# Open Source Privacy Pools for Starknet

Source: https://x.com/EkuboProtocol/status/1884249283958038755

## Summary

Ekubo Protocol has open sourced an implementation of Privacy Pools for Starknet, built with Visoft. The article presents Privacy Pools as a way to offer financial privacy while letting users show their funds came from a specific set of deposits, known as the Association Set, without revealing which deposit. The paper introducing the design was published in 2023 by Vitalik Buterin, ameensol, Jacob Illum of Chainalysis, and researchers from the University of Basel. The article says Starknet's Account Abstraction allows the protocol to eliminate relayers, improving user privacy.

## Article

Today we are excited to open source an implementation of Privacy Pools for Starknet!

👉 https://github.com/EkuboProtocol/privacy-pools

Public blockchains like Ethereum and Starknet are useful because they are fully transparent. However, this comes at the cost of a lack of financial privacy. The Tornado Cash protocol brought on chain financial privacy to Ethereum with an implementation of a permissionless mixer. Tornado Cash works by allowing users to deposit funds into a pool from one address and later withdraw them to another using ZK proofs, breaking the public link between the two addresses.

While Tornado Cash was a boon for regular users, it also became the go-to tool for criminals to launder stolen funds, drawing scrutiny and eventually landing on OFAC’s sanctions list (SDN).

👉 https://decrypt.co/153118/tornado-cash-sanctions-affirmed-by-federal-court

Even worse, the developers behind Tornado Cash are facing legal repercussions. We encourage you to read more and offer support: https://x.com/rstormsf/status/1882100012513186283

👉 https://decrypt.co/153481/tornado-cash-money-laundering-charges-arrest-justice-department

In 2023, @VitalikButerin (Ethereum), @ameensol (a long-time Tornado Cash contributor), Jacob Illum from Chainalysis, and researchers from the University of Basel (@fschaer and Matthias Nadler) published a paper introducing Privacy Pools, a solution designed to balance privacy with regulatory compliance.

👉 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4563364

Privacy Pools work similarly to Tornado Cash with a simple but important change: when withdrawing funds, users can publicly demonstrate that their funds came from a specific set of deposits (known as the Association Set) without revealing which deposit. This allows law abiding citizens to access financial privacy without affording it to bad actors.

We believe in the value Privacy Pools brings to users, which is why we worked with Visoft (@neoprogramist et al) to implement Privacy Pools on top of the Starknet stack. With Starknet’s Account Abstraction, we can eliminate the role of relayers from the protocol, improving the user's privacy as well as solving the tricky issue of sending the withdrawal transactions.

We hope the Starknet community will be interested in continuing this important work. Check out the code here!

👉 https://github.com/EkuboProtocol/privacy-pools