Vitalik: Railgun Privacy Pool Mechanism Can Filter Out Illegal Funds Without the Need for Monitoring or Backdoors

BlockBeats News, February 13th, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted on social media that the "Railgun Privacy Pool Mechanism can allow Railgun to avoid dealing with proceeds of crime without any monitoring or backdoors.

The operation is as follows:

· Anyone can make a deposit to Railgun.

· After the deposit, there will be a 1-hour detection period during which various algorithms will analyze whether the deposit may be from what it deems to be criminal activity.

· If the deposit passes the screening, the user can then use zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) for private withdrawals (but it is recommended to wait longer to obtain a sufficient anonymity set).

· If the deposit does not pass the screening, the user can only withdraw the funds back to their own address. Doing so will not result in the freezing or seizure of funds, but they will not benefit from the privacy pool's anonymity feature.

If someone disagrees with Railgun's screening rules, they are free to fork and create their privacy pool, but without obtaining sufficient broad public support, its anonymity will be very limited."