Fast Shielded Microgrants: Introduction & Call for Proposals

Fast Shielded Microgrants
1

I’d like to start a “Fast Shielded Microgrants” initiative, the aim of which is threefold:

  1. To bootstrap new projects and teams in the Namada and broader shielded ecosystem,
  2. To promote usage of Namada’s MASP, and
  3. To complement Namada’s governance-level PGF (well-suited to supporting long-term ecosystem contributors) with a nimble initiative optimized for speed and project diversity.

I plan to personally bootstrap this initiative by providing funding in some Cosmos tokens of mine and some USDC. Others are welcome and encouraged to sponsor microgrants as well, perhaps focused on ecosystems, causes, or application ideas that you care about. The aim of this forum category is to create a shared place and lightweight structure for tracking microgrants, including:

  1. Requests-for-proposals: ideas for specific projects to fund, and associated funding commitments.
  2. Proposals: proposals by teams or individuals to execute on a specific RFP.
  3. Project updates: updates over time from teams or individuals who received microgrants.

I’d like to start by opening up a call for ideas:

  1. What would you like to see built in the Namada and/or broader shielded ecosystem?
  2. What applications or tools that don’t exist today would you personally use?
  3. What new, compelling products can be enabled by Namada’s MASP and shielded actions?

Please be as specific as possible. I will take ideas from this topic and combine them with my own to put together an initial list of RFPs by the end of next week – so the deadline for ideas is Wednesday, May 28th.

Ideas do not need to be exclusive to Namada – but they should promote the shielded ecosystem more generally.

To give a flavor of the kind of ideas I’m imagining, here are three of mine:

Shielded USD Payments Mobile App

Build a mobile application for iOS and/or Android designed to facilitate shielded USD payments using Namada’s MASP. Users should be able to onboard through fiat deposits (e.g. connecting a Coinbase account) and deposit USD into Namada’s MASP. They should then be able to track their balance and send their shielded USDC to any Namada, Cosmos, or Ethereum address (Cosmos via IBC transfer, Ethereum via IBC Eureka and/or Circle CCTP). Further versions could add Visa payment support via Gnosis Pay / Apple Pay, where assets are unshielded from the MASP on-demand.

Basic Namada Ethereum Outpost

Develop a basic Namada outpost on Ethereum. This initial outpost would just be focused on economic integration. It would consist of a smart contract controlled by Namada over IBC Eureka that can hold protocol-owned liquidity of NAM:USDC or other pairs in Uniswap pools, can deposit USDC and ETH (likely collected in fees by Namada) into an aggregator such as Tokemak, and can periodically use a portion of owned non-native assets to buy-back NAM (just on the Uniswap pools). The outpost should come with a simple web dashboard so community members can track the economic data. Prototyping this would best be done on Namada and Ethereum testnets.

Shielded Index

Develop a “shielded index” of serious privacy projects, initially focused on Cosmos, as a smart contract for the Cosmos Hub or Neutron. The shielded index would own (a) NAM, UM, and NYM and (b) some liquidity positions between NAM, UM, and NYM and issue a shielded index token which represents fractional ownership of the underlying basket of assets. Holders of the shielded index would thus benefit from both performance of these three projects (more could be added in the future) and from short-term volatility. Users could purchase the shielded index token directly by depositing the assets in the current proportions (this could be automated so that users could swap from one initial asset, including something else like USDC), and could withdraw the underlying assets and LP shares directly if they want (this could be automated such that users could just sell the index token and get whatever other token they want).

11 Likes
2

Cross-Chain Private Swaps Telegram Bot

Develop a Telegram bot allowing users to automate spot swap strategies entirely confidentially via Namada’s MASP. The bot would offer a simple conversational interface to program and manage cross-chain token exchanges while preserving complete anonymity.

Key Features:

  • Telegram interface with intuitive commands (/deposit, /swap, /strategy, /balance, /withdraw)
  • Full integration with Namada’s MASP to mask all fund movements
  • Configurable automated strategies: DCA (scheduled regular purchases), grid swaps based on price thresholds, portfolio rebalancing
  • Cross-chain support via IBC (Cosmos) and IBC Eureka (Ethereum)
  • Performance notifications without revealing transaction details
  • Secure configuration backup via seed phrases
4 Likes
3

xmr integration. (+20 chars tax)

4

What kind of integration do you have in mind / what would a user be able to do?

