What’s Manta Network?

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In these days when we are rapidly moving towards the WEB3 world; Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies have started to take an important place in our daily lives. As the use of blockchain technology increases; Decentralization and transparency in almost all transactions are spreading rapidly. Although we see this as an advantage, on the other hand, with the effect of Web3 on our whole lives; The fact that even the smallest interactions we will make can be traced started to create new risks. Of course, this is the case; These are some of the ones that belong to some of his personal likenesses. Surely there is a solution that can achieve this!

Zero Knowledge Proofs and WEB 3.0

A technology first designed in 1985; is running to the rescue of blockchain projects in these days. Zero Knowledge Proof! Zero Knowledge Proof; In its simplest terms, it is a way of making the other party accept that the statement is true without explaining what it is. The party trying to prove the claim of the statement is called the ‘Proof’ and the party responsible for verifying is called the ‘Verifier’. Very detailed on our youtube channel for Zero Knowledge Proof Technology; We have a video as a guide, you can find it here.

The number of projects using ZKP has increased considerably recently. But among these projects, one of the most important; It is currently being developed in the Polkadot ecosystem. With the innovations it brings, it is very likely to be a few steps ahead of its competitors; Manta Network!

What is Manta Network?

Manta; it is the blockchain privacy platform for Web3, Defi and much more. With its high-performance brand new Zero Knowledge Proof infrastructure, it is focused on solving one of the most important shortcomings of blockchains; the privacy problem.

Manta; from the first day, compatible with WEB3; works to establish a scalable and confidential network. With Manta; privacy can be brought to DeFis, NFTs, GameFis, DAOs, and countless other blockchain applications. Manta Network, which uses zk-SNARK technology to provide complete privacy, high throughput and cross-chain interoperability; It is divided into 4 main applications.

• Decentralized Management
• MantaPay
• MantaSwap
• MantaPlatform

Decentralized Governance

Manta and Calamari; It is a decentralized center controlled and managed by its own community. You can also participate in governance by purchasing MANTA and KMA tokens, voting on governance proposals, and focusing on the development of the protocol. You might be wondering where the Calamari came from; Let’s not interrupt the topic, we will satisfy your curiosity right after this section.

MantaPay

MantaPay; It is an on-chain multi-asset and protected repository using zkSNARK. It’s a BYOT; that is, it is a decentralized and anonymous payment protocol in the bring-your-own-token model. MantaPay will support all major crypto assets on Polkadot and Kusama networks and more. To bring complete privacy to the Web 3, Manta Network’s primary focus is on MantaPay, which enables decentralized private money transfers. Unlike the vast majority of blockchains; In Manta, transactions are translated into NFTs with zero-knowledge proofs. So every transaction is unique, that is, completely private.ü

For example; In Bitcoin, where Alice sends 1 BTC to Bob is processed on the blockchain and can be observed by anyone. But thanks to the brand new Zero Information Technology offered by Manta network, transactions are confidential and cannot be observed from the outside.

There are also projects in the industry, such as Zcash and Monero, that allow confidential money transfers. With these projects; Along with the sender and receiver wallet addresses, coin transfer can be made in such a way that the amount sent remains confidential. But the difference of Manta starts here. Manta Network; instead of creating a privacy token, it creates a privacy tool.

Manta; offers the Bring Your Own Token feature to the entire ecosystem and with the Polkadot Cross Chain Messaging technology it is powered by; It supports all tokens in the DOT/KUSAMA ecosystem. Also Manta; In the future, it aims to add privacy to tokens on all blockchains, in addition to Polkadot, via inter-blockchain bridges.

Another basic concept that provides this privacy to MantaPay is Shielded Address, that is, protected addresses. Protected addresses are reusable addresses for your private assets in Manta. These addresses are not associated with your real address. Thus, you can transact with MantaPay without worrying about your privacy and will not be exposed in on-chain analysis.

The view key allows viewing the entire spending history of a protected address without leaking the spending secret. Each protected address corresponds to a single display key. This is useful for both accounting and regulatory compliance.

Mantaswap

MantaSwap; It is an AMM-style decentralized exchange powered by zkSNARK technology. Unlike DEXs like Uniswap and Curve, your financial privacy will be protected here.

Mantaplatform

Manta Platform offers programmable custom assets. Developers can create exciting and privacy-protecting applications that the web 3 world has never seen before. For example, you will be able to run a private NFT auction.

Mantaswap and Mantaplatform are currently in the prototype stage and their development continues.

Now; For a better understanding of Manta, we would like to briefly talk about the Polkadot ecosystem on which it was developed.

