio of 1:1. Apart from that, a decentralized private swap platform can support the exchange of these privacy tokens.

The Manta Network mainly consists of two protocols: the decentralized private payment protocol and the decentralized private token exchange protocol.

The Decentralized Anonymous Payment (DAP) protocol is based on zk-SNARK. It allows users to swap Polkadot and its Parachain tokens with corresponding private tokens, pay with privacy tokens, and redeem base coins from private tokens.

The Decentralized Anonymous Exchange (DAX) protocol is based on AMM and zk-SNARK. Users can anonymously trade private versions of tokens on the platform between each other. The price formation method of the decentralized private token exchange protocol is consistent with the mainstream AMM. The revenue model of Manta tokens is based on the rebate and redeem of swap usage fees and transaction fees. In the future, the team will also develop products like synthetic asset stable coins based on Manta.

We also plan to integrate Manta products into decentralized private lending protocols. Decentralized private lending is a decentralized non-custodial lending platform where users can deposit anonymously and borrow private coins on the platform. Decentralized private synthetic asset protocols and other DeFi services are included in the future roadmap.

Although the current distributed ledger has brought a new payment model without the participation of third-party financial institutions, most records of the current cryptocurrency transactions are publicly available due to the transparency of blockchain technology. Public transactions can be viewed by competitors or third-party organizations, which affects business interests. At an individual level, public transactions can be taken advantage of by advertisers and criminals.

Although anonymous cryptocurrencies such as ZCash exist, the status quo has two major problems. High price volatility is the first problem, which affects practical use. The lack of scalability is the second problem, which limits use to only simple payments. The exchange of anonymous coins and other cryptocurrencies, including other anonymous coins, is still unsolved — that still relies on centralized exchanges and OTC.

Manta Network addresses the above two pain points. First, the decentralized anonymous payment protocol based on zk-SNARK supports the exchange of Polkadot and Substrate Parachain assets to their corresponding private pairs. In this way, users can use popular assets like stable coins, renBTC, etc., while simultaneously benefiting from the anonymity of privacy coins.

Second, a decentralized anonymous exchange protocol based on AMM and zk-SNARK can realize decentralized transactions between private coins, which is similar to Uniswap and Curve, and ensure transaction addresses’ privacy. Our product is the only platform that can meet user privacy needs, boast anti-surveillance, and ensure private tokens’ stability and interoperability. Also, compared to the centralized dark pool, the decentralized version is more credible and secure, as it reduces single points of failure.

We designed a decentralized private payment and exchange protocol based on zk-SNARK, and proved security via cryptography. At present, we are the only decentralized private payment and exchange-based entirely on cryptographic assumptions. Unlike with existing decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap and Curve, Manta is compatible with Parachain tokens (including stable coins) and is end-to-end privacy secured. Compared with TEE-based private trading products, Manta has indisputably more robust security in today’s environment, where security hardware has been repeatedly exposed to vulnerabilities and attacks. Compared with public chains such as Findora, which also applies zero-knowledge proofs, Manta can support many cross-chain assets in Polkadot’s ecosystem and reduce repetitive work in consensus layer ecological development.

Among the current DeFi products, we are the only decentralized trading platform that uses zk-SNARK for privacy enhancement. zk-SNARK can already be used to support complete end-to-end anonymity — the sender can verify to the prover the legitimacy of the transaction without disclosing the transaction amount, address, or other details. Manta fully preserves user and transaction anonymity. The agreement is open source and auditable, which can also reduce the cost of trust and ensure the system’s security. Please refer to the following table for technical comparison (bold means better):

Currently, Manta is the only private DeFi product that is compatible with mainstream assets, including stable coins, and provides security using cryptography rather than hardware.

Manta token, namely $MANTA, is the first deflationary utility token where rebate rewards, redemption, and token burns are generated from actual privacy-preserving network usage and growth in DeFi. The total amount of $MANTA tokens is 1,000,000,000. Its main source of income is the fee collected from users for minting private coins, redeeming base coins from private coins (0.1%), and the private coin payment fee and exchange fee between different private coins (0.3% — variable). These continuous incomes will bring $MANTA tokens a discount value, redemption value, governance value, and extended value. The coming article will explain these values ​​specifically.

Due to technical difficulties, no decentralized exchange platform protects user privacy from end to end in the current Polkadot ecosystem even the entire crypto world. Manta perfectly fills this gap. Since Manta covers both the decentralized private payment and decentralized private transactions of Polkadot’s ecological chain assets, it is irreplaceable for users who need privacy protection, especially institutional users. Therefore, Manta is expected to become the leader in the Polkadot ecosystem and the entire cryptocurrency market in terms of a privacy-protected decentralized platform.

The problem we see today is that the blockchain lacks privacy, compatibility and usability, which leads to many other problems. That's why we are creating Manta Network, a private protocol for the DeFi stack, with a decentralized exchange preserving confidentiality as our first use case. We are building it as a tier 1 solution, which means that privacy will exist in the underlying architecture, and not as a function located on top of another blockchain. Using Substrate, we can take advantage of the functional ecosystem that Polkadot offers.

"We believe that one of the biggest problems that needs to be solved exists on decentralized exchanges," Shumo Chu, CEO and co-founder of Manta Network, said in an email.

"The volume on decentralized exchanges is large and growing, but DEX is also a hotbed of advanced opportunities due to the transparent nature of the blockchain. Someone can see your transaction before it is recorded and confirmed, and make the same transaction with a higher commission to get priority and go through this transaction before you."

Privacy in DeFi

According to the survey, almost three-quarters of 404 respondents (73.2%) "have either hesitated or completely avoided making a transaction in the past because they were worried about the privacy implications of this transaction."

