ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has transferred 400 eth, worth around $1.05 million, to Railgun, a well-known cryptocurrency mixer, according to on-chain data from the Arkham Intelligence panel.
The transaction, which took place on August 19, was corroborated by Web3 analytics platform SpotOnChain, which x.com/spotonchain/status/1825398787155939832?t=X4nhFauIL1Xi4xaE5gJXvQ&s=19″>fixed that Buterin had transferred 662 eth, approximately $1.91 million, to Railgun in the past ten months.
Railgun
Railgun works like the approved Tornado Cash protocol, as it helps hide its users’ transactions. However, it uses the Privacy Pool protocol, a concept taken from an academic paper by Buterin.
Privacy pools allow users to create cryptographic proofs that verify the legitimate origin of their funds while maintaining privacy. Therefore, if honest users generate these proofs, only malicious actors, such as the North Korean-backed Lazarus hacker group, will lack them, and this differentiation could help authorities identify and exclude these illicit participants.
Buterin said:
“Railgun uses the privacy pool protocol, making it much harder for malicious actors to join the pool without compromising users’ privacy.”
Thanks to Buterin’s continued use, Railgun’s popularity has increased. It now has nearly 10,000 unique users on the ethereum blockchain and has processed a total of $1.6 billion in transactions, according to the Dune Analytics dashboard.
Another donation?
The specific reason for Buterin's recent move is unclear. However, some members of the community speculate that it could be related to charitable donations.
In fact, Buterin has a history of significant cryptocurrency donations. In 2021, he contributed over $1 billion worth of the Shiba Inu meme coin to India’s Covid-19 Cryptocurrency Relief Fund.
More recently, he x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1824034740627800121?t=uFvoxnGzjMoWLk4IxYmMvg&s=19″>donated 200 eth, valued at over $500,000, to an animal welfare charity fund. Buterin claimed that these funds were generated from the sale of various animal-themed tokens, while urging coin issuers to allocate them directly to charities in the future.
Mentioned in this article
(tags to translate)ethereum