Polkadot; as an alternative to Ethereum, which is struggling with gas fees and scalability problems; It was created by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood and a group of developers in 2016. Polkadot is more like a Blockchain Hub than a blockchain and is designed as a hub to which Tier-1 projects can connect. Manta network; by taking advantage of this important feature of Polkadot, it aims to reach all other layer-1 networks.

Meanwhile, networks like Manta which are connecting to Polkadot and running on it; are called Parachains. 1-1 copies of parachains that want to take part in the Polkadot network, ie twins; It is first tested on Polkadot’s testnet, Kusama. However, transactions made on the kusama network differ from other blockchain testnets by a large margin, as they have real financial value. We wanted to tell this because; Manta Network also has a twin on Kusama; Calamari Network

Calamari is currently an active project on the Kusama network and the Calamari $KMA token is traded with high volume in the ecosystem. In this article, we will not mention Calamari any more; We may describe the Calamari project in a separate article in the future. By the way, if you noticed; We said Calamari is active in the ecosystem because Calamari’s KMA token is now; It can be traded on major exchanges such as Bybit, Huobi, Kucoin, Gate and Mexc.

Manta Network on Polkadot leg, which is the main focus of Manta; It is under development and has not yet been released as a token. Set; they take firm steps and continue to grow stronger day by day for complete privacy and security for Web 3.0, Defi, NFT and much more, which they aim for.

For Manta, whose pre-sale and listing program has not been announced yet; We can consider this as an advantage. The opportunity to invest in such important projects early is often not found, because when you see the project, it is already too late. It is very important to catch the opportunity to follow, interact and be active in social media early on. In addition, we will explain the details shortly; By participating in the Testnet Stages of the project, you can be one of the first winners. With reward events and Airdrops, you can collect tokens before anyone else.

So far, we think the overall purpose of the Manta project is understood. Before diving into the whitepaper and getting into the technical details; Let’s talk about the partners of the project, the investors.

Manta Network Partners and Investors

At first glance; important projects from Polkadot network, especially Acala and Parallel Finance; We can see that Manta is among his partners. As for investors; a few of the largest financial institutions in the market immediately catch the eye; especially BinanceLabs. Binance Labs, the investment leg of the world’s largest stock exchange Binance; Alongside its strategic investment in Manta, it also supports Manta Network’s efforts to develop innovative products, services and technologies that provide decentralized on-chain privacy. It seems very likely that the project will be listed on the Binance exchange, after being pre-sold by auction on the Dot network. In fact, Binance previously held Polkadot Auctions by Staking Dots on its platform; We think they can do the same for Manta Network. By the way, what is the Dot Slot Auction? We recommend that you review our article on Polkadot pre-sale details here.

Of course, it is not only Binance that invests in such an important project; Alameda Research, the largest investment pillar of the Solana network, is also among the supporters of the project. Moreover; Major fund groups such as Polychain Capital, Defiance Capital, Parafi Capital, Multicoin and Spartan have invested in Manta. Manta too; with the strength it receives from such great support and investment; continues to develop with firm and sure steps.

Manta Network Roadmap

In the last quarter of 2020; started with a Web3 foundation grant to create a decentralized anonymous payment system. When it comes to 2021; First, the Calamari network was activated, the first testnet of Manta Network was published, and they continued to raise investments from key capitals. Manta Network, which started 2022 with a Binance investment, added the Polkadot cross-chain messaging feature to its library and launched the 2nd phase of the Testnet, respectively. The developments about Manta Network, which keeps its roadmaps constantly updated; in more detail, you can also follow the notion application step by step.

The most important target, which is planned to be completed in Q3 2022, is tokens initially distributed as Proof-of-Authority Proof-of-Authority (PoA); now moving to Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS), which has significant impact on network security, incentive and token economy. Also, staking feature will start at the end of this quarter and in addition, MantaPay in the near future; It will be launched on the Calamari network.

Let’s take a look at Manta Network’s Testnets.

Manta Network Testnet

Let us state that the Manta network Dolphin Testnet -2, which you can access from our website at labs.pusulafinans.com, continues as of now. After months of development, Manta Network has released Dolphin v2, which will give users back their privacy rights faster and more securely. Dolphin v2; It offers a chance to test and try out protocols before they are published in Calamari and Manta.

Released in December 2021, Dolphin V1 processed more than 60,000 unique transactions with 6,000 unique wallet addresses. There was no incentive bounty program as Dolphin v1’s purpose was to collect as much feedback as possible from the core community. Despite this, 500 responses and thousands of feedback were collected and reviewed one by one to create Dolphin v2. For the V2 testmet phase, unlike the V1 testnet phase; The incentive reward program was also announced. You can qualify for Airdrop Rewards by completing the feedback form on Dolphin v2 and completing other instructions in the Gleam campaign. Let’s remind again; You can follow the step-by-step instructions on our site to participate in the testnet and award event. You can access the testnet here.