5

Integration Architecture: The bot would integrate with Namada’s MASP as the privacy layer, connecting to multiple DEXs across different chains (Osmosis, Uniswap, etc.) via IBC and IBC Eureka. Users interact solely through Telegram - no separate app needed.

What a user could do:

Basic Usage:

  • /deposit 1000 USDC → Deposit funds into Namada’s MASP via the bot
  • /swap USDC ETH 500 → Instantly swap 500 USDC for ETH privately
  • /balance → Check shielded balances without revealing amounts publicly
  • /withdraw ETH 0x123... → Withdraw to any Cosmos/Ethereum address

Automated Strategies:

  • /strategy dca USDC→ETH 100 weekly → Scheduled purchases of $100/week in ETH
  • /strategy rebalance 60ETH-40ATOM daily → Maintain a 60/40 portfolio automatically
  • /strategy grid ETH/USDC 1800-2200 5% → Grid trading ETH between price levels
  • /strategy arbitrage ATOM Osmosis↔CosmosHub 2% → Profit from price differences

Cross-Chain Scope: Initially Cosmos ecosystem (ATOM, OSMO, etc.) + Ethereum (ETH, USDC, ERC-20s), with expansion to Solana/other chains as IBC Eureka grows.

1 Like
6

bridge/swap xmr directly into masp.

7

Was thinking some research into the possibility of selective view keys would be interesting as well.

1 Like
8

I think a discord bot would also be a welcome development. The Zcash community has one, and many live in discord land, in addition to telegram land.

Great idea!

1 Like
9

An idea ZecHub could implement is to offer small educational grants via a bounty program. We already offer bounties for shielded ZEC and shielded UM, and as part of our effort to build the shielded community, we would be honored to offer shielded NAM as well.

We specialize in easy to learn guides/videos that can help folks onboard into the growing namada ecosystem. Sometimes the best way to learn is to do and offering an shielded incentive is a creative way to introduce new folks.

Part of this idea idea is to futher bridge other shielded communities that share common goals. This could include things like bridges between discord communities or other ideas that folks from the community can suggest.

We are curious of community appetite and encourge feedback. These types of programs only work if the community wants and supports them.

:shield: :student: :heart_suit:

2 Likes
10

A debit card visa/mastercard or MIR pay, which supports shielded payments.

1 Like
11
  1. Cross-Chain Privacy Asset Management Tool
    Goal: Solve the challenge of unified management of multi-chain privacy assets and lower user adoption barriers.
    Features:
  • Develop a cross-chain wallet supporting the management of assets across privacy chains like Namada, Secret Network, and Oasis, ensuring transaction privacy through MASP or Zero-Knowledge Proof (ZK) technologies.
  • Integrate cross-chain bridges (e.g., IBC privacy channels) to enable seamless cross-chain transfers of assets like USDC and ETH between privacy chains and public chains, preventing on-chain activity patterns from exposing user behavior.
  • Provide a “Privacy Asset Dashboard” where users can customize the privacy level of their asset portfolios (e.g., partially disclosing balances or fully hiding transaction counterparties).
    Technical Dependencies**: Namada MASP, IBC protocol, ZK-SNARKs.
  1. Privacy DeFi Lending Protocol**
    Goal: Build a decentralized lending market while protecting the privacy of users’ collateral and lending records.
    Features:
  • Based on Namada’s private state proofs, users can anonymously collateralize assets like NAM and ATOM to borrow stablecoins like USDC, avoiding on-chain exposure of collateral ratios and liability status.
  • Introduce TEE or ZK technologies to privatize interest rate algorithms, preventing arbitrageurs from manipulating markets using public rate data.
  • Develop a “Privacy Credit Scoring System” that evaluates creditworthiness through off-chain encrypted data (e.g., user-authorized off-chain income proofs) instead of relying on public on-chain activities.
    Technical Dependencies: Namada TEE integration, ZK-STARKs, off-chain encrypted data transmission.
  1. Privacy Social Media Platform (Web3 Version)
    Goal: Reconstruct social media using blockchain and privacy technologies to protect user content, social relationships, and data ownership.
    Features:
  • Users register anonymously via Namada accounts, with content automatically encrypted via MASP and stored on IPFS, accessible only to authorized friends or groups for decryption.
  • Develop a “Privacy Advertising System”: Users can selectively share interest tags (e.g., “technology,” “travel”) with advertisers, who pay USDC for anonymous exposure matching these tags, avoiding permanent user profiling.
  • Integrate micropayment functionality, allowing readers to send small USDC tips to creators via private channels, supporting a “tipping-as-burning” model (tips are sent to black hole addresses to enhance privacy).
    Technical Dependencies: Namada private transfers, IPFS encrypted storage, zero-knowledge proofs (for verifying user tag authenticity).
  1. Privacy Prediction Market Platform
    Goal: Build a censorship-resistant prediction market to protect users’ position and strategy privacy.
    Features:
  • Users participate in prediction events (e.g., election outcomes, cryptocurrency prices) via privacy wallets, with betting records hidden via ZK-SNARKs and only results disclosed upon settlement.
  • Introduce “Privacy Liquidity Pools”: LP (liquidity provider) asset shares and returns are encrypted via MASP to avoid exposing fund sizes and strategy portfolios.
  • Develop “Anonymous Oracles”: Oracle nodes submit data via TEE, ensuring data source credibility without disclosing node identities to prevent Sybil attacks.
    Technical Dependencies: Namada private state proofs, ZK-rollup, TEE oracles.

