In the immediate term, Namada’s role is to solve the need for data protection–today–through a blockchain and transaction-centric architecture.

Because of the architectural differences between the Namada protocol and the intent-centricity in the Anoma protocol, the relationship between Namada and Anoma might not be obvious at first glance. However, Namada plays a crucial role in the Anoma ecosystem, and Namada lays the foundation for the Anoma community.

The Uniqueness of the Namada Protocol

The design and implementation of the Namada protocol started in 2022, with the purpose of giving back to the users their ability to share their data whenever they interact with decentralized applications and tokens in the multichain.

To achieve this goal, the Namada protocol comes with native support for interoperability, innovative data protection features, such as the unified shielded set and shielded actions, and novel cryptoeconomic mechanisms, such as shielded set rewards and on-chain public goods funding. The utility of Namada’s native token NAM goes beyond the basics of paying for transaction fees, securing the network through PoS, and protocol governance. NAM is also used to reward users for contributing to the shielded set and for a virtuous cycle of funding public goods.

Shielded Interoperability Network in Anoma

The design of Namada enables users to decouple data protection from tokens and underlying protocols, and to reason about shielded and transparent state on a network and across chains. The Namada protocol combines data protection and interoperability in transaction and blockchain-centric architectures today, and can serve as a stepping stone for even more advanced data protection through information flow control and intent-centric architectures with Anoma tomorrow.

Because of its unique design, the Namada network plays a crucial role in the Anoma ecosystem. As an interoperability network that differentiates itself from other interoperability networks, Namada enables users to interact with other networks and dApps without revealing their identity across chains. In other words, the Namada network can become the shielded identity layer in the Anoma ecosystem. Namada will serve as a shielded bridge for tokens and arbitrary state between other networks, Anoma, and within the rest of the Anoma ecosystem.

Shared Application Development and Ecosystem Tooling

With the goal of making data protection accessible to as many as possible, the developments in Namada go beyond the protocol itself. Notable developments include the Namada browser extension that serves as a signing oracle, the indexer, and Namadillo, a web-based user interface. Since both Namada and Anoma applications require handling shielded state, be it in shielded transactions/actions or shielded intents, application developers on Namada and Anoma have shared requirements. As a result, many tools currently built for Namada applications can be used to build Anoma applications, too.

Namada and Anoma also have an overlapping application and ecosystem development tooling roadmap in several categories: 

• UX improvements, such as private note retrieval (aka Oblivious Message Retrieval) that enable more private and faster interface-network synchronization. These can significantly improve the UX for interfaces like Namadillo and interfaces for intent-centric dApps on Anoma, which will have a similar need whenever the intent involves private state.
• More basic functionalities, such as: the support for FROST multisignatures, which enables the creation of multisigs without revealing sensitive information. Support for shielded multisigs for signing shielded transactions, which can be brought to Namada and Anoma for better end-to-end data protection.
• More flexibility in parts of the stack, such as the ability for interfaces to connect to a P2P network of choice, which improves decentralization and censorship-resistance.

Regardless of the architectural differences between the Namada and Anoma protocols, the ecosystem tooling and end-user facing features are more continuous than they seem. In fact, builders can already build novel applications and interfaces on Namada using all of the existing tools. An example novel application is a decentralized and shielded version of wise.com, which could leverage the asset-agnostic shielded transfers and shielded actions from Namada in the beginning, but also leverage Anoma as another backend later, to e.g. make exchange prices more efficient.

One Community

Data protection, interoperability, and public goods funding are pervasive themes–not only in the Namada protocol and the design of NAM, but also in the community initiatives so far, such as the RPGF Nominations, the RPGF Drop programs, or the Shielded Expedition. 

The uniqueness of Namada comes from the fact that even today there is no other protocol like it. Combined with its community, which lies at the intersection between data protection, interoperability, and public goods funding, over time Namada has become a schelling point for individuals and organizations across other ecosystems in the space, including Zcash, Cosmos, and Ethereum.

The properties of generalizing data protection and trustless interoperability are crucial affordances in the design of Anoma, and public goods funding is a common collective action problem–part of the umbrella of coordination failures that Anoma aims to solve.

Because of this strong alignment, the Namada community is a subset of the Anoma community, which in the immediate term focuses on data protection, public goods funding, and interoperability. As early members of the Anoma community, they are the ones will pave the way for advanced interoperability through cross-chain intents, more granular data protection through information flow control, and will be experimenting with novel intent-centric applications to solve collective action problems beyond public goods funding – by being the first to interact with the novel intent-centric applications on Anoma.

Namada sets the precedent for a network launch that maximizes decentralization through a community-driven genesis process, where the genesis files, parameters, decision to start the network and launching mainnet is entirely in the hands of the community. As a subset of the Anoma community, this is the best equipped community to launch Anoma in the future.

Concluding Remarks

The Namada protocol is transaction and blockchain centric, whereas the Anoma protocol is intent-centric. Due to the differences in the protocols, the relationship between Namada and Anoma are not obvious at first glance. Namada and its developments plays a crucial role in Anoma: as a protocol and network, it can serve as the shielded interoperability and identity layer for Anoma. There is a large overlap in the ecosystem tooling and application development requirements making application builders on Namada the best equipped to tinker and build novel intent-centric applications on Anoma, and Namada central to the Anoma community, focusing on solving data protection, interoperability, and funding public goods.