Namada
What is Namada?
Namada is a sovereign proof-of-stake blockchain, using the CometBFT (opens in a new tab) (nee Tendermint) BFT consensus algorithm. Namada enables multi-asset private transfers for any native or non-native asset using a multi-asset shielded pool (opens in a new tab) derived from the Sapling circuit (opens in a new tab).
Namada features full IBC protocol support, a natively integrated Ethereum bridge, a modern proof-of-stake system with automatic reward compounding and cubic slashing, a stake-weighted governance signalling mechanism, and a dual continuous/retroactive public goods funding system.
Users of the MASP are rewarded for their contributions to the privacy set in the form of native protocol tokens (NAM).
Namada supports a variety of different wallets. One of these wallets is the native wallet, that exists in order to facilitate interacting with the protocol in a safe and private manner.
Furhter, Namada supports Shielded Actions, which allows users to hold their assets privately on Namada most of the time while occasionally unshielding specific assets in order to interact with existing applications on transparent chains.
You can learn more about Namada here (opens in a new tab).
What is Anoma?
Anoma is an intent-centric, privacy-preserving architecture for decentralised counterparty discovery, solving, and settlement. You can find the Anoma specs here (opens in a new tab).
How does Namada relate to Anoma?
Anoma is a full-stack architecture designed with a long term perspective, while Namada is a specific chain and featureset designed to provide practical privacy now.
Why Namada?
Privacy should be default and inherent in the systems we use for transacting, yet safe and user-friendly multi-asset privacy doesn't yet exist in the blockchain ecosystem. Up until now, users have had the choice of either a sovereign chain that reissues assets (e.g. Zcash (opens in a new tab)) or a privacy preserving solution built on an existing smart contract chain. Both have large trade-offs: in the former case, users don't have assets that they actually want to transact with, and in the latter case, the restrictions of existing platforms mean that users leak (non-trivial) metadata, and the protocols may be expensive and clunky to use.
Namada supports any fungible or non-fungible asset on an IBC-compatible blockchain as well as fungible or non-fungible assets sent over a custom Ethereum bridge (such as ERC20 tokens and ERC721 tokens, respectively). Once assets are on Namada, shielded transfers are cheap and all assets contribute to the same anonymity set.
Users on Namada earn rewards, retain privacy of assets, and contribute to shared privacy.
Layout of this specification
The Namada specification documents are organised into four sub-sections:
This book is written using NextraJS (opens in a new tab). The source can be found in the Namada Docs repository (opens in a new tab).
Contributions to the contents and the structure of this book should be made via pull requests (opens in a new tab).