Refactors, Broadcasters, and Reliability — RAILGUN Update
With the launch of RAILGUN Cookbook last month, RAILGUN is about to be the center of a private DeFi ecosystem on Ethereum and Ethereum-like chains. Beefy Finance is the first Cookbook integrated protocol and DeFi’s first private on-chain yield mechanism. Integration season is just beginning and soon RAILGUN users will be able to perform a variety of DeFi functions privately without leaving their preferred chain.
To prepare for the upcoming feature updates, contributors are working on infrastructure upgrades to improve reliability, UX, and smart contract modularity. Let’s look at the important improvements in the works. 🛠️
RAILGUN Project current status: the RAILGUN Privacy System is deployed and fully active on Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and BSC. The Railway Wallet, an independent project built on RAILGUN, can be accessed at railway.xyz or on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. A standalone desktop application is also available for download here.
Development Update
Ethereum & EVM chains have a smart contract size limit of just over 24.5kb. The main RAILGUN smart contracts containing the core of the Privacy System was approaching this limit. Contributors are working on splitting and refactoring the contract so as to not reach the limit. The contracts will be split out by purpose and function and this kind of modularity enhances upgradeability. For example, if down the line a new token standard needed to be supported, instead of migrating the entire contract which might be unwieldy, only the relevant functions would be upgraded.
This refactoring will require a vote so if you have $RAIL staked, check the Governance Portal towards the end of June for the proposal.
There are also some enhancements to the Broadcaster network being worked on. First up is the movement to a dedicated RAILGUN subtopic on the Waku p2p private messaging network. Broadcasters and users use Waku to anonymously agree on fees to send RAILGUN private transactions. Previously, RAILGUN transactions were using the main Waku communication topic which meant competition with other services using Waku and congestion during times of high activity. Starting later this week, RAILGUN transactions will have their own topic which is the equivalent of opening a private highway that only RAILGUN Broadcaster communications can use. Users of RAILGUN enabled wallets like partner project Railway Wallet should notice improvements in Broadcaster communication speed and reliability.
A more significant change to Broadcasters in the form of ERC-4337 Paymaster compliance is also in development. ERC-4337 allows Broadcasters to pre-authorize network gas tokens (like ETH) to be used in RAILGUN transactions as long as a certain output is provided by users (e.g., the user pays gas + Broadcaster fee). In this setup, the Broadcaster is also not signing the transaction (signing remains entirely with the user’s private key) meaning that users can be sure their transaction will be submitted prior to generating their SNARK proof.
Moving to an ERC-4337 model enables 2 main overhauls. The first is guaranteed Broadcaster cooperation as users can always expect the same behavior from Broadcasters. With this minimum standard of functionality, community members will be able to more easily run Broadcasters which will be important as RAILGUN grows in adoption. The second enhancement is that now Broadcasters will be able to process transactions simultaneously as before, they were essentially standard EVM wallets and had to submit transactions one after the other. This improves throughput for each individual Broadcaster. More Broadcasters + more throughput per Broadcaster = exponential reliability increases for RAILGUN transactions.
Communications Update
@RAILGUN_Project on Twitter will be co-hosting a Space with Waku and Status on Friday 16th June at 6pm. Tune in to find out how RAILGUN maximizes the Waku messaging network and to learn in-depth details about Broadcasters. Make sure you’re following @RAILGUN_Project to stay up to date on this Spaces and this is not to be missed if you like tech or just want to learn more about privacy and peer-to-peer networks.
ETHDam has uploaded RAILGUN contributors’ speeches. Watch Alan Scott and John Meurer Jr take the stage in a keynote on the future of Web3 privacy products here. This workshop shows the simplicity of RAILGUN Cookbook and the ease at which RAILGUN privacy can plug into any EVM smart contract. If you’re interested in building with RAILGUN Cookbook, this workshop is a great guide on how to get down and dirty and start building.
If you feel you can contribute to spreading the message or if you want to get involved in anyway, please drop a line in the Telegram group, Discord, or send a DM to @RAILGUN_Project on Twitter. Every member of the community is a contributor in some way — you have all shown dedication to the ethos of privacy.
