Introduction
Manta is a set of easy-to-use and secure protocols based on Substrate frameworks. It uses zk-SNARK to provide complete end-to-end anonymity, high throughput, and high cross-chain interoperability (it supports Polkadot and its parachain mainstream cryptocurrencies and stable coins). It includes a decentralized privacy payment protocol, a decentralized privacy token exchange protocol, and a decentralized privacy lending and synthetic asset protocol to be developed in the future. Manta’s founding team comprises many US cryptocurrency veterans, professors, and scholars whose experience includes Harvard, MIT, Algorand, and other institutions. They believe that DeFi, for now, has its most value in permissionless and anti-surveillance while current services in DeFi have their deficiency in privacy, scalability, usability and liquidity. Under the current landscape, only when a stable coin that fully supports anonymity and cross-chain interoperability and the relevant DeFi protocol being created can the tremendous value of DeFi be released and deployed, and it is at this point that DeFi will have the chance to overtake the traditional financial industry. That’s the reason why the team decided to build Manta Network.
What is Manta Network?
Privacy functions are implemented in the core of architecture that’s why Manta network provides better privacy and throughput. Privacy solutions implemented over blockchains may not be that satisfying because of limitation.
Manta network is using Zero-knowledge proofs that allow a user to construct a mathematical proof that a given program, when executed on some (possibly hidden) input known by the user, has a particular (publicly known) output, without revealing any other information.
Manta network is easy-to-use means that Manta network can be easily integrate as privacy level. The key factor of it is granular structure of components. Manta network mainly consist of two components the decentralized private payment protocol and the decentralized private token exchange protocol.
The Decentralized Anonymous Payment (DAP) protocol is based on zk-SNARK. It allows users to swap Polkadot and its Parachain tokens with corresponding private tokens, pay with privacy tokens, and redeem base coins from private tokens.
The Decentralized Anonymous Exchange (DAX) protocol is based on AMM and zk-SNARK. Users can anonymously trade private versions of tokens on the platform between each other. The price formation method of the decentralized private token exchange protocol is consistent with the mainstream AMM. The revenue model of Manta tokens is based on the rebate and redeem of swap usage fees and transaction fees. In the future, the team will also develop products like synthetic asset stable coins based on Manta.
Here is some projects that will use Manta Network to solve privacy: ZenLink, Acala Network, MathChain, Crust, Phala(Manta network and Phala joined to bring full-stack privacy), ChainX and etc. The main goal of Manta is to bring privacy for every token.
Comparison
At present, Manta network are the only decentralized private payment and exchange-based entirely on cryptographic assumptions. Unlike with existing decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap and Curve, Manta is compatible with Parachain tokens (including stable coins) and is end-to-end privacy secured. Compared with TEE-based private trading products, Manta has indisputably more robust security in today’s environment, where security hardware has been repeatedly exposed to vulnerabilities and attacks. Compared with public chains such as Findora, which also applies zero-knowledge proofs, Manta can support many cross-chain assets in Polkadot’s ecosystem and reduce repetitive work in consensus layer ecological development.
Conclusion
The crucial moment for Manta Network is that Polkadot ecosystem is growing with each Parachain and Parathread. There will be tons of tokens, stable coins, lending platforms and etc. Most of them will use Manta Network instead of implementing their own privacy. Since Manta covers both the decentralized private payment and decentralized private transactions of Polkadot’s ecological chain assets, it is irreplaceable for users who need privacy protection, especially institutional users. Therefore, Manta might become the leader in the Polkadot ecosystem and the entire cryptocurrency market in terms of a privacy-protected decentralized platform.
