Namada Community Bonfire Aug 28 2025

[shy hazel]

🔥

[wispy lily]

🔥

[wispy lily]

(I'll be a bit on/of here today)

[gleaming condor]

hi

[livid hazel]

Hey guys

[rare sorrel]

Hi all

[nova wagon]

👋 Hello

[cerulean fern]

Yo

[shy hazel]

hey hey!

just want to acknowledge that our chart looks bleak, i know this is stressful. we're all in the same boat, and i think the best direction for this boat is to get some meaningful traction and prove ourselves worthy of market attn

not months-long tech upgrades, etc etc, but actual users. asap

[unique sequoia]

heylo

[opal burrow]

hi folks

[solemn current]

[shy hazel]

also i want to acknowledge that Luminara has delayed infra provider PGF for too long. we have a system for monitoring and tracking that we want to share asap for feedback. probably there is more infra running than needed, and we should do some pruning to be more economical

[cerulean fern]

Yeah trying onboard users and devs but with this charts it's kinda hard sell

[opal burrow]

is the consensus that we're ready to push for more users? is there not still UX issues? and also unsolved app-hash errors happening on housefire?

[sleek coral]

What’s up folks

[hard shore]

Hi!! Sry I'm late

[shy hazel]

glad you're here! @hard shore want to weigh in on @opal burrow's comments?

[fierce tartan]

👋 hey there

[shy hazel]

the first phase is complete--we now have a shielded pool
there aren't many other shielded pools out there, btw

[opal burrow]

don't mean to sound negative just I seem to remember agreement that pushing for users whilst unresolved issues could be counter-productive

[shy hazel]

it's important 💯

now that we have a shielded pool, i think we can focus on finding some product-market fit

we're working on one experiment that we're excited share

[hard shore]

I still think we have a pretty large issue with reliable, high-quality infrastructure to be honest. Heliax is still in the process of setting up, but it is taking some time

We need things working way more smoothly and reliably if we're going to successfully onboard a whole new class of users imo @opal burrow

[gleaming condor]

If we wait that UX and tech upgrade, before pushing for marketing/adoption, the project will die and there won't be anything left to work on.
At some point you need to draw a line and "sell and capitalize" your product while you continue to extend it ( Bug fix, upgrade is continuous).
How long is it sustainable to have a continuous price fall ?

[fresh orchid]

What do you mean exactly by high-quality infrastructure?
What is the ETA for this setup?

[shy hazel]

i think the market needs to see the potential--the coming value of a shielded pool, and we need to show traction to give confidence that our shielded pool can do it

[hard shore]

Scalable, highly reliable RPCs, indexers, etc that can be used by any frontend / Namadillo and handle increased load. Unfortunately, I don't have a super precise ETA, but @covert scarab has best idea currently

[hard shore]

I also understand this argument too tho

[cerulean fern]

After Berlin Blockchain Week and ETHCannes I've booked a trip to ETHWarsaw next week to find cracked builders to make cool apps for Namada. I think it'll be tougher now because at the previous events there was pre-market hopium and now it's down only.

[shy hazel]

Knowable is working on a proof of concept to share early next week

[opal burrow]

see your point, but first impressions are often sticky...

[shy hazel]

so i think the opportunity will be huge, and there are almost no other competitors--just Railgun and Privacy Pools. but we'll need to survive to make it to escape velocity

inevitably all banks and institutions will adopt stablecoins, because they don’t want the burden of being money transmitters
agree 👍 or disagree? 👎

[gleaming condor]

Better a bad impression (adoption) that you can fix it rather no adoption at all that will lead the project to die.

[fresh orchid]

Ok, thanks for the details. So, is an important part of our "bugs" related to the infra?

[shy hazel]

stablecoin payment rails must be public and decentralized enough so that participants are not money transmitters, but no enterprise or institution will use infra that publishes their transaction data

agree 👍 or disagree? 👎

glad you're with me. because this will be what compliance really looks like, imo

you can't just expose your customers' financial info to the world, or you're not compliant

[fierce tartan]

I think being transparent about how things are handled is important, showing how compliance works and the rails required for operation. The activity itself is what should remain private if all parties agree.

If privacy has a price, and the parties agree, then so be it.

[gleaming condor]

Is the upcoming Anoma the only way that will facilitate it or there is also some other way to leverage Namada to obtain stablecoin privacy tx

[shy hazel]

compliance-focused solutions like Fairblock won’t be sufficient, because they a) they're assuming companies will continue to be money transmitters and b) **a deep and active shielded pool is needed to break counterparty linkability to offer true transactional privacy **(not just making spend amounts confidential)

agree 👍 or disagree? 👎

[fierce tartan]

The risks of transparency involve exploitation, but there's a varying degree of this that can serve as feedback.

