The Ren Project (REN): A Brief Overview

Please note that this quick article is intentionally simplistic and my goal is give a brief overview of REN and some of the core fundamentals without confusing the hell out of you. Yes, if you’re a token investor without a CompSci degree it is safe to keep reading.

The Problem

According to the REN Project (formerly Republic Protocol) REN is “an open protocol that enables the permissionless and private transfer of value between any blockchain.”

REN is an ERC-20 based token. The REN Project utilizing this token is a fascinating effort that started out solving a very difficult problem with the current state of crypto based assets. How can we guarantee (with open source software of course) that anyone can exchange their crypto tokens for others, with the entire transaction being both permissionless AND 100% private? This is actually quite a challenging problem to solve cryptographically and prior to 2018 nobody had done it effectively.

Enter the Darknode

The early aim of the REN Project was to create a decentralized, hidden order book providing an order matching engine between two or more…