Introduction 

Silent protocol is introducing the world’s first L1.5 for ethereum enabling a modular secure value transfer layer, creating the first completely compliant, composable and privacy preserving ecosystem. 

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A bit of background

Silent Research Labs started building Silent protocol in 2021 with the mission to solve the problem of “state denial”(a condition that doesn't allow for global shared state to exist, causing fragmentation of data and application due to denial of access, in privacy frameworks). The reason to solve the problem of state denial was to create a framework through which we could interact with the existing ecosystem in a secure and privacy preserving manner. Silent protocol came out with their patent pending framework EZEE, that defines a hybrid zk architecture, that allows access to the global shared data of the system for applications and users, through the usage of access channels or by splitting flows– essentially enabling composability within the execution environment. Silent Protocol built a middleware solution through which developers could turn their existing applications into a 0dapp, allowing a user to interact with these 0dapps, that shares the existing liquidity and network effect in a privacy preserving manner. 

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The Ghost layer - the first L1.5 for ethereum

The ghost layer is a modular secure value transfer layer based on the EZEE framework. 

EZEE is divided into the execution layer and the encryption layer. The encryption layer in EZEE is responsible for storing the encrypted state of the user while opening access channels into different 0dapps, existing within different execution layers. Silent Protocol has built its first execution layer within ethereum, by establishing different 0dapps on ethereum.

The ghost layer is a modular zk based system that stores the encrypted state of the user on top of ethereum but utilises 0VM(more information about this will be revealed later) in order to move the state of the system forward. It also uses the silent compliance VM in order to remain compliant. It's a fully fledged secure value transfer layer with its own ledger. It is built using zksnarks, homomorphic encryption and a modified version of the many out of many proofs. The ghost layer acts as a modular encryption layer endowed with the abilities to open access channels into different execution layers housing different 0dapps.

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What makes the ghost layer a L1.5?

There are three axioms that might help you classify a particular state machine into either  a layer 1 or a layer 2. First, who defines and stores the state; second who validates the state and third who is responsible for computation defined within the machine. 

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A system that will be responsible for doing all three of them will be defined as a Layer 1. A system that processes the computation and also decides its own state however whose validity depends on a secondary party will be defined as a layer 2 from whom it is borrowing its security. 

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Based on the above classification, a machine, whose state has been defined by the base ledger and not by itself, whose security and validity is also defined by the base ledger, but the computation is carried out by someone else, can be defined as a layer 1.5.

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The ghost layer utilises ZK-SNARKs to prove the validity of its state using a smart contract on ethereum and also utilises that contract to store the state of its ledger in that contract. Although the ghost layer uses 0VM to move the state of the system forward and uses ZK proofs to offload computation away from the base ledger making the system a Layer 1.5.

A glimpse at the ghost layer’s design

The ghost layer is a modular Layer 1.5, built to provide compliant privacy and security to its users. It hosts the ability to enable access to different 0dapps(mirror version of the original application) in a completely composable manner.

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Channel the incredible amount of value stored in on ethereum

The Ghost layer enables a user to directly onboarded their ethereum native assets into it and helps encrypt user assets and flows built within the system, enabling an omni directional movement of assets in a secure and privacy preserving manner.  

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Built with the 0VM and the Silent compliance VM

The ghost layer is designed to provide scalable interactions and enable anonymous computation on a decentralised ledger through the help of 0VM. The ghost layer also builds a compliant protocol for users and institutions through the use of silent compliance VM.

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The ghost layer is modular 

The ghost layer utilises access channels and an intent based architecture to allow users of the ghost layer to open an access channels into different execution layers to interact with 0dapps in different blockchains. The ghost layer acts as the data layer to enable different computational routines performed by the users.

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Chapter 1: Becoming a Silencer  

Silent Protocol recently started onboarding users into their community and has been giving the Silencer role to its users and anyone with the role will be eligible to claim the silencer NFT. (Rewards assigned to these Silencer NFT will be disclosed at a later date and these Silencer NFT might not have any value and can very well be worthless.)

During this chapter silent protocol will be onboarding a maximum of 10K users into its community and will be issuing a maximum of 10k Silencer NFT on a FCFS basis. To get the Silencer NFT, a user will have to join the silent discord through this link(this link invalidated) and then follow the instructions within the discord, to get the role of silencer and then be able to claim the silencer NFT. You can also follow the silent twitter account here for a future link, if you miss entering the discord link in time. 

Conclusion 

The vision of silent protocol is to create an anonymous computational access layer for ethereum. Privacy and the demand for a compliant privacy infrastructure has been growing exponentially ever since institutions started entering the space and became more active. Through the ghost layer- silent protocol moves one step closer to its grand vision. It creates an ecosystem of privacy preserving applications, where users of the ghost layer could not only store and transfer assets but also be able to interact with already existing applications within the base ledger or other blockchains in a secure manner while protecting their privacy. 

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