Cyclone Cash

Cyclone Cash

Privacy-preserving cryptocurrency transactions with 90% gas cost reduction using Nova folding schemes.

Project description

Cyclone Cash is a next-generation privacy protocol that revolutionizes anonymous transactions by reducing gas costs to just 10% of Tornado Cash while maintaining the same level of privacy and security. The core innovation lies in using Nova folding schemes for incremental verifiable computation (IVC), which allows us to batch multiple transaction proofs off-chain and verify them with a single on-chain operation.

Traditional privacy protocols like Tornado Cash require expensive on-chain proof verification for every transaction. Cyclone Cash solves this by:

• Folding multiple proofs into a single proof using Nova IVC

• Aggregating Merkle tree updates off-chain with cryptographic guarantees

• Checkpointing compressed state commitments on-chain periodically

• Enabling batched verification of many transactions at once

Key features

• Full Privacy: Complete transaction unlinkability and anonymity

• 90% Gas Reduction: Ultra-low transaction costs via Nova folding

• Incremental Updates: Off-chain Merkle tree maintenance with IVC proofs

• Modular Design: Separate circuits for deposits, withdrawals, and state transitions

• Battle-tested Cryptography: Built on arkworks and Poseidon hash functions

• EVM Compatible: Direct deployment on Ethereum and Layer 2s

Technologies used

• Rust - Core implementation language with arkworks ecosystem

• Nova + CycleFold - Folding schemes for incremental verifiable computation

• arkworks - Comprehensive zero-knowledge cryptography library

• Poseidon Hash - SNARK-friendly cryptographic hash function

• BN254 + Grumpkin - Elliptic curve cycle for efficient folding

• Solidity - Smart contract implementation

• Alloy - Modern Ethereum development framework

• Groth16 - Final proof system for on-chain verification

• KZG Commitments - Polynomial commitment scheme

• Clap - Command-line interface framework

Basic Architecture

Circuit

Flow

Deposits: Users deposit ETH with commitments, creating O(1) hash-chain updates

Off-chain Processing: Nova IVC incrementally proves Merkle tree state transitions

Checkpointing: Compressed state commitments are submitted to the contract

Withdrawals: Users prove inclusion against registered checkpoints with minimal gas

• GitHub Repository: https://github.com/TornadoOpt

• License: MIT License (open-source)

• Main Components:

  - src/circuits/ - Nova IVC circuits for Merkle tree operations

  - src/contracts/ - Smart contract interactions and proof verification

  - src/cli/ - Command-line interface for deposits, withdrawals, and checkpoints

  - TornadoOptV1.sol - Main privacy contract with optimized gas usage

  - NovaDecider.sol - Nova proof verifier contract

Deployment

• Smart Contract: Deployed on Ethereum Sepolia testnet

• Contract Address: 0x80184665d7AFFBAceEc0a3685e34C3B6258C1E1D (Sepolia)

• Demo Interface: CLI-based interaction for deposit, withdrawal, and checkpoint operations

• Testing: Comprehensive test suite with cargo test

• Documentation: Complete setup and usage instructions in README.md

Screenshot

• Tornado cash gas cost
  https://etherscan.io/tx/0x674dfa52bb0494f81413c257ca05cbbe8a68ad9c472444f49359f2c406924250

• Cyclone cash gas cost
  https://sepolia.etherscan.io/tx/0x1a398781fe138205a9adf4a0f71a987832ae5e5ce43381e7200cbd0bd232640b

Deliverables
Cyclone Cash Contract (Sepolia)

https://sepolia.etherscan.io/address/0xb87cef96a8112a3627ebb8fac90a7ab001e4a004

Github repos

https://github.com/TornadoOpt

Slides
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16XSy4OaWlNA7AdEyr1gfelM3vetzHbY3bSJOPM_Ykfw/edit?usp=sharing

Frontend Demo

https://youtu.be/uM1SsCyrgi8