Key Design Principles
Privacy-First: All solutions must protect user data and activity traces by default, avoiding “optional privacy” that fragments privacy protections.
Technical Compatibility: Prioritize construction based on Namada’s existing tech stack (e.g., MASP, TEE, IBC) to reduce development costs.
User Experience-Oriented: Lower adoption barriers through automated tools (e.g., one-click privacy transfers, smart contract templates) to avoid hindering adoption due to technical complexity.

These directions can either stand alone as independent projects or integrate with Namada’s existing features to further strengthen the practicality and diversity of the privacy ecosystem.

1 Like
12

Thanks all for the contributions thus far!

I like this idea a lot! I just have one general question: as you envision it, how would keys and signing be handled? Would the keys be stored by a remote server (maybe with a TEE), and the user just accepts that trust assumption? Or would the keys be stored (and signing performed) in the Telegram bot somehow (and is that possible)?

What kind of functionality are you looking for, specifically?

13

I think a multi-sig approach with recovery would be ideal in the long term, as it balances security and UX. The idea would be a 2/3 multi-sig where the user holds 2 keys (one main + one recovery) and the service holds 1 key.

Advantages:

  • The service can automate trades without user friction
  • The user always keeps final control (can recover their funds even if the service disappears)

Realistic Implementation:

  • Phase 1: Start with secure server storage (TEE) for a simple MVP
  • Phase 2: Migrate to multi-sig once traction is proven

The purely non-custodial approach (manual signing for each trade) would break the automation that’s the core value proposition of the bot. And pure local storage on Telegram seems technically limited.

This custodial → semi-custodial progression follows the path of many successful DeFi projects, allowing market validation before investing in more complex architecture.

But , I’m not a developer, technical experts might have other perspectives!

1 Like
14

Great initiative to bypass the “red tape” (hehe, even onchain we have it).

Do you think we should have some type of guidelines for evaluating for the stewards? Such as stage of project, category (media, privacy, tools, etc), website traffic, points for integrating with MASP or IBC, etc
OR maybe the steward after sometime can create a template for it?

Would be cool to expand this further. I mean, yes, you mention onchain, but I can see cases (off chain events, rare releases) where a project can comeback.

I guess another thing is to measure the amount of likes to a post (so kinda creating a layer between the subjectivity of the stewards). So lets say the community can also vote on posted tools / proposal.

1 Like
15

What if a view key was not all or nothing, but you could tailor viewing keys to include only the transactions you wanted whoever uses that viewing key to? realizing this may be at the bounds of what is technically feasible, but part of me thinks it could be doable.

2 Likes
16

I see. What viewing keys reveal depends on which transactions you use the associated addresses for, so you have the option to segment your transactions in that way already, but it requires knowing what you want to reveal up front, which may not always be possible (and the tooling doesn’t really exist to make this user-friendly). I think it might be possible to achieve what you want with a small separate circuit and ZKP just for proving details of some particular transactions – you could then provide such a proof to a third party who could verify it. Does that sound like it might serve your use-case?