In addition, MantaSwap and MantaPlatform prototypes will also be put to the test in the future, that is, by constantly monitoring and actively; You can be one of the first winners of the project.

Now it’s time to dive into the technical details that make the Manta ecosystem and apps work; manta; offers us two networks; Calamari Network in Kusama that we mentioned before and the main topic of this video, Manta Network. Manta, the developers; It allows building interoperable, easy-to-use, high-performance, auditable, end-to-end privacy-guaranteed and decentralized applications.

By the way, one of the most important factors in making Manta such an effective and important project is the team of the project. In the team; There are many experienced US cryptocurrency experts, professors and academics who have worked in important institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and Algorand. They are active on social media and constantly explain and promote the project with presentations.

Compared to traditional finance; Defi’s are more important because they are decentralized. However, the existing DeFi services; It still faces critical issues in terms of privacy, scalability, ease of use and liquidity. Although transactions are anonymous, malicious actors can use transaction graph analysis to match user IDs to addresses. Because blockchain information is immutable, the cost of user privacy leaks is also immeasurable.

Manta Network and Zero Knowledge Proofs

Manta to bring complete privacy and security one step closer to reality; presents two basic concepts of zero knowledge. zkAssets and zkAddresses i.e. Zero Knowledge Assets and Zero Knowledge Addresses

What is zkAssets?

zkAssets; It is a new class of crypto assets where privacy, integrity and access policy are protected by zero-knowledge evidence. In simple terms, we can think of it as a mirror reflection of real coins. The information and assets used in all of Alice’s transactions with Bob, which can be seen in the picture, will remain confidential on the chain. Zk Assets also have the following features:

• Flexible Asset Types: For example, it can be ERC20-like coins or NFTs.
• Privacy by Default i.e. the asset owner’s address and types of assets are encrypted on-chain.
• Disclosure at Will: More specifically, asset owners can disclose asset transaction history to auditors without having to disclose the spending secret.
• Configurable Asset Policy: The zkAssets issuer can customize a zkAssets’ access control policies. For example, access control policies can be created, such as KYC rules, having or not having the ability to blacklist hacked assets.

What is zkAddress?

zkAddress; It is the public key infrastructure for zkAssets and consists of 3 important parts.

• zkAddress: A zkAddress is required to receive any zkAsset.
• View key: A special transaction key to view the full transaction history of a zkAddress.
• Spending Secret: It is randomly generated and generates two other keys namely zkAdress and display key.

Manta’s another application is called Manta Signer

Manta Signer

Signer; Manta Network is a confidential administrator and zero-knowledge proof generator for use with Calamari Network and Dolphin Testnet.

Why Do You Need Manta Signer?

ZKPs are an integral part of the design and functionality of Manta protocols. Secrets that only you know represent your identity on blockchains. Signer will be the computational extension of these secrets and builds evidence based on them. You can then send this evidence to the blockchain to update the ledger with changes that only you can make. The goal is to improve zero-knowledge proof generation performance to eventually get rid of the signer.

Finally; We would like to explain the details of the Manta token, which will be released soon!

Manta Token

$MANTA token; It is the first deflationary governance token to have a token burn, which protects privacy in network uses, leverages the growth in DeFi. In addition, MANTA token holders have a say in the management and are rewarded with income from Manta Pay and Manta Swap usage fees, as well as having the right to submit bids. The main revenue sources of the Manta Governance Protocol are divided into three.

The income will be collected when users,

• replace its base tokens with an equivalent number of privacy tokens (0.1%)
• convert privacy tokens to base tokens (0.1%)
• transfer from one address to another address.

These recurring revenues will bring benefits such as cashback and management value to $MANTA tokens.

The total amount of MANTA tokens will be limited to 1,000,000,000 units. Of the Tokens, 38% is reserved for mining rewards, and 18% is devoted to development. The share of teams and consultants is 15% in total; The early, strategic and pre-sale share will be limited to 29%.

With Staking Function; Through a mechanism they call game theory, they will encourage token holders to act honestly. Good collectors will be rewarded by this mechanism, while bad collectors will lose their share of the network. With this mechanism, it will be ensured that the network remains secure. Meanwhile, the stake reward will come from transaction fee collections.

Last Word

Due to technical difficulties, no decentralized swap platform is able to protect end-to-end user privacy in the current Polkadot ecosystem or other crypto world. Manta is being developed to fill this void perfectly. manta; It will be indispensable for all users who need privacy protection, especially corporates. Therefore, we expect Manta to be a leading decentralized platform with privacy protection in the Polkadot ecosystem and the entire cryptocurrency market.