Some necessary changes

Hi there, CardMix supporters! This time the team shares some big adjustments that we have to make going forward. This is, of course, related to the events with Tornado Cash and the assault on privacy that is going on in the world.

It appears that the development of such a privacy tool as a mixer is now only possible in a completely decentralized and anonymous manner. At least when it comes to those that actually work and do not contain any backdoors in them. On the other hand, the team (not actually anonymous) wants to continue building tools that enhance the privacy of users on Cardano. So, we took some time to evaluate our options and came up with the following solution. We hope by the end, you will see the necessity of our decision and that we have the best interest of our community and the larger Cardano/crypto community in mind.

First, we released the code and the updated whitepaper for CardMix earlier than expected. The code is available now on GitHub. An updated version of the whitepaper is available on the CardMix website. The code is unfinished, and the team has to put finishing it on hold until the situation gets better. Though, at the current rate, it is improbable. Theoretically, it might get finished by some anonymous developer, but we cannot know for sure.

Second, the team is pivoting towards our new privacy solution (which is not a mixer). Welcome, ENCOINS: encoins.io. What’s our general plan going forward?

1. Release ENCOINS whitepaper in two weeks.
2. Finish and release the base layer by the end of the year. This is possible because we took a big chunk of our CardMix code into this new project.
3. Release the utility/governance token by January-February 2023. From that point onward, not just governance but the development will be decentralized.

The question you might be asking is, what happens with $MIX tokens now? Since we cannot guarantee that CardMix will be complete or that our proposed distribution will be honored by whoever completes it, $MIX tokens will be converted one to one into the ENCOINS utility/governance tokens, $ENCS. So, participating in the ISPO will now reward you with $ENCS. The tokens will serve the same purpose in the new protocol: they will be required for relayers to prove that they have a stake in the protocol, and they will be used for governance. The token holders will vote on the distribution of the treasury funds and the project’s future development direction. The two changes that we propose (that may make the new tokens more valuable in addition to better serving their purpose) are to decrease the supply to just 15 000 000 $ENCS tokens and to send all staking rewards from the value locked in the ENCOINS protocol into the treasury. The latter should ensure the project’s long-term sustainability, but more on that in the new whitepaper that is coming soon.

Another question you might be wondering about is, what can ENCOINS do for your privacy besides hiding the transaction amount? Well, potentially, it can do a lot. ENCOINS enables building more advanced privacy protocols on top of it, including, for example, private sub-ledgers and more. Imagine Monero- or ZCash-like privacy natively available on Cardano: we are building the foundation to make it possible. Then again, once the decentralized governance of the protocol is operational, the token holders will steer its further development. So, it will ultimately be up to you!

With this, we thank you for staying with us! Subscribe to our new social media (Twitter and Medium) and stay tuned!