Samwell Tarly, an anonymous core contributor of the Cyclone protocol Chinese community, told Cointelegraph China on April 14th that Cyclone — a cross-chain, non-custodial, universal, privacy-preserving protocol with decentralized governance for all DeFi applications — is preparing to launch its version 3. 

According to Samwell, Cyclone protocol’s v3 will launch the most popular functions in the Ethereum community. It will open the asset pool based on Ethereum and support anonymous mining and liquidity mining. Anonymous pool assets will enter the Cyclone protocol, which can not only obtain CYC rewards but also obtain benefits from other DeFi protocols. 

He continued that at present, the initial implementation effect of DAO governance in the community is very popular with users. After entering the v3 phase, the Cyclone protocol will enter the stable operation phase; the DAO governance on the chain will be activated; and all the smart contracts will be taken over, and new functions, such as governance and currency, will be launched.

Samwell explained that Cyclone applies zk-SNARKs to enable transactional privacy for all DeFi components by breaking the on-chain link between depositor and recipient addresses. It uses a smart contract that accepts token deposits, which can be withdrawn by a different address. Whenever an asset is withdrawn from Cyclone, there is no way to link the withdrawal to the deposit for absolute privacy.

Development of Cyclone protocol 

Cyclone was launched first on IoTeX, as it is a fast and EVM-compatible blockchain with an active community.

Samwell said that Cyclone aims to launch multiple anonymity pools for various assets on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and other EVM-compatible public blockchains in Q1/Q2 2021. The company will also be looking at launching on Polkadot and other non-EVM public blockchains in Q3 2021. CYC will be the main token for all instances of the Cyclone protocol.

The cyclone agreement was launched on IoTeX in January 2021, which is the v1 phase of the cyclone agreement. IoTeX is currently the most decentralized, high-speed, EVM-compatible blockchain, which has a thriving global community. 

The most important thing is that IoTeX is one of the few public blockchain projects with cross-chain functions (cross Ethereum + cross BSC) and low service charges that enables any user to participate in it at a low cost. So far, four anonymous pools and one liquidity pool on IoTeX have generated $15 million of total locked value.

The cyclone agreement was released on BSC on March 12, 2021, which is the v2 phase of the cyclone agreement. Covering Binance USD (BUSD), Binance Coin (BNB) and other assets, 24-hour TVL has rapidly exceeded $10 million. Currently, in terms of interface and user experience, cyclone protocol v2 was released at the beginning of this month, which is the largest upgrade for the UX so far.

On the premise of ensuring ease of use, more anonymous pools are supported. Some of these pools will continue to follow the “classic” route, such as the current robot pool, which helps users achieve anonymous privacy of assets on-chain; some new pools will support anonymous machine gun pools, which aim to help users actively participate in the high-yield WiFi mining on each chain.

This is the first privacy-centric cross-link DeFi application that can support IoTeX Etam star and BSC on a unified interface at the same time.

In terms of opening decentralized governance DAO autonomy, the team has completed two community referendums, in which community members voted independently, realizing two proposals of “adding an anonymous pool on BSC” and “reducing the total supply of CYC to 50,000.” The third referendum, “deploying the whirlwind protocol on the Ethereum mainnet,” is in progress. There may be governance airdrops involved in voting, according to the official announcement.

According to Samwell, community development has been growing. He added that:

“In the Telegram group, we also have more than 9,000 community members. It is conservatively estimated that there are nearly 1,000 Chinese community members.”

Universal privacy-preserving layer for DeFi with yield aggregation

The Cyclone Protocol is much more than a token mixer. Cyclone protocol is the world’s first protocol that supports anonymity pools aggregating yield-generating DeFi components, and it is a universal privacy-enhancement layer for all DeFi apps. It is envisioned to be a universal privacy layer for all DeFi components on various blockchains, enabling users to participate in the anonymity/liquidity mining of CYC and harvesting profits from the underlying DeFi components.

Cyclone Protocol is fueled by the CYC token, which is designed to incentivize anonymity providers, liquidity providers and users. CYC is not pre-mined or pre-allocated. Those that contribute to Cyclone will earn CYC.

Cyclone governance is inspired by the Compound Governance Model. Cyclone will be governed and upgraded by CYC token holders using three distinct components: the CYC token, governance module (Governor Alpha) and Timelock. Together, these contracts will allow the community to propose, vote and implement changes toward Cyclone. Proposals can include changes such as adding support for new assets, optimizing current token pools, adjusting CYC’s minting/burning rates and more.