COTI, the EVM layer-2 aiming to deliver onchain private transactions at scale, has announced the launch of its testnet. The highly anticipated testnet deployment allows developers to experiment with COTI’s privacy features for the first time and explore the capabilities of Garbled Circuits technology.
To bootstrap the testnet and subsequent mainnet, COTI has secured the support of more than a dozen ecosystem partners who’ll help provide the infrastructure and tooling for builders to get to grips with COTI’s capabilities. These include non-custodial wallet MEW and AnChain, an AI-based blockchain focused on enterprise and web3 security, that will be utilizing COTI’s L2.
“The response to our testnet launch has been astounding,” said COTI CEO Shahaf Bar-Geffen, “with projects and developers from various sectors across web3 joining our community to build a private blockchain future.”
Pioneering Privacy for the People
At the heart of COTI’s layer-2 is Garbled Circuits, a technology that supports confidential transactions. It allows parties to prove the validity of an input without disclosing the input itself. In this respect, there are certain similarities to zero-knowledge proofs. The primary difference, from a scaling perspective at least, is that Garbled Circuits is multiples more efficient, as confirmed by benchmarks released by COTI to mark the testnet’s release. COTI’s implementation of Garbled Circuits, developed with the support of researchers at Soda Labs, utilizes a version of multi-party computation (MPC).
The anticipated use cases for dapps built on COTI will be wide-ranging including healthcare, fintech, DeFi, high-frequency trading, perps, and decentralized ID. While consumer privacy, be it as a patient, trader, or retail user, is one segment expected to benefit from this technology, it also has significant utility for enterprises, who will be able to transact onchain without revealing sensitive company information, be it account balances or trading intentions such as stop losses on perps markets.
From Testnet to Mainnet
While testnets tend to be dev- rather than user-oriented, there’s still scope for the COTI community to familiarize themselves with what the L2 has to offer. A testnet explorer and faucet allow users to track activity and acquire tokens that can be used to power experiments with making L2 transactions and interacting with test dapps. More experienced developers, meanwhile, can make use of the SDK to start building their own applications.
Having attracted broad cross-industry support for its forthcoming L2, hopes are high that COTI can realize its promise of delivering private payments and confidential transactions that operate at scale, allowing onchain privacy to become normalized while maintaining low network fees. From RWAs to AI, the potential applications for this technology are extensive. If COTI succeeds in its mission, onchain privacy may ultimately become the norm rather than the exception.
While the mainnet launch date has yet to be confirmed, the testnet deployment brings COTI closer to transforming its vision of private transactions into a working reality.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