[autumn cipher]

Hello👋

[shy hazel]

doesn't make sense to be a money transmitter in crypto--ie. be an intermediary--if the value of the tech is disintermediation

nobody wants to have to spend the resources to act as a money transmitter, and decentralized infra sufficiently removes the intermediary as a locus of power

[hard shore]

We can (and should) absolutely obtain stablecoin privacy tx ecosystem before any Anoma tech is truly launched

[shy hazel]

so if you're still with me, i think you'll agree that asset privacy will be a huge unlock for a decentralized internet, and only shielded pools can credibly offer that. there’s a moat, and enterprise will regularly pay to cross it, because that’s what will actually be needed for compliance

[cerulean fern]

Uh is this like Team Lisa and Team Macintosh?

[hard shore]

No, I think the timelines toward actually launching tech are fairly different, and that there is a real possibility that smth like AnomaPay leverages the MASP once it is a real product

[shy hazel]

yeah i think it will make sense to use our shielded pool

[desert peak]

hi all!

[shy hazel]

doesn't make sense for a dev platform to focus on growing a shielded pool and the infra to support it

[hard shore]

AnomaPay could end up being a kind of router with intents, where one path can be the Namada MASP

[shy hazel]

when you can plug into existing shielded pools

and focus on making the best dev experience

[opal burrow]

how much do we know about AnomaPay?

[karmic fiber]

Any ETA for ETH IBC?

[shy hazel]

Housefire has had eth on it already

[gleaming condor]

Do we already know how to do that ?
An actionable plan with roadmap could help with the confidence as it has a killing storyline. (e.g. banks will go stablecoin -> Namada as the only and key enabler for the privacy tx ecosystem, with a clear action plan to get there)

[rare sorrel]

In the meantime, you can test our mobile wallet Namada vallet
https://namadawallet.com
Today we've released new app version 1.3.1.

Improvements:

1. Shielded transfers.
2. Unshielding transfers.
3. Performance improvements.

[wispy lily]

disagree in the medium and long term. and when they do they will integrate their own systems imo. (sorry I'm popping in and out here)

[shy hazel]

i think Namada should be the best way to send private USDC to any chain with native USDC support

if you have USDC shielded with Namada, it can be used to pay anyone on Base, Ethereum, Solana, Hyperliquid, Cosmos, or anywhere native USDC is supported. fast, cheap, and composable across all CCTP chains, Namada will be the portal

we're evaluating the technical side, but it's not looking like any major upgrade is needed

[hard shore]

We're sorting out a potential small bug in the v201.0.3 release rn, once we are comfortable with the new release, we will try to upgrade mainnet and be able to develop some integrations to allow this smoothly

[autumn cipher]

Now with CosmWasm active in Cosmos Hub, the ethibc router thing would be easier I assume?

[desert peak]

What regulatory issues led to the closure of Penumbra Labs? As I understand it, the project was close to Namada. Are there similar risks for us?

[hard shore]

AnomaPay is rly just an MVP in this stage, I don't believe any engineering has begun there yet

[shy hazel]

it's not a regulator pressuring them, it's that the US entity Penumbra Labs ran out of money

[hard shore]

Yeah the regulatory explanation was not exactly accurate as far as I am aware. They are out of money, no one wants to invest further

[livid agate]

👋 - joining for a few minutes here, happy to help with any Qs

[gleaming condor]

Is it still on housefire or mainnet ?

[rare sorrel]

If you haven't done a review yet, we would appreciate it if you could leave one here
https://forum.namada.net/t/testing-namada-mobile-wallets/1799/25

[hard shore]

The project essentially died when Henry left - my two cents

[shy hazel]

Penumbra Labs was engaging with VCs to raise more money, and weren't able to close. the thinking is that VCs don't want to invest in Penumbra because of regulatory uncertainty

[rare sorrel]

Mainnet

[opal burrow]

#1410670644458291330 message

[karmic fiber]

What was the point of low FDV when tokens with high FDV have had less all time falling?

[livid agate]

Just to note, neither Heliax (nor other developers) control the markets. If we did, you can bet they would look different, like personally I would swap Namada and Ripple (grifter scam) 😉

[cerulean fern]

What is the goal at the W3PN/Protocol Labs Berlin Retreat and can I join?

