Private Transactions on BSC vs. ETH — Are They Any Different?
Many people who utilize the Ethereum blockchain are familiar with its most popular privacy solution: Tornado.cash. This decentralized protocol uses cryptographic methods(zkSnarks) to break the on-chain link between deposit and withdrawal addresses, allowing for anonymous transactions.
Currently supporting over 100M USD-worth of tokens flowing through its privacy funnel every day, Tornado has thus proven the reliability and effectiveness of its implementation over a long time, cementing its status as the gateway to anonymity on Ethereum. So now, with the growth of Binance Smart Chain, an alternative to Ethereum with, many users have wondered — are private transactions on BSC also possible?
Ethereum vs. Binance Smart Chain
To answer this question, we’d have to first look at the differences between BSC and Ethereum. Although the two chains are almost identical in many ways since BSC is a modified Ethereum fork, one key difference separates them — their validators.
At a high level, validators approve transactions that have been submitted to the blockchain, accepting or rejecting them. On Ethereum, the validators are the miners and are decentralized so once a block is added to the blockchain, it cannot be reverted. Meanwhile, on BSC, all the validators are organized under Binance, creating a theoretical possibility for a transaction to be reverted, rolled-back as if it never happened along with all the others on its block. So, does this mean Tornado-style cryptographic transactions are not possible on BSC? How does having grouped validators affect private transactions?
Privacy on BSC
Well, the answer to the aforementioned question is — it doesn’t; at least, not directly.
The cryptographic privacy funnel of Tornado.cash is just as effective and foolproof on Binance Smart Chain as it is on Ethereum. Once you make a deposit, the technology will guarantee that your deposit address isn’t connected to your withdrawal address, making the transaction anonymous. This can’t change even if 100% of the BSC validators want it to.
Having said that, it’s true that BSC validators could theoretically revert your transaction, making the funds you sent return to your deposit wallet. Yet, that is extremely unlikely, because in order to do that, they would also need to revert all the transactions on that block. If you were to then make another transaction, they would have to revert it again, and this cycle could repeat ad infinitum. In simple terms, this impracticality makes this distant possibility move from theoretical, towards impossible.
Such a pattern would pause their entire blockchain for an indefinite period of time, an event Binance would certainly never want to see. That’s also why BSC doesn’t revert the blockchain after major hacks or rug pulls, because the cost isn’t worth it to them. So in the end, the key point of it all, is this — your privacy is still absolute.
How to make private transactions on BSC
Although Tornado.cash only operates on Ethereum, luckily, a new solution will soon be available on BSC.
Swirl.cash, a BSC-customized fork of Tornado, will launch next week after its upcoming presale on the LaunchPad at Wault.Finance. Using the same programmatic methods, its implementation will be just as foolproof as Tornado’s is on Ethereum. As such, you can feel relieved knowing an umbrella exists to protect your privacy, preserving it in absolute fashion through powerful cryptography that has stood the test of time.
More info on Swirl.cash:
Website: https://swirl.cash
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Swirl_Cash
Telegram: t.me/Swirl_Cash
