Blockchain technology is highly regarded for its transparency and decentralization, as any transaction information is accessible to everyone. However, this can inadvertently have a negative impact on individuals or organizations as they lose privacy rights over the assets they hold. From here, Iron Fish was born as a solution to enhance user privacy in blockchain systems. So what is Iron Fish? Let’s learn about Iron Fish through the following article!
Iron Fish Project Overview
What is Iron Fish?
Iron Fish is a decentralized Layer-1 blockchain that uses a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism and is censorship-resistant and publicly accessible. The project aims to ensure the privacy of all transactions on the blockchain, similar to the SSL/TLS layer invented in the 90s, which paved the way for the development of e-commerce and many other industries. The Iron Fish development team believes that privacy is a fundamental requirement to protect users and expand the use of cryptocurrencies into the future.
Iron Fish uses zk-SNARKs - zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) encryption solutions to ensure the authenticity of certain information without revealing its content. Specifically, zk-SNARKs allow users on Iron Fish to conduct transactions without revealing their balance, recipient, or even personal information. Instead, Iron Fish will use cryptographic proofs to encrypt the simplest transaction information to prove that users have sufficient funds to trade.
Iron Fish also uses the Sapling protocol - created by Zcash for building and validating protected transactions in the blockchain. Each account is equipped with a key that grants "read-only" access to activity associated with that specific account. Iron Fish supports encrypted memo fields for FATF (Financial Action Task Force) compliance for virtual asset service providers (VASPs), allowing them to store information after a transaction is completed.
Why is this project called Iron Fish?
During World War II, the term "Ironfish" was used to refer to secret communications submarines on the battlefield (such as the Navajo Code Tellers).
The project development team chose the name to represent the "power of cryptography," where a complex concept is "simplified" to make it easier to understand.
Features of Iron Fish
Privacy
Iron Fish uses zk-SNARK technology to give users control over their transaction information and positions itself as the SSL layer of the blockchain to ensure privacy.
High availability
Iron Fish provides high availability to users and developers to ensure the privacy of every transaction. The project is building a toolkit to maximize user experience so that users can trade IRON tokens on different platforms.
Emphasis on decentralization
Iron Fish is a censorship-free Proof of Work (PoW) blockchain available to everyone. The project provides a range of tools that users can use to create wallets, run their own nodes and be able to mine IRON tokens.
Adhere to regulatory compliance
Although Iron Fish values user privacy, it still does not forget to comply with existing regulations. Each Iron Fish account will be equipped with a set of viewing keys, allowing exchanges or financial institutions to audit, manage and comply with AML obligations.
The main components of the Iron Fish blockchain
Network layer
The network layer is an important part of any blockchain as it supports all the features that make the protocol outstanding and unique. Technically, the network layer regulates how nodes interact with each other, how they communicate, transfer information, and send requests and respond to specific messages from different nodes.
When building any decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) system, Network Address Translation (NAT) dependencies must be addressed. Most machines, laptops, tablets and phones are behind routers and firewalls, making it difficult for people to connect directly to each other. From here on, the network layer seems to solve the problem.
There are some network layers that require users to set up port forwarding for routers to solve NAT problems. However, the above issues are solved when there is Iron Fish - a blockchain focused on ease of use that uses a combination of WebRTC and WebSockets to implement the network layer. Deployment of Iron Fish nodes can be done immediately in the CLI environment or even directly in the browser. This makes Iron Fish available to anyone, regardless of their lack of technical knowledge or ability.
Storage
In Iron Fish's data structure and storage model, LevelDB and IndexDB are used to store basic data. The most basic data structures that represent Iron Fish's global state are notes and zeroizers. Stored components include:
Note: This is a payment method representation on Iron Fish, similar to Bitcoin’s Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO). Nodes are referenced privately and will only be referenced publicly under two circumstances. The first case is when the notes are as important as transaction outputs, and the second case is when the notes exist in hash form. Notes in particular are always private.
Nullifier: This is a unique identifier for the note and can only be used when exposed as part of a transaction. After the transaction information is displayed, the zeroizer will be saved in Iron Fish's data structure and help track all nodes on the Iron Fish blockchain.
Merkle Tree of Notes: This is a fixed-size data structure with a depth of 32 that stores all created notes. Unlike other blockchains, where UTXOs are deleted after they are used, this Merkle tree is an append-only data structure in which notes are continuously added.
Merkel Nullifiers: This is the data structure used to track all nullifiers (32-byte numbers) that have ever been exposed when their corresponding notes were used.