[livid agate]

Great question! I am not the right person to answer, though, I recommend contacting the organizers (I learned about the event through the web3privacy folks).

[shy hazel]

if helpful, i can connect you w w3pn people, @cerulean fern

[livid agate]

That's their interpretation, and I can believe that the regulatory uncertainty made it much harder, I'm sure it's incredibly frustrating. I think, though, to draw lessons that will be useful for Namada, we should also acknowledge that Penumbra simply did not find PMF, and spent a long time and a lot of money on various efforts (3 entity split, extremely complex liquidity tournament) that IMHO were not at all strategically oriented towards getting it. We don't live in ZIRP land any more - you ship or you die.

[shy hazel]

yup

Penumbra is a warning to us--get fit or die

[desert peak]

just for brainstorming... Maybe we should add the currently popular Cronos POS to MASP? No integration issues, fast hype, a coin from the top 30. If the main UI issues are resolved, this could be free promotion.

[shy hazel]

just wanna resurface this, in case it was buried #1410670644458291330 message

i think Namada should be the best way to send private USDC to any chain with native USDC support

if you have USDC shielded with Namada, it can be used to pay anyone on Base, Ethereum, Solana, Hyperliquid, Cosmos, or anywhere native USDC is supported. fast, cheap, and composable across all CCTP chains, Namada will be the portal

we're evaluating the technical side, but it's not looking like any major upgrade is needed

[shy hazel]

perhaps, but i think we should be focused with what we grow and what we pursue

[livid agate]

A random idea I had earlier this week that I wanted to float here: what do we think about adding some more regular IBC assets to IBC? I saw someone asking in #general about AXL a few days ago, and there are tons of assets already on Osmosis and other IBC chains that we can enable just with IBC allowlist proposals. May not be super high volume, but it's a good co-marketing opportunity, easy to do, and the more assets in the MASP the better!

[shy hazel]

payment tokens--stables--are growing in issuance, volume, and adoption. very quickly

[livid agate]

Do you know what the latency for CCTP from Base would be? Unfortunately, from Ethereum itself it's ~ 18 minutes (Ethereum finality).

[hard shore]

Yeah this is extremely low lift and we should def add more assets

[shy hazel]

if we capture value at the entrance and exit of the masp, payment tokens seem like the best place to start

[shy hazel]

cctp v2 is < 30 sec

https://blog.chainport.io/circles-cctp-v2

https://developers.circle.com/cctp

[cerulean fern]

Their tech was solid but tbh I didn't enjoy using Penumbra. Namada I already like and use a lot more in practice even despite the 🐛 And I have ideas for apps just need to build them 😅

[shy hazel]

i think we should wait grow the number of IBC channels we have. could be fine to open an Axelar channel and then support a bunch of their tokens tho

[cerulean fern]

Decentralized Imgur with private pay-per-upload only

[shy hazel]

i think power users / defi traders would use private USDC now, if we offered it
particularly if the gas fees were low and the cross chain was smooth

no fancy app or anything--just a simple UI and get that volume started

i have "shielded USDC" (which is on Namada), but i can get it to any Circle-supported chain in seconds, so it doesn't feel like it's even on Namada

there's nothing else like that out there, far as i know

[livid agate]

interesting. is this not supported by noble then? or why was it so slow when I tried it?

[shy hazel]

not yet

i believe that EVM chains now have cctp v2, but with Noble, everything is custom

[hard shore]

I believe skip.go leverages CCTP, right?

[livid agate]

It does, idk if it's v2 though

[hard shore]

Does Noble not use it for their Fast USDC option?

[livid agate]

Fast USDC on Skip is some Agoric orchestration thing

Fees are pretty high and there's a low cap

[shy hazel]

they use Agoric

[livid agate]

Also involves another blockchain for zero good reason (no shade to Agoric, but it's not really necessary)

[shy hazel]

from eg. Base to Noble is slow, but from Noble to Base is fast
Noble has instant finality

ethereum chains need ~15 mins for finality, so i think cctp waits until finality before attesting to the burn

[livid agate]

in general you can get around this with a third party fronting the funds and taking the finality risk (these could also be different parties)

sometimes this is called "intent-based bridging"

[shy hazel]

yeah Everclear does this

[livid agate]

from a quick skim of CCTPv2 it looks like they do this, where the third party is Circle

[shy hazel]

makes sense

they take the chance, which is worth it for them

[livid agate]

they can charge some fees, yeah

ultimately slow finality is effectively a tax on interop

[shy hazel]

anyway it's not terrible--so you have to wait ~17 minutes to have your USDC become private

then you can send it anywhere very quickly

it won't always be this 17-min wait, but for now

[livid agate]

there's some interest in the Ethereum ecosystem to update their consensus to sth more modern (more like Tendermint). I've been doing my little part to lobby for it 😆 maybe something others could help with as well

[shy hazel]

like i suspect we can have this working without an upgrade

[livid agate]

what is concretely needed, exactly?

