“Crypto’s Dirty Little Secret: How Shutter Network’s Got a Solution for Ya!”
Well, shucks, folks! 🤠 It seems like cryptocurrency, the supposed savior of the common man, has turned into a right ol’ mess. 🤦♂️ According to Shutter Network core contributor Loring Harkness, them fancy “maximum extractable value” (MEV) bots and whale decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) voters have made crypto a regular playground for the rich and powerful. 🤑
But fear not, dear reader! 😊 Harkness reckons there’s a simple solution to all these problems. On Episode 14 of The Agenda podcast, he sat down with hosts Jonathan DeYoung and Ray Salmond to chat about fairness in crypto, how Shutter Network uses encryption to safeguard users, and why enabling free and fair transactions has global geopolitical implications for activists and those living under authoritarian regimes. 🌎
Crypto Ain’t Fair When MEV Bots Steal Your Lunch Money 🍞
Harkness described Shutter as “a platform which helps your favorite platforms be more fair, credibly neutral and private.” 🤝 It does this by encrypting data such as transactions or DAO votes until a certain threshold is reached, like when a transaction has been confirmed or a DAO voting period has ended. This way, them MEV bots can’t steal from users, and whales can’t manipulate voter sentiment. 🐳
MEV attacks have been plaguing the crypto space, especially decentralized finance. 📉 Between September 2022 and June 2024, at least 526,207 Ether (ETH), worth around $1.3 billion, was extracted from Ethereum. And let’s not forget that notorious Solana-based bot that captured $30 million over just two months in 2024! 🤑
“By encrypting that transaction before it goes into the mempool, […] these MEV bots are blind,” Harkness said. “Because they can see there’s a transaction, but they don’t know the contents of the transaction, they’re not able to manipulate it, and so they can’t place their transactions strategically before or before and after that transaction.” 🤔
“As a result, it protects normal blockchain users, people like you and me, from malicious MEV and from this form of organized theft, which has become pervasive on Ethereum.”
Crypto: The Unsung Hero of Financial Freedom 🎸
Before working on Shutter, Harkness lived in Myanmar, where he was building alternative finance mechanisms. But when the country’s military seized power in a 2021 coup, things took a turn for the worse. 🚨
The new military government cracked down on protests and began “a process of weaponizing the TradFi banking system,” Harkness told The Agenda. “The Myanmar military used the banking system in order to identify pro-democracy actors and, in some cases, seize their assets and, in other cases, imprison them.” 🚔
But crypto offered a lifeline, allowing residents to maintain the value of their savings through stablecoins as the currency became volatile. Others converted their funds into crypto to move it out of the traditional banking system, where it was at risk of government seizure. 🌈
“With self-sovereignty of digital assets, they were able to basically move their money out of Myanmar and onchain, even though they themselves physically were still in the country. And it gave them a protection against the arbitrary seizure of assets by the military.”
To hear more from Harkness’ conversation with The Agenda — including more on how threshold encryption on Shutter Network works and whether crypto has lost its cypherpunk roots — listen to the full episode on CryptoMoon’s Podcasts page, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don’t forget to check out CryptoMoon’s full lineup of other shows! 📻
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of CryptoMoon. 🙅♂️
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2025-02-19 17:36