Expanding the Shield: Namada’s Post-Launch Roadmap
With the completion of Namada’s mainnet launch finally in sight, the community is now on a mission to expand the network into the composable privacy layer for all of Web3. This means adding plug-and-play data protection features to blockchains across the entire crypto ecosystem—so users can finally enjoy the same protections they already have in the off-chain world, no matter which assets and apps they use.
Blockchain privacy has been a difficult problem to solve. Until now.
As the composable privacy layer, Namada is designed to be as easy to integrate as possible for existing chains and dapps, requiring as few changes as possible to their code. It’s also designed to minimize user experience tradeoffs, so accessing privacy features can be as easy as possible for users.
To achieve this expansive vision, the Namada community plans to guide the network through a path of expanding to one network and ecosystem after another, integrating with decentralized applications and upgrading the network to add key new functionality.
Part of this path has already been laid out in various community discussions, and other parts will need to be explored together. Here we’ll take a look at the roadmap for how Namada will grow, evolve, and expand following the completion of the network’s five-phase mainnet launch.
Bridge to everywhere
Expanding access to Namada’s privacy benefits to all of Web3 means broadening Namada’s connections to more and more ecosystems and supporting more and more assets.
Today, Namada is compatible with the IBC ecosystem and can support any IBC-enabled asset or dapp. Discussions are underway to add shielding support for additional IBC assets beyond the initial set, which as of today includes the following supported IBC assets:
- TIA/stTIA
- OSMO/stOSMO
- ATOM/stATOM
- USDC (via Noble)
- UM (Penumbra DEX)
- NYM (Nym mixnet)
- NTRN (Neutron)
The next step beyond enabling support for additional IBC assets will be adding new bridge connections to expand Namada into additional ecosystems, including the Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana ecosystems. This would mean bringing privacy to Web3’s most widely used assets and applications—a huge step toward expanding protection to all chains. Bridges under discussion include IBC Eureka, the latest version of the IBC protocol which expands support to the Ethereum ecosystem, and Wormhole. Wormhole is connected to 40+ blockchains and will enable Namada to expand shielded protection to ecosystems like Solana and Base.
Shielded actions galore
A key component of how Namada enables cross-chain composability is shielded actions: the ability to program multi-step operations that enable functionality for use cases like shielded DeFi. The goal with shielded actions is to make shielded assets as functional as unshielded assets, ensuring users don’t have to choose between usability and data protection.
With shielded actions, developers can integrate Namada’s shielding capabilities into new and existing applications, enabling users to participate in DeFi on transparent chains while keeping their personally identifiable information shielded. A typical shielded action flow looks something like this:
- Start with asset A in the Namada’s Multi-Asset Shielded Pool (MASP)
- Unshield A and send it across the bridge to the other side
- Take an action on the other side (e.g. swap, borrow, LP, etc.)
- Take the outputs of that action (e.g. swap outputs, borrowed assets, LP tokens, etc.)
- Send those outputs back to Namada, and shield them in the MASP.
From the user’s perspective, this would feel like a single interaction and could be initiated with a single click.
The first example of shielded actions planned for Namada is shielded swaps on Osmosis. This will enable users to swap asset A held in Namada’s MASP on Osmosis for asset B, which is then shielded to the users MASP account.
Shielded swaps are just the beginning–additional types of shielded actions will be developed to enable all sorts of shielded use cases. Application developers will be able to use shielded actions as a new type of DeFi primitive to integrate composable privacy into their projects, paving the way for a wave of shielded innovation.
Settling the multichain frontier with shielded outposts
Along with new bridge connections, shielded outposts are an approach to interoperability that will enable UX benefits as Namada expands to new ecosystems. Shielded outposts are satellite implementations of Namada that live on other chains and enable users to take advantage of Namada’s core functionality without needing to bridge out of the blockchains their assets are already on.
Shielded outposts are part of Namada’s multichain connective tissue, deployed as smart contracts on external blockchains. Smart contracts can host satellite versions of Namada’s MASP to enable shielding without bridging, and can even provide shielding rewards.
With shielded outposts, there’s a tradeoff between user experience and privacy guarantees. They remove the need to bridge assets, which provides usability benefits, but as the shielded sets on outposts are smaller than on the Namada chain, privacy guarantees are reduced. This should provide good enough privacy for smaller amounts of assets, but users will still benefit from keeping the majority of their assets shielded on the Namada blockchain for the highest privacy guarantees. Long term, the community is developing private bridging technology that will address this tradeoff and enable shielded cross-chain transfers.
Combined with shielded actions, shielded outposts will enable new use cases and new types of shielded applications across the multichain landscape.
