United States senators and intelligence agencies may not be as opposed to privacy-focused crypto protocols as some believe, according to Railgun researcher and advocate Alan Scott Jr.
In a conversation with Cointelegraph at the ETH Global conference in Sydney on May 2, Scott, a contributor and public advocate for Railgun, revealed that his discussions with senators and the FBI in Washington D.C. have not uncovered any signs of a crypto privacy crusade on Capitol Hill.
Scott shared that there are many individuals in the upper echelons of government who are “generally smart, want to do right, and protect people.” Railgun is a privacy-focused protocol that leverages smart contracts to ensure private transactions for decentralized finance (DeFi) users on the Ethereum network and several of its layer-2 networks, including Polygon and Arbitrum.
However, Railgun is often grouped together with other crypto privacy protocols, such as Tornado Cash, which has faced legal challenges in recent years. On April 17, an X account claiming to be the official account for Railgun denied any involvement by North Korea or other U.S.-sanctioned entities in using the protocol to launder ill-gained crypto, specifically referring to an FBI statement that alleged Railgun was used to launder more than $60 million in Ether (ETH) during the 2022 Harmony bridge exploit.
Railgun asserted that its zk-proof tech and “Private Proofs of Innocence” systems prevent bad actors from utilizing its protocol. Scott emphasized that the FBI is a large, multifaceted organization, and the individuals he had spoken with were more concerned with bad actors seeking to commit financial crimes, rather than privacy protocols themselves.
Scott’s conversations with politicians and regulators in the U.S. have been largely positive, with many of them seeming genuinely interested in understanding the new developments in the crypto space. He noted that they ask well-informed questions and strive to comprehend the technology, its operations, and the reasons why people are drawn to it.
While actions have been taken against mixers like Samourai Wallet, with the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleging the platform handled $2 billion in unlawful transactions and facilitated $100 million in money laundering, Scott believes there does not appear to be a crusade against the concept of privacy in crypto more broadly.
Scott emphasized that the disintermediation of finance and the importance of DeFi are central to Railgun’s mission, and privacy is a crucial element of that. He expressed hope that if the concept and application of privacy in crypto were to become illegal, it would be an extremely unfortunate outcome.