[shy hazel]

on ethresear.ch?

[livid agate]

https://ethresear.ch/t/lmd-ghost-with-256-validators-and-a-fast-following-finality-gadget/22856/6?u=cwgoes

[shy hazel]

we're determining that now. Spork has picked up my PoC work and our aim is to have something before Monday

[livid agate]

exciting!

gotta run, but looking forward to better infra, more assets on the MASP, private USDC PoC. and more!

[shy hazel]

1. we send USDC from Namada shielded pool to Noble with instructions to burn and to mint to an address on Base

2. we burn USDC on Base with instructions to mint on Noble and forward it to Namada shielded pool

we intend to demo #2 early next week. #1 will be directly possible after the September Noble mainnet upgrade

there are workarounds to make #2 possible now, like Skip api, but i suspect Noble will be the way

[safe canyon]

Does that only work on Base or is it an example?

[shy hazel]

Noble is calling it Orbiter: https://github.com/noble-assets/orbiter/blob/main/docs/integration.md
it's just an auto-forwarder

[autumn cipher]

Sounds nice, so the same concept could be used in the future to connect with Solana eg?

[shy hazel]

we'll make it work for Base, then we'll make it work for every other chain with native USDC

[shy hazel]

exactly

we will expand (very quickly) to wherever USDC expands to

[autumn cipher]

Like it

[shy hazel]

start with USDC, then USDT and store-of-value tokens like ETH/BTC

USDC will be ++easy to expand. think we'll need an upgrade to do the others well

but we think USDC will be an important test for how successful Namada will be (before expanding)

showing the market that a) we solve a real problem, b) that we are the dominant solution and c) that we have meaningful revenue will make Namada look like a sleeper bet

we will really have to show this tho--really get the narrative out

with some market attn and some real experience with user flows, we'll have the runway and sense of direction to direct our growth

[autumn cipher]

Having a strong volume in USDC within the shielded pool would be an important achievement, plus multiple routes to come in and out, things could end up with positive scenario in regard adoption and usage to collect masp fees

[shy hazel]

it's really important that we don't sit around waiting for tech upgrades with uncertain timelines, and CCTP allows for us to bypass that

[shy hazel]

exactly

[fresh orchid]

Do you already have a strategy in mind for that?
Once it has been tested and proven to work, how can we spread it effectively and drive usage and hype?

[shy hazel]

in the last 30 days, Base did $1.37T in USDC volume (with only like $3.5B USDC on the chain). i don't think there's a shielded pool serving Base rn

[safe canyon]

While fees should not be a priority in this phase, at some point the protocol needs to generate revenue. We currently allow Namada's fees to be paid in any token. We could use those alternative fee tokens to buy or burn NAM, or we could restrict fees to be paid in NAM only. In the latter case, NAM should become a cross-chain token, right?

But I guess my question is more a suggestion or hope that NAM as an ERC20 or SPL token is a more attractive asset than a Cosmos token.

[shy hazel]

we should get a sense for how Circle and Base feel about this. if they're into it, i think they can help us with this

[autumn cipher]

They are indeed huge numbers, tornado cash doesn't work with USDC, right? Just ETH if I recall?

[shy hazel]

we have the connections we need to find this out

[shy hazel]

think it supports USDC, but nobody is working on tornado cash any longer

[shy hazel]

yes, but i think we will prioritize fees. and it can be used to buy NAM

if we take 0.25% for shielding and 0.25% for making a payment (ie. unshielding), for folks spending 0 - $10k this is very small

but with lots of volume, this will add up quickly

$2.50 to shield $1000? that's cheap
$0.25 to privately pay someone $100? also cheap

but if we do $100m in volume, we'll earn $500k in fees. that doesn't seem like a lot of volume to achieve

[cerulean fern]

Now that's a selling point! 🔥

[shy hazel]

we're way over time for the Bonfire, was just a bit too fired up to see it

there's other stuff to talk about, i'm sure--one thing i don't want to forget is that Spork implemented a new endpoint for namada-indexer that makes querying transactions much easier

hasn't been released yet

i'm particularly excited about seeing exactly what MASP activity has been happening