Additional plans
Several plans are in discussion for new functionality and initiatives, including:
Shielded asset management
A Namada shielded asset management service would allow users to hold funds in the MASP and receive rewards in the MASP for strategies managed on transparent chains. Keeping assets in the MASP should not require forfeiting opportunities to use them elsewhere, for example in staking or DeFi on other chains. With Namada shielded asset management, users can keep assets in the MASP, select how those assets can be used (ex. specific DeFi strategies like lending/liquidity provisioning), select how they’d like to receive rewards, and potentially how they’d like their assets rebalanced over time. Representations of assets on other chains can be kept in the MASP and can earn shielding rewards.
Namada shielded bonds
Selling “shielded bonds” would enable Namada to raise funds for the network to fund infrastructure and give users a stake in the long-term future of Namada. The network would periodically sell bonds (e.g. in an auction) for selected non-native assets, which will be kept in a foreign reserve and be used for various purposes. Bonds could be tokenized and transferable within the MASP, but not transferable outside Namada. After a fixed period (e.g. 1 year, there could be multiple bond types with different periods), bonds would be redeemable for the face value of NAM.
Cross-chain partnerships
Namada will pursue cross-chain partnerships of various forms, such as mutually controlled protocol-owned liquidity, joint public goods funding, joint service integrations, or similar. For example, the community is planning to enable shielded payments for VPN services like NYM from the Namada MASP, providing end-to-end privacy for setting up a decentralized VPN.
New wallet and UI integrations
Integrating new wallets and UIs will enable users to access Namada’s shielding features in their favorite apps that they already use regularly, rather than needing to use Namada-native UIs like Namadillo. Keplr and Leap integrations have been discussed for the IBC ecosystem, and additional wallets such as Metamask will need to be integrated when Namada expands to additional ecosystems like Ethereum and Solana. Mobile wallets are also being developed to make accessing Namada even easier, and the community is discussing support for the Keystone hardware wallet as an alternative to Ledger.
Shielded airdrop for Zcash holders
The community is also planning the world’s first shielded airdrop for Zcash holders as a way of both acknowledging Namada’s technical debt to Zcash and promoting mutual alignment between the two privacy-focused communities.
Public goods funding upgrades and experiments
Several upgrades and experiments with public goods funding are also planned, including new Donor Drops, LLM-augmented distribution (e.g. Deep Funding), and prize-based PGF, where Namada governance commits a prize amount up front to the first team to satisfy a particular milestone (roughly inspired by the Ansari X Prize).
Intent Machine Transformation
Long-term, the vision for Namada is to integrate more closely with Anoma’s tech stack, enabling a truly unified shielded set for all of Web3. By integrating Anoma’s resource model and through the use of protocol adapters, Namada will eliminate the need to unshield assets to bridge between chains. This will enable true end-to-end privacy for all applications that support Namada. Namada will not only become the shielded asset pool for the Anoma ecosystem, but the integration of the two projects will enable the first fully private multichain bridging solution.
The shielded roadmap: phases
Namada’s roadmap to becoming the composable privacy layer will unfold in four broad phases:
- Shielded Ignition
This is roughly where we are today. Shielded Ignition is Namada v1, encompassing the initial version of Namada rolled out in the network’s 5-phase mainnet launch process. Shielded Ignition includes Namada’s proof-of-stake, governance, and public goods funding systems, the network’s core shielding functionality and shielding rewards system, support for foreign reserves, and fuzzy message detection (a new scheme for faster shielded sync).
- Shielded Expansion
During Shielded Expansion, Namada will prioritize expansion into additional ecosystems via bridging solutions like Wormhole and IBC Eureka. This will also include adding smart contracts on external networks (e.g. Ethereum and Cosmos chains) to enable key functionality with shielded actions. The scope of available shielded actions will also expand to enable new types of DeFi interactions on these chains. Experimentation with the first cross-chain partnerships will also begin, and Namada will launch its first basic shielded outposts without shielding functionality.
- Shielded Integration
During Shielded Integration, the focus will be on integrating advanced shielded outposts into external blockchains, with full shielded functionality, including shielding rewards. This phase will also include expanding wallet and UI integrations, and additional experimentation with public goods funding.
- Shielded Transformation
During Shielded Transformation, Namada will evolve to support the Anoma tech stack, including the resource model and protocol adapters, in order to form a unified shielded set for all of Web3 and eliminate the need for transparent bridging. This phase will enable Namada to fully realize its vision as the composable privacy layer for all chains.
Shields are going up
Executed successfully, this roadmap would allow the vast majority of crypto applications today to provide their users composable privacy with Namada, without requiring any changes to their application logic, with at most some integration requirements on application frontends and browser extensions.
Namada’s roadmap is an ambitious one, but thanks to the network’s composable design, the path to becoming the privacy layer for Web3 is well within reach. The Shielded Ecosystem is about to expand like never before. But this is by no means a solo mission, it will take the entire community working together to get us there.
Everyone should have the choice to share their personal data as they please, because our rights don’t end where the digital world begins. Soon, the quest for full data sovereignty across Web3 will be complete. Ready to join that quest? Connect with the community on Discord and the Namada Forum and be part of the shielded multichain future.