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Overview of Shutter Network

Shutter is an open-source encryption protocol that has been in development since March 2021. It was created to address a critical threat in the crypto world: transaction manipulation, including malicious Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) attacks and censorship, which affect millions of users and dollars. Shutter aims to fulfill crypto's original promise of being a genuinely neutral and fair system. It achieves this by ensuring simultaneous access to information for all participants, preventing front-running, censorship, and manipulation, and reinforcing base layer neutrality.

Shutter Network builds on this vision by leveraging threshold encryption and decentralized cryptographic techniques to ensure the security, fairness, and privacy of transactions. It addresses critical challenges in blockchain ecosystems, particularly MEV exploitation and transaction manipulation. Shutter is highly applicable to use cases in trading, governance, and other decentralized finance (DeFi) activities on Ethereum and its Layer 2 rollups, making it a foundational tool for enhancing trust and equity in decentralized systems.

Decentralized Solutions​

Shutter enables fairness in blockchains through threshold encryption and Distributed Key Generation (DKG), which safeguard transactions and votes from manipulation. In a Shutterized system, users encrypt their actions until they are securely added to the blockchain, ensuring that everyone accesses the same information simultaneously, thereby maintaining fairness.

Key Components of Shutter​

1. Threshold Encryption​

Transactions are encrypted at the time of submission and remain protected until they are ready for inclusion in a block. Decryption is managed by a decentralized network of nodes called Keypers, using threshold cryptography to prevent unauthorized access.

2. Mitigating MEV​

Shutter safeguards users against malicious MEV practices such as front-running, sandwich attacks, and back-running. By concealing transaction details during the critical mempool phase, it ensures a level playing field for all participants.

3. Applications​

  • Shielded Voting: Guarantees private and tamper-resistant votes in decentralized governance.
  • Shielded Trading: Protects traders from manipulation on decentralized exchanges by securing transaction confidentiality.
  • Encrypted Mempools: Keeps transaction details private while ensuring compatibility with existing blockchain architectures.

4. Decentralized Governance​

Shutter is envisioned as a community-driven protocol supported by decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), such as Shutter DAO 0x36, which governs aspects like the selection and management of Keypers.

5. Integration and Modularity​

The protocol is designed for seamless integration with existing blockchain infrastructures, requiring minimal changes to underlying systems. It is adaptable for use cases across various decentralized applications (dApps), DeFi protocols, and Layer 2 scaling solutions.