Iron Fish: named after world war ii and whisper "submarine" | privacy project is introduced

If according to different uses, the existing projects in the blockchain field are divided into different blocks. Then the "privacy" sector may be one of the unloved sectors of the market these days.

In terms of usage, the privacy realm has moved beyond the stage where tokens such as XMR are needed to avoid tracking censorship. At the same time, the blockchain narrative no longer needs to be supplemented by the dark Web. On the other hand, the regulatory policy framework for the crypto world is becoming more and more perfect. Mainstream funds and hot money are bound to consider the risk of participation when entering the privacy field.

For all these reasons, few projects have achieved privacy and convenience. It also means that sacrificing convenience and pushing privacy to the hilt may win the market.

Iron Fish is a private project that has been wrapped in secrecy from concept to low-level design, and now has a web of motivated playtests.

"Submarine"

Iron Fish, Chinese translation into Iron Fish. During World War II, ironfish was a term used by the U.S. military to encrypt transmissions of "submarines." Elena Nadolinski, founder of Iron Fish, said the name was chosen because Iron Fish's history demonstrated the power of cryptography and included two tradable commodities, Iron Iron and Fish.

When it comes to privacy, we have to first determine the definition of privacy. In blockchain, privacy is mainly divided into two categories: identity privacy and transaction privacy.

Identity privacy mainly refers to the association between user identity and blockchain address. At present, most projects in the market, such as mixcoin pools, security agencies' on-chain tracking, are aimed at re-encryption or unlocking identity privacy. Most of the projects to explore identity privacy mainly rely on transaction characteristics and transaction rules and even combine some social work databases for analysis and comparison.

Due to the characteristics of blockchain accounting, transaction privacy is the extraction of some valuable information based on the data on the chain. Most of the current well-known graph database projects, including Dune Analytics, Nansen, Glassnode, etc., collect public data on the chain and output valuable information after algorithms or regular cleaning.

Of course, there are those who argue that information that exists publicly on the chain is not private information. But is there a new protocol or technology that hides all this information?

The idea at Iron Fish is that the transaction information, mining information, and wallet information are all hidden from view by any second party other than the private key owner. To achieve this, Iron Fish uses PoW consensus mechanisms and zero-knowledge proofs (Zcash's Sapling Protocol). And, along the way, Iron Fish said that in the future the network layer will support WebRTC and WebSockets, which means full Iron Fish nodes can be run directly from the browser.

Token 经济

根据设定，Iron Fish Token 总量约为 256,970,400 枚，初始供应量约 420 万枚。主网启动后第一年，每个区块奖励 20 枚，随后每一年的区块奖励都将根据衰减函数递减。

释放数量与时间变化如下：

在主网启动前的激励测试网，Iron Fish 也准备了总量 42 万枚的 Token 用于奖励用户。方式主要靠累计积分，积分可根据激励测试网挖矿、寻找 bug 或在 Github 中修改批注（Pull Request）等方式获得。每个获得积分的类别每周累计积分上限为 1000 分。同时，每开采一个区块累计 100 分，这意味着每周激励测试网挖矿获得积分上限为 10 个区块。

How to get involved in mining

1. Register an account

Before starting the node, you need to visit the official website (https://testnet.ironfish.network/leaderboard) for account registration. Interestingly, Iron Fish is registered using Magic Link, which also uses zero-knowledge proof to protect privacy. (For those interested, read:Magic: Your next password why is a password | project introduction)

Note that graffiti is the only identification for the entire participating Iron Fish and is subsequently used to motivate the testnet work proof recognition.

2. Install Iron Fish

After registration is completed, start the node. At present, the simple way to start the node is to install the Docker container, and this method is applicable to all platforms. However, some users have tested that the mining power of Docker is about 15% lower than other methods, so this paper will introduce the use of MacOS software package management system Homebrew.

2.1、Docker

Download the corresponding version from Docker's official website, and then open the system terminal (Windows PowerShell, macOS terminal).

Then, type:

Windows:

docker run --rm --tty --interactive --network host --volume %USERPROFILE%/.ironfish:/root/.ironfish ghcr.io/iron-fish/ironfish:latest

Other platforms:

docker run --rm --tty --interactive --network host --volume $HOME/.ironfish:/root/.ironfish ghcr.io/iron-fish/ironfish:latest

The first installation takes a long time, and some users will install some of the environments necessary for Iron Fish to run.

For subsequent software updates, open PowerShell/ terminal and type:

docker pull ghcr.io/iron-fish/ironfish:latest

After a while, the Iron Fish installation is complete.

2.2、macOS

On macOS, Homebrew, the package management system, is required. Open terminal and type:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Most domestic users may have various installation errors in this step, it is recommended to use scientific Internet or use domestic mirror.

After installing Homebrew, type in the terminal:

brew tap iron-fish/brew & & brew install ironfish

After a while, the Iron Fish installation is complete.

3. Start digging

Before you can start mining, you need to start the nodes and synchronize data across the network.

In Docker, click on Images and select Run Latest software. MacOS type in the terminal:

ironfish start

Once the node is started, it is the most important step to put your unique identity on the network. In Docker, click CLI, macOS create a terminal window, and type (zZH should be replaced with graffiti) :

ironfish config:set blockGraffiti "zZH"

After modifying graffiti and synchronizing the nodes, you can start mining. If you want to do some other work while you're mining, type:

ironfish miners:start

If you want to run out of CPU debt, you can try typing:

ironfish miners:start -t -1

As far as the mining work of the incentive test network is concerned, only CPU is used without affecting the work of GPU. After nearly a week of testing, under the current difficulty, the 6-core 12-thread AMD 2600X uses Docker's computing power to fluctuate around 700 KH/s, and can dig out a block in two days on average; The computation power of the 4-core 8-thread Intel I7 4870HQ under macOS is about 270 KH/s (fluctuated greatly). After a week, no block has been dug. Older laptops are not recommended for testing.

Once we've successfully excavated the block, we'll be able toBlock browser(It can only be queried based on graffiti) or locally.

In addition, operations such as transfers, taps, and checking node status can be viewed in official documents by clicking on the CLI or creating a new terminal interface and entering codes.

Project Financing

On March 6, 2021, Iron Fish announced the closing of a $5.3 million funding round, Financing parties included Electric Capital, Elad Gil, Metastable, A Capital, Slow Ventures, Dylan Field, John Lilly, Jack Abraham, Juan Benet, Jack Chou, Balaji Srinivasan, Lemniscap, James Prestwich, and Linda Xie.

On November 30, A16Z announced that it led A $27.6 million Series A round for Iron Fish, Other financiers included Sequoia Capital, Electric Capital, Metastable, Arrington XRP Capital, Do Kwon, Matt Luongo and Nathan McCauley.

In fact, it's no surprise that A16Z is interested in privacy and investing in Iron Fish. Back on November 18, when A16Z announced its investment in Nym, it revealed that Iron Fish and other projects are addressing privacy issues at the application layer.

From the launch of Iron Fish's test network to the launch of the incentive test network, it can be found that Iron Fish is constantly iterating, but there are still many problems in its network condition, such as frequent block congestion, block browser decoupling from the information on the chain, intermittent faucet failure, disconnection and memory overflow when using Docker, etc. Hopefully all this will be resolved before the mainnet arrives.

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