Introducing Incognito
Every idea starts with a problem. Ours was simple: blockchain data is public.
Duy was running Autonomous where he paid a team of 100+ people in 6 different countries with an ERC20 stablecoin. While he saved processing time and money on international wire fees, employee salaries were exposed publicly on the Ethereum blockchain. It was a mess.
Many of the team had similar experiences, frustrated at how hard it was to send, receive and store crypto privately, even in a rapidly tokenizing world. No one wants to show their bank statements to the entire world.
We started Incognito to create an alternative — the choice of privacy whenever needed, simple for anyone to obtain. Incognito mode for blockchains.
A full-stack approach to decentralized privacy
Incognito embraces a full-stack approach to decentralized privacy. Every layer of the stack works to deliver a simple, fast and secure end-to-end privacy experience for the new decentralized web.
- Physical Layer. Incognito’s low cost, efficient and streamlined mining hardware removes typical barriers to entry. It allows for anyone to become a validator and earn passive income, paid out in various cryptoassets such as BTC and ETH.
- Network Layer. A high-throughput proof-of-stake blockchain, made possible by the implementation of state sharding with 1 beacon chain and N shard chains.
- Data Layer. Incognito uses zero-knowledge proofs, ring signatures, stealth addresses, and confidential transactions to mask the sender, receiver and transaction amount.
- Application Layer. Incognito is mobile-first. Incognito’s wallet is a simple and secure tool for anyone to manage their cryptoassets confidentially. Incognito built the entire Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZKP) stack for mobile from scratch. Send a private transaction on mobile in seconds.
Incognito operates a number of bridges that connect Incognito with other blockchains (i.e. Ethereum), to allow two-way transfers of cryptoassets whenever privacy is needed.
The code
Over the first 12 months, Incognito has 12,000+ commits and 1M+ lines of code in 14 public repos and 2 private repos.
The code is hosted on Github at https://github.com/incognitochain.
The core team
We’re a diverse team of 23 cryptographers, distributed system researchers, and programmers. We’ve been busy building the privacy layer of the decentralized web since May 2018.
Explore the Testnet
The Incognito public Testnet is live. Here are the key products, all of which are available to explore:
- Incognito Android Wallet http://incognito.org/android.apk
- Incognito Web Wallet https://test-wallet.incognito.org
- Incognito Explorer https://test-explorer.incognito.org
- Incognito Faucet https://test-faucet.incognito.org
- Become a Validator https://incognito.org/miner.html
Questions? Reach us on Telegram or email us at go@incognito.org.