In addition, 84% of respondents expressed concern that their wallet addresses are linked to their real identity. Part of this concern was caused by the fact that the nature of blockchains allows people to see address balances.

In fact, more than 90% of respondents said they were looking for someone's wallet address to view that person's assets and/or transactions.

The survey gives additional weight to the notion that privacy is a central issue in the cryptocurrency space, and the Manta Network is one of many different projects in the DeFi space working to improve privacy functionality.

Why Privacy is Important

The implications for transparent transactions are not limited to the fact that someone knows how much money is in the address. This can have tangible follow-up effects, given that information is power.

In traditional finance, if you want to view information about your bank account (including transactions and the total amount of funds), you must prove that you are the owner of this account. No one else has the right to view your information without your consent.

In blockchain, everything is different — anyone who knows your wallet address can view your transactions, track your transactions and see all your assets

The lack of privacy leads to many other problems that arise when scaling blockchain use cases. Automated monitoring and parsing lead to unauthorized data collection, opening up potential opportunities for blackmail. In cases of corporate use, trade secrets can be disclosed by tracking transactions in the chain.

On decentralized exchanges, this transparency opens up advanced opportunities. People are taking extra steps, which increases the friction in use, just to make transactions more confusing.

The availability of privacy products is a secondary issue for DEX, which is one of the reasons why Manta Network should work on the plug and play principle.

Manta Ray Network

The Manta network aims to strengthen privacy in DeFi, partly by obfuscating wallet addresses, but with the overall goal of allowing users to make transactions and exchange privacy. The blockchain in the Polkadot ecosystem, the first major project of the Manta Network— is an automated market maker (AMM) DEX, preserving confidentiality, called MantaSwap.

The Manta network is working on the implementation of zkSNARK at the blockchain level. zkSNARK is a cryptographic method that allows two objects to verify information with each other without having to share the underlying data associated with it.

Think about it, for example, in the context of logging into a website. The site verifies who you are without revealing your password, geolocation data or other information that can be used to obtain additional information about yourself that you do not suspect that you can refuse.

The use of Manta zkSNARKs can ensure the confidentiality of transactions and the identity of the user.

While you can still track your own transactions, no one else can. By taking this and applying it in a compatible way (via Polkadot), we will be able to provide a ready-made solution for the entire ecosystem in the future

However, right now the team is focused on improving usability, given that their goal is to create a "plug and play" solution. In addition, they are working to ensure transparency of both the code itself and the process. As for usability, we also want to focus on implementation security, which takes time.

Financing and the future

The Manta Network, which was previously the winner of the Web 3.0 Foundation grant, has closed a $1.1 million funding round led by Polychain Capital to create MantaSwap.

"Manta Network brings together an experienced team to address critical and growing privacy issues in blockchain," Ben Pershik, partner at Polychain, said in a statement. "His unique approach to creating the Polkadot blockchain allows them to offer plug-and-play privacy for a variety of use cases and projects, starting with their own privacy-preserving DEX."

The financing will give an impetus to the development of the Manta Network. The team is currently finishing work on a prototype to send to the Web3 Foundation. By the end of the first quarter, the company will present the first version of its test network. Future releases of the test network will feature other assets as well as exchange functions.

"Our goal is to launch the main network before the end of the year, but we recognize the importance of ensuring that the security aspects of our network are thoroughly tested and taken into account before we decide to launch the main network," Chu said.

Manta has accomplished many milestones to date. Based on the feedback so far from the community regarding the Dolphin Testnet, the community sentiment around the project is positive and excited about what is to come.

But pushing forward into this new growth mindset requires more than just an amazing product. The project is adding on more core contributors and designing a strategic vision to usher in the next chapter of Manta Network–a chapter that demonstrates not just to the community how much has been achieved, but one that also shows the world how important and critical Manta is for the future of Web3.

On-chain privacy in Web3 requires a scalable, decentralized, and secure solution. Manta’s approach using zero-knowledge proofs and the Substrate framework for composability will accomplish this. The project is focused on building a strategy and bringing on the right contributors to communicate this.

As part of the next chapter, Manta Network will be bringing on talented and experienced core contributors who will focus more on the strategy and brand-building aspects of the project. As one of its missions, Manta will educate the entire Web3 space about the importance of on-chain privacy, and our goal is to become a thought leader in this matter with the help of the entire community.

Manta network- privacy upgrade for the Polkadot ecosystem

In the rapidly developing time in the field of blockchain cryptocurrencies in general, most projects focus on addressing data privacy and user privacy issues. Along with this, many are “sawing” the decentralized economy of tokens, increasing the degree of protection. Also, many people solve the problem of confidentiality through several protocols.

Now in this vein, such cryptocurrencies as “Zcash” and “Monero” are worthy of attention. But it should be noted that their protocols do not provide sufficient ready-made privacy for the large pool of emerging new cryptocurrencies. It is also important that these protocols lack an extension for the decentralized financial system — DeFi, which gives the world innovations in monetary tools for end users.

However, Manta supports multiple underlying assets at once and allows anonymous exchange of assets through MantaDAX.

The advantage of the project privacy model is that Manta payments and exchanges are private.

- Secret addresses are never revealed;

- Publicly available information, cannot be linked;

- All operations consume two old coins and generate two new coins.

When making a transaction (transfer, exchange or return), the user does not indicate which obligation was used. Accounting takes place in a special ledger, so even knowledge of the nominal value of the obligation will not help the attacker to de-anonymize the sender

With this approach, the confidentiality property of a decentralized anonymous payment is formally determined