Mining
Mining refers to randomly mining new blocks through the Proof of Work (POW) consensus mechanism and calculating the rewards for miners. The Iron Fish blockchain is set up with an algorithm that automatically adjusts the mining difficulty to achieve an average block time of 60 seconds, increasing or decreasing the mining difficulty if it observes that previous blocks are coming too quickly or too slowly.
To become a miner, a node must have a synchronized global data structure (the node's Merkle tree and the Nullifier's Merkle tree) and know at least the two most recent blocks.
Account Creation
Iron Fish will focus on the core details of how the Iron Fish wallet is created to support fully private transactions. The way you create an account in Iron Fish is influenced by the Sapling protocol, but there are still some differences.
Secret Key: This is the core part needed to build all other parts of the user's wallet, it is a 32-byte random number.
Spending Key Pair: This key pair is used to record spending associated with a user's account and is derived directly from the secret key.
Nullifier Key Pair: These keys are used to generate the Nullifier required for the note, and are also derived from the secret key.
Outgoing View Key (ovk): This is the key to decrypt outgoing transactions. It is obtained by hashing the secret key and modifier using the blake2b hash with additional parameters, and then taking the first 32 bytes of the result.
The Incoming View Key (ivk): This is the key to decrypt the incoming transaction. It is obtained using the blake2s hash function, which hashes the bytes of the license key with the bytes of the derived key.
Public Address: An address consisting of a transport key and a decentralizer. They work together to allow a single wallet with private keys to hold up to 211 public addresses.
Transaction Creation
Similar to accounts, transactions in Iron Fish also strictly follow the Sapling protocol, but there are still some differences. All Iron Fish trades are protected trades, meaning they do not reveal any information to any observer without explicit access.
This privacy protection is achieved through the use of ZKP (Zero-Knowledge Proofs), which allows transaction data to be encrypted along with highly valid proofs. Things to consider include:
Transaction components.
Expense description component (element that shows how the account is expended in the note).
Component that describes the output (the component that creates new notes).
How to balance transactions to ensure the correct amount has been spent and paid.
How validators (like miners) verify any transaction.
A special type of transaction called a mining fee is used to reward miners for successfully mining blocks.
How to encrypt and decrypt notes so that the parties involved can see the transaction details.
Verification and Consensus
Consensus is the validation layer where Iron Fish sets the rules for nodes to accept the next block. This affects the node's new block construction, which must comply with established rules in order to be accepted by other nodes in the network.
An Iron Fish block will be accepted if its title and content are valid. At a high level, verify that the block header has enough work by checking if the hash value is less than the target value. The node then performs the state transition by correctly applying all transactions in the block to the two global data structures and providing two Merkle results. Similarly, validating the block contents also confirms that all transactions in the block are valid.
Basic information about IRON token
Token name: Iron Fish Token
Token abbreviation: IRON
Blockchain: Ethereum
Token standard: ERC-20
Contract: Updating
Token Purpose: Utility, Management
Total supply: 256,970,400 IRON
Circulating supply: updating
Currently, the expected total supply of IRON tokens is 256,970,400, but block mining rewards will decrease and be adjusted year by year.
Token distribution
updating...
Where can investors trade IRON tokens?
Currently, IRON is not listed on any exchange. Investors should be aware and understand carefully to avoid trading fake IRON tokens.
What are IRON tokens used for?
IRON is a token used to govern the protocol and incentivize IRON holders to participate in protocol changes and improvements.
development team
The Iron Fish team is composed of many members with many years of experience building products for world-renowned technology companies such as Microsoft, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, Uber, etc. Prominent members include:
Elena Nadolinski: She is the founder and CEO of Iron Fish. She worked as a software programmer at Microsoft and Airbnb for a total of 7 years. In 2017, Elena was invited to attend the birthday party of Filecoin founder Juan Benet in California. Through this party, she had the opportunity to interact with blockchain developers, which led to the idea of Iron Fish, whose mission is to create privacy for people.
Rohan Jadvani: He is a software developer at Iron Fish. He has worked as a software developer at prominent financial and technology companies such as JPMorgan Chase & Co and Snap Inc.
Jason Spafford: He is a software developer at Iron Fish. He has 15 years of software development experience and worked at Uber for 2 years.
In addition, the team also includes programmers, designers, and people with extensive experience in the technical field. Iron Fish is headquartered in San Francisco.
investor
Currently, Iron Fish has received support from institutional investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Electric Capital, Sequoia Capital, etc., as well as individual investors such as Linda Xie (former Coinbase product manager), Juan Benet (Protocol Labs, Filecoin CEO) And especially Do Kwon (Terraform Labs CEO).
in conclusion
Through this article, you must have understood the basic information of the Iron Fish project and can make your own investment decisions. I wish you success and great profits in this potential market.
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