The Record-Breaking Conclusion of the Trusted Setup
Over 4,300 contributions across 177 countries, marking a new world record for the largest trusted setup in history.
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It looks like we will start the new year with a bang 💥 we’ve now concluded our Trusted Setup, and the results are in! With your help, we’ve completed the largest and most diverse Trusted Setup in history.
“The widespread adoption of a self-sovereign web3 relies in large part on the innovation of trustless privacy-preserving mechanisms such as zero-knowledge proofs. I’m thrilled to see the forefront of that innovation happening in the Polkadot ecosystem,” stated Dr. Gavin Wood, Chief Architect at Parity Tech. “Manta Network’s recent record-breaking trusted setup and the upcoming launch of MantaPay showcase the tremendous innovation in this field.”
Ending officially on December 29th, we saw over 13,000 registrations and 4,328 contributions from 177 countries; Manta Network has broken the world record for having the largest trusted setup in history.
With the Trusted Setup now complete, we can launch MantaPay to main net on Calamari Network, the first service in the Polkadot ecosystem that offers private payments between two parties using Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs).
Trusted Setup Refresher
What is the Trusted Setup, and why do we need it to launch MantaPay?
To enable on-chain privacy functionality, we use zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs). Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are emerging as the industry standard for on-chain cryptography. ZKPs are algorithmic, which means that the technology relies on mathematics and computation. There are no hardware constraints, such as what is found with alternatives such as trusted execution environments (TEEs). The mathematical soundness of ZKPs and the lack of dependency on hardware result in a higher level of privacy, security, and ubiquity.
To launch our ZKPs securely, we go through what is referred to as a Trusted Setup Ceremony. The trusted setup allows people to contribute to the network’s proving keys, which makes the zero-knowledge proof. The more contributors there are, the safer those keys become. We’ve run the largest Trusted Setup to date, meaning that Mantapay’s proving keys will have the strongest security guarantee in the blockchain ecosystem.
By the way, all code to build the Trusted Setup will be included in our OpenZL initiative, making Trusted Setups more accessible to Web3 developers.
A Token of Our Appreciation
“With so many Web3 companies lacking credibility and the lack of regulation, I wanted to contribute to a decentralized ceremony so I could ensure credibility. If you are concerned with the security of users and their funds — I’m with you!“ (Metin from Turkey)
We’re so happy with the overwhelming support we’ve received from the community to become contributors. We want to thank our supporters with a small token of appreciation:
Special Discord Roles in our community. For everyone who attempted to contribute or successfully contributed, you have received a Discord Role. If you successfully contributed, you have received the role of Trusted Contributor; we will also be giving you a commemoration of your contribution through an NFT. If you attempted to contribute but could not do so in time, we still appreciate your effort, and you have received the role of Trusted Supporter.
How to verify contributor status
There is not much you need to do but sit back and wait for your role change! We will check your discord handle with your contributor status and assign the appropriate role. But if you want to check your status, the ceremony results are now available to the public for verification. You can read the details in our Github summary here.
Next steps for the MantaPay launch
The Trusted Setup is a big piece to launching MantaPay. We want to give a big shoutout to our developer team that put together the largest, most open source Trusted Setup to date! You will be able to see everything in our open source GitHub library on ZKP, but for now, all the code lives here.​
With the testnet underway and the Trusted Setup complete, our next goal is to launch MantaPay on Calamari. We will have more details soon on how that will play out. Stay tuned!
About Manta Network
Backed by industry-leading investors, including Polychain and Binance, Manta Network is committed to building a better Web3 world through privacy protection. Manta’s product design starts from first principles and provides end-to-end privacy protection for blockchain users through leading cryptography architectures such as zkSNARK. While ensuring privacy, Manta offers interoperability, convenience, high performance, and auditability, allowing users to conduct private transfers and transactions between any parallel chain of assets. Manta’s vision is to provide more convenient privacy protection services for the entire blockchain world.
