Decentralized finance (DeFi), with all its promises of transparency and scalability, is becoming increasingly popular by the day. We now have a plethora of DEXes and dApps being developed with a promise of changing the future course of our financial systems. However, as the DeFi userbase continues to grow, we encounter a serious problem of privacy. The transaction information of financial assets is quite transparent on most blockchain networks, and can easily be traced back to the original user.
To counter this problem, we need a privacy protocol that can efficiently shield user information across blockchain networks. This is where Suterusu comes into the picture.
What is Suterusu?
Suterusu is a next-generation privacy protocol that protects users’ transaction information by converting tokens issued on various blockchain networks into their anonymized versions. By using a new technology called zk-ConSNARK, it shields from view both the identity of the user and the financial value of the asset transferred. What makes Suterusu different from other privacy protocols is the fact that it is highly scalable and supports smart contracts.
What Problems Does Suterusu Solve?
All the DeFi platforms today facilitate peer-to-peer transactions of digital currencies across the globe. The problem is that all these transactions are stored on a ledger and can be viewed by anyone. Most blockchain networks claim that the identity of the user is kept anonymous. But they are only pseudonymous. With a simple blockchain address, all the transactions made by a user can be traced with ease.
To solve this privacy issue, several privacy protocols like zCash have emerged over the years. These protocols use a proof generation and verification method called zk-SNARK (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge) to shield users. zk-SNARK is used to offer proof of information about any certain thing without directly revealing the actual information. It requires a setup where a trusted entity generates secret keys to keep transaction data private. This method is not efficient and contradicts the very idea of decentralization. Besides, these protocols are not scalable and do not support smart contracts.
This is exactly what Suterusu aims to solve. It aims to bring unmatched levels of privacy into the DeFi world without the need for a trusted or centralized setup.
Within three weeks of the official launch of Suter Shield BSC, the total transaction volume has exceeded 205 million USD, the number of transactions has exceeded 9,000, and the annualized TRY (Transaction return per Year) has spiked above 2,000%. With more than 1,200 transactions on Ethereum, the volume of all transactions including Suter Shield Ethereum has surpassed 210 million USD. The annualized TRY now sits over 1,000%.
How Does Suterusu Work
There are various elements that enable truly private crypto transactions within the Suterusu ecosystem. Here’s a brief overview:
zk-ConSNARK
The Suterusu protocol uses its own modified version of the zk-SNARK technology called zk-ConSNARK that eliminates the need for a trusted set-up. It acts as a second layer that lets users perform small, almost constant-size crypto transactions with efficient proof generation and verification.
Suter Shield
Suter Shield is the main privacy-preserving product of the Suter protocol. It was first deployed on Ethereum blockchain, and it accepts deposits from any Ethereum address and lets the depositor draw funds from a totally different address. It also makes sure that the two addresses are unlinkable. When the depositor and withdrawer addresses cannot be linked to each other, there is no way to trace the entire transaction. In this way, Suter can make any blockchain transaction truly anonymous. In addition, it also adopts a homomorphic public-key encryption scheme to guarantee the confidentiality of the transaction amount. Due to the universal nature of the Suterusu protocol, Suter Shield can be deployed on any blockchain, including Binance Smart Chain, that supports smart contracts.
Suter Virtual Machine (SuterVM)
SuterVM is essentially a tool that facilitates the Suterusu protocol to be deployed on blockchain networks like Binance Smart Chain, Near, Solana, Theta, and many other blockchains that support smart contracts.
Suter Smart Contracts
- Fund Contract: The user is first required to create a Suter account. Then, the ERC-20 tokens that need to be transferred are deposited into the account. The Fund smart contract converts these tokens into their anonymized versions (like s-ETH or s-WBTC) to shield them from view. The original tokens are stored in the Fund contract itself.
- Transfer Contract: Now, once the anonymized tokens are created, the Transfer contract is initiated. It uses zk-ConSNARK technology to hide the identity of the user and to encrypt the total value of the transaction. The secret key of the sender’s Suter account and the public keys of both the sender and receiver are used to create a zero-knowledge proof. This proof is served as input to the Transfer contract. Once the contract is run, the assets are transferred from sender to receiver account.
- Burn Contract: Burn contract releases the original tokens from the Fund contract by burning the anonymized versions of the tokens.
SUTER Token
SUTER is the main utility and governance token of the platform. Token holders can stake their tokens to participate in the on-chain governance of the network. The token is also used to pay the gas fees for the smart contracts that enable privacy. A part of the gas fees collected is paid as rewards to those who participate in the platform’s governance. In addition to this, SUTER is also an ERC-20 token, meaning that it can be used for payments across networks.
The total supply of SUTER is capped at 10B, out of which, 3.7B tokens are currently in circulation. The token adopts a deflationary model in which the annual supply is halved every two years. SUTER has the lowest inflation rate among all the mainstream privacy coins.
Conclusion
Ever since its launch, Suterusu has been well received by the industry. It has already been integrated into Ethereum blockchain, Binance Smart Chain, and Huobi ECO Chain. The network has a market cap of $47M as of March 2021. As DeFi continues to grow, we might see this protocol being integrated into almost all blockchain networks to protect the privacy of their users. Suterusu has the potential to become one of the major players in the DeFi ecosystem.
