Namada 🤝 Osmosis Alliance



By Gavin Birch, June 1, 2023

Ready for interchain privacy? Namada and Osmosis are integrating to make a privacy-preserving Osmosis front-end with Namada. We’re anticipating research collaboration, shared funding, and an airdrop, and further innovation. Here’s why and what to pay attention to. We’ll be running a local bare metal validator (and you can too! DM, email). Stay in the Know for alerts.

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With Namada, all assets from IBC-enabled chains and Ethereum can be shielded and privately used with Namada’s “shielded actions.” Thanks to Osmosis, cross-chain IBC transactions have become common in the Cosmos ecosystem. And with gratitude, Namada has not only signalled an Osmosis NAM airdrop, the Anoma Foundation is also signalling opportunities to collaborate.

  • NAM airdrop for all OSMO holders (including stakers & LPs)
  • NAM grants for Osmosis research initiatives
  • Namada shielded actions will enable a fully private Osmosis experience

NAM airdrop for OSMO

Prior to Anoma/Namada, cofounder Christopher Goes was best known as the lead architect of IBC. IBC cross-chain transactions are essential to Cosmos, and also essential to Namada’s mission to deliver interchain privacy to the Cosmos ecosystem and beyond (any IBC-enabled chains).

As a material thanks to the Osmosis community for bringing IBC to market, the Anoma Foundation has signalled that they will propose a NAM airdrop for all OSMO token holders, including OSMO stakers and LPs. Getting NAM into the hands of OSMO holders will introduce the Osmosis community to Namada and ideally Namada’s privacy features and privacy yield. The snapshot has not yet happened and is TBD.

NAM grants for shared Osmosis initiatives

To further develop the Namada x Osmosis alliance, the Anoma Foundation has also signalled an intent to fund the Osmosis Grants Program with a portion of NAM supply inflation. This funding will be earmarked for areas of joint interest, including front-running protection (Ferveo), UX development/improvements for shielded actions, and other shared research.

  • Ferveo (jointly developed by Anoma and Osmosis): could include further development, Tendermint integrations, testing & benchmarking, optimisations, and research into theoretical improvements.
  • Shielded actions: IBC-related compatibility design & implementation, integration optimisations, interface & tool development
  • More: basic zero-knowledge cryptography optimisation research (e.g. small-field SNARKs), AMM/DEX design options & trade-offs, cross-domain MEV, and others

Osmosis is known for its capable community, impressive user experience, and experimentation. The Namada team is known for powerful innovations, broad and holistic expertise, dedication to the decentralization and privacy ethos. Both are into public goods and collaboration.

Privacy-preserved Osmosis experience

When Namada and Osmosis work in tandem, Osmosis users will “seamlessly benefit from both the privacy features of Namada and the trading capabilities of Osmosis.”

The Namada team will collaborate with the Osmosis team to make an Osmosis front-end that enables the same Osmosis trading experience while keeping assets shielded with Namada.

That means with a single action, your private Namada assets can unshield, anonymously swap on Osmosis for another asset, then immediately be shielded back on Namada. The Namada team refers to these as “shielded actions.” While the swap itself is transparent (ie. the type of asset and amount swapped), the asset owner remains private. But the swap could also become private.

When Osmosis incorporates Ferveo, an encryption scheme designed to protect against manipulative trading practices like front-running, the way we trade assets could become much safer. Namada could keep trades private by encrypting the details of the assets and the amounts being traded using Osmosis’s public key. Once encrypted, these trades would be collected into batches and then processed by Osmosis. This is similar to what Penumbra does, except Namada will use IBC in the process.

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Further reading

This isn’t the first alliance proposal–in April, the Anoma Foundation proposed an alliance with the Zcash community that includes an airdrop, a joint grants program, and a bridge to introduce ZEC to the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems.



Knowable has been running our validator on the testnet, and we’re working closely with the founding team on preparations to launch Namada’s public goods funding experiment.

The Namada community is in Discord, on Reddit, and Twitter. Participate by running a Namada validator or by nominating someone for public goods funding. Follow along and Stay in the Know for alerts from Knowable, and Heliax’s Namada newsletter.


Hi! I’m Gavin Birch 👋 Thanks for reading. Feel free to reach out :)

Written on June 1, 2023