Railgun Weekly Update, September 5, 2022

The RAILGUN Project’s current status: the RAILGUN Privacy System is deployed and fully active on Ethereum, Polygon and BSC. The RAILWAY wallet, an independent project using RAILGUN systems, can be accessed at railway.xyz or on the Apple App Store.

August was a huge month for RAILGUN, with contributors delivering strong feature improvements and continuing to put their heads down and ship. RAILGUN users expect to see continual enhancements to the world’s most secure, most flexible, and easiest to use private DeFi solution and contributors have certainly exceeded these expectations. Few developers in DeFi and crypto can match RAILGUN’s pace of innovation. What’s more exciting is that September through the rest of 2022 will bring even more improvements, integrations, and volume catalysts. We are far from done!

RAILGUN contributors also made several high-profile appearances throughout August, talking about RAILGUN’s underlying tech innovations and the importance of privacy as a human right. Kieran Mesquita gave an enlightening Spotlight Speech at DeFiCon, and both Kieran and Dylan Oliver appeared with crypto and privacy OG Ryan Lackey on a panel about privacy. Contributors were also on the ZecHub ZCash podcast discussing tech and privacy.

Development Update

Congratulations to partner project Railway for releasing the first RAILGUN integrated mobile wallet, available on the Apple App Store now. The Android version is currently going through Google Play Store review and is expected to go live in the next week or two. Users can shield and unshield their balances to and from their 0zk address as well as send assets privately, all completely on the move. For the alpha seekers out there, the Railway DEX will also be pushed as a feature update within the next few weeks.

As the world’s first EVM compatible zk-SNARK prover to run entirely on mobile, the Railway Wallet is a huge advancement in privacy tech as this greatly increases access to private DeFi. This is undoubtedly an historic moment for privacy as a right and reinforces the idea that everyone should be entitled to privacy, even if you prefer DeFi over CeFi. It also highlights how the RAILGUN privacy system can be integrated almost anywhere and how developers can now feasibly choose to build privacy into their protocols. This first mobile release from Railway is only the beginning and opens the doors for RAILGUN integrations across the wide expanses of the DeFi ecosystem and how privacy can be accessed from anywhere, be that your computer or your smartphone.

In other developments, the proposal for Active Governor Rewards (staker income) will go live shortly with the contributors double checking final details. RAILGUN Governors will soon be rewarded for their belief in the protocol. These checks are to ensure that the proposal vote is safe and runs smoothly for all participants. Check out the official RAILGUN Telegram and Twitter for an announcement when the vote goes live.

Communications Update

RAILGUN contributors are working on several articles which both highlight the protocol and push the discussion on privacy forward for some high-profile crypto and non-crypto publications. These articles will be published over the month of September, and we can’t wait to share our thoughts with the community on the importance of privacy.

Further, contributors are also in the process of updating RAILGUN’s documentation and Dune Analytics dashboard. This updated documentation will aid in onboarding new users as well as help developers building future integrations with the RAILGUN SDK (Software Development Kit). The protocol design of the RAILGUN privacy system is a thing of beauty and the best way to communicate its value proposition is through deep explanations of the cryptography, smart contracts, and security engineering behind it.

Further, RAILGUN contributors have had several productive meetings with potential partner projects over August. These are well-known projects in both DeFi and the wider crypto world with great synergies with the RAILGUN SDK. Some very cool integrations are in the works which highlight the flexibility, useability, and opportunities of the RAILGUN system and we can’t wait to share them.

September and beyond will also see the beginning of a big marketing push as contributors reach out to podcasts, news websites, and content creators. If you’re a creator and would like to talk about RAILGUN, please DM the official RAILGUN twitter account with some examples of your work. With the community’s support, we can tell the whole world about RAILGUN and the human rights affirming capabilities its tech empowers.