2 Likes
17

Yes, I think it was something along those lines I was imagining.

18

Shielded Donations App Using Namada MASP

Overview
Build a donation app that leverages Namada’s MASP to offer privacy-preserving USDC donations. The app ensures:

  1. The amount received by the donatee is not publicly visible.
  2. Donations cannot be linked to a specific donatee address, even if the donor identity is public.

How It Works
Each donatee generates a unique donation link to share with their audience. When opened, the link presents a fresh znam address generated for that session, ensuring each donation is unlinkable.

Donors do not need to hold USDC or be on Namada. The app integrates third-party token swap services, enabling users to convert tokens from various chains into USDC, which is then routed via Circle CCTP or IBC into the shielded MASP address of the donatee.

Status
I started ideating and researching this project a few weeks ago. While early versions may rely on relayers or a backend that temporarily tracks some metadata , the goal is to iteratively reduce trust requirements as much as possible.

Future Possibilities
Although it may be technically challenging, I believe there’s potential to minimize or eliminate trust assumptions over time—possibly through cryptographic proofs, ZK circuits, or decentralized relayer infrastructure.

Use Cases
This app could empower creators, activists, NGOs, and others to accept private, censorship-resistant donations, while offering donors a seamless experience with a certain degree of privacy.

5 Likes
19

In connection with the development of AI, I would like to see a combination of just such technologies + blockchain with protection from Namada.
The idea is as follows: the user can write what he wants to get as a result, AI bot searches for the most profitable ways (something like an aggregator), then interacts with the desired contract and the user will only have to sign the transaction.
In this case, the user can write a large and consistent prompt of what he wants to do and the bot takes turns executing the request.

For example:
A user wants to exchange some $ ($USDT for example) from Neutron to $NAM and then deposit this $NAM into the staking.
As a result AI searches for the most profitable exchanger from $USDT to $NAM, then searches for the most profitable bridge from Neutron to Namada and transfers $NAM there and finally prompts the user to choose a validator to deposit the funds into the staking.

Such a request can be anything that involves cryptocurrency.

This will help those who are new to cryptocurrency to easily get involved in using cryptocurrency while getting the necessary protection from Namada.

I’m not a developer and wouldn’t be able to implement something like this, but if someone can, it seems like it should be a cool idea.

The platform itself will take a small commission from its side when launching transactions (except for protocols) and thus will generate profit while making life easier for the end user.

Win - win situation.

1 Like
20

I’ve been thinking about how programmable yield-bearing assets (like Noble’s USDN) could unlock new forms of shielded actions for the community. Two ideas:

Anonymous Yield Donations
This idea is somewhat related to @EmberStake’s shielded donations concept, but it focuses on leveraging yield-bearing assets to automate donations. Token holders on Namada could redirect their yield to shielded addresses or vaults tied to public good causes (like Web3Privacy Now) without ever taking custody of the yield. This could potentially enable donation-like behavior without generating a taxable income event (for some), and the donation could also remain fully private. The recipient could even issue a proof or some unique badge to donors without revealing the wallet identity.

Private Yield Lotteries
Holders could deposit a yield-bearing token into shared vaults where their principal stays untouched and shielded, while the yield is used to fund a private lottery. The idea is that every X number of epochs (or some other interval) the yield gets awarded to one or more randomly selected winners. Since this would be in the MASP, both the deposits or outcomes could stay private (if that’s what’s wanted). I could see reasons why we would want to expose the “pot” periodically to build hype.

I think there are a few ways this could work. One approach is to pool the yield over a set period of time (e.g. epochs ^^) and then distribute the amassed supply to the winner. A more experimental angle could be to skip the pooling altogether, instead a random winner is selected and begins collecting ongoing yield from all active participants for a random or fixed period of time. Maybe the winner knows how long they’ll receive yield for, or maybe they don’t (could be a fun surprise).

This could be fairly sybil-resistant using deposit proofs, etc., and the odds of winning could scale with deposit size (weighted lottery). Could even boost it with NAM rewards or match early prize rounds to make it a bit more attractive.

3 Likes