Before the outbreak of the counterfeit season, a comprehensive analysis of the privacy track's unlaunched projects — Mystiko

Recently, I purchased several 5x rising projects in the secondary market, such as $hype and $blue. The more I bought, the higher the prices went, allowing me to gain significant profits.
This made me realize that------the altcoin season might be coming soon.
From the altcoin season indicators, among the top 50 tokens in the last 90 days, 67% of the tokens outperformed Bitcoin. If this proportion reaches 75%, it means that the crypto market has officially entered the Altcoin Season.

From the curve, the market made its first test from December 1 to 8, and after a pullback on December 9, the market entered an adjustment phase. Currently, the market is gathering strength, and it is estimated that the adjustment will be completed soon, followed by the altcoin explosion season.
At this time, we should be well prepared: investigate in advance, lay low at the bottom, and then wait for the wind to come.
Among altcoins, apart from DeFi, the most favored by capital and large holders are privacy projects. This sector has been quietly rising, to the extent that many people are completely unaware of its existence. For example, Zcash has risen 56% in the last 30 days.
So today, let's talk about why we should pay attention to the privacy sector. This article will cover the following aspects:

• Why does the privacy sector exist?
• Comparison of 10 privacy projects
• What innovations does Mystiko have?
• What opportunities are there in Mystiko?

1. Why does the privacy sector exist?
The transparency of blockchain is a double-edged sword. Users' on-chain trading activities, balances, etc., are all transparent. Although the real entities behind on-chain accounts are anonymous, their transaction data is almost completely transparent. If your on-chain address happens to interact with platforms like CEX that require KYC, then all your on-chain assets are exposed. Even using DEXs like Uniswap, the same exposure occurs.
Web3 is highly related to assets, and with high transparency on-chain, a significant problem arises: if someone intends to, it is very easy to track these transactions. A typical case is:

• 3AC once confidently disclosed some addresses to prove their high strength in the crypto space;
• However, unfortunately, they encountered the LUNA incident. During the LUNA incident, some people tracked 3AC's addresses, leading to a massive influx of reverse operations, ultimately accelerating 3AC's liquidation.
• Additionally, there was the FTX incident. The FTX incident intensified people's distrust of CEXs. To rebuild market confidence, CEXs must disclose their assets more transparently than before, but many users and institutions do not want their account balances to be public.

At this time, the market needs privacy projects, whether it's hiding addresses or hiding transactions, as long as they are not "naked" on-chain.
Thus, when Monero and ZCash first emerged, they gained favor from VCs, miners, and large holders. It wasn't until Tornado Cash was shut down that people truly realized the market needed more privacy projects to provide services.
Currently, the solution in the market is to use zk-SNARKs to improve the privacy of encrypted assets, storing users' balances in Merkle trees or KZG commitments, which not only protects users' privacy but also effectively discloses their asset status. The encrypted assets adopting this solution are referred to as "privacy tokens." From 2013 to now, these privacy tokens include:

• Zcash (ZEC)
• Verge (XVG)
• Monero (XMR)
• Dash (DASH)
• Beam (BEAM)
• Horizen (ZEN)
• Bytecoin (BCN)

The crypto market follows the principle of investing in new projects rather than old ones, seeking new projects that have not yet risen to improve investors' winning chances. Therefore, this article will not analyze those old privacy projects; instead, we will compare 10 representative projects.
2. Comparison of 10 privacy projects
Privacy projects are primarily created to meet users' demand for anonymity, generally used to protect data, addresses, transaction records, amounts, or files. The privacy concept was first introduced by Monero, and since the launch of $XMR over the past decade, the token has increased by 8601%, creating immense wealth for countless miners.
Inspired by Monero, developers have tried various methods to develop privacy coins over the past decade, with Zcash being one of the more famous ones. It uses ZKP technology to hide transaction addresses, thereby concealing the sender and receiver of funds and protecting user privacy. In 2020, it was decided to allocate 20% of ZEC network mining rewards to the ZCash Foundation for the operation of the project. However, some participants were dissatisfied with this, leading to the creation of a fork chain, ZCL.
The discord within the Zcash community brought significant opportunities to the privacy sector, as developers left to create numerous projects, with some being more representative:

Currently, most solutions use ZKP technology to encrypt users' transaction information to protect user privacy.
In the last 30 days, the privacy sector has generally risen by 50%, with increases of 35% seen in $mask and $xzk. $mask belongs to social privacy, while this article mainly discusses infrastructure projects, so we will focus on Mystiko.
3. What innovations does Mystiko have?
Among many privacy projects, Tornado Cash was widely used globally until it was shut down in August 2022.
The mechanism of Tornado Cash is very simple; it adopts a mixing model that allows users to deposit ETH, DAI, USDC, and other ERC-20 tokens and withdraw them from different other crypto addresses. Technically, it uses ZK technology to encrypt the wallet addresses of depositors and mixes them with the wallet addresses of other users who deposited the same token, making it difficult for outsiders to trace the flow of funds.
Since Tornado Cash was deployed on Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, and Optimism Network, it meets the needs of most EVM addresses. This is somewhat similar to cross-chain privacy models, but it has the drawback of high gas fees. Even so, before being sanctioned, Tornado Cash had already processed about $8 billion in transactions, indicating a substantial market demand for cross-chain privacy.
(1) Background of Mystiko
In response to strong market demand, Mystiko Network launched the Mystiko Protocol based on zk-SNARKs after two years of development, featuring a plug-and-play technology protocol that can be integrated into almost all major cross-chain bridges in the Web3 ecosystem. This makes Mystiko one of the few cross-chain privacy projects currently available.
Such an innovative concept and market demand led Mystiko Network to secure $30 million in funding during its private placement round in March 2024, led by Sequoia Capital, with participants including: Samsung Next, HashKey, Mirana, Signum, Coinlist, Naval Ravikant, Sandeep Nailwal, Gokul Rajaram, Tribe Capital, Morningstar Ventures, and other investors.

Let's take a look at how Mystiko specifically operates.
(2) Introduction to Mystiko
Mystiko Network is the zero-knowledge (ZK) technology layer of Web3, providing privacy protocols and ZK software development kits to ensure scalability, compatibility, and permission privacy for projects using Layer 1, Layer 2, wallets, cross-chain, etc.
Ordinary users can manage and transfer their assets between complex blockchain technologies such as Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, Polkadot, Near, and Solana using Mystiko's one-click wallet, paying only a small gas fee.

Many people might think that Mystiko Network is going to create another L1 or L2. However, it is important to note that Mystiko Network, as a privacy technology provider, is neither a Layer 1 nor Layer 2 platform and does not belong to any ecosystem. It is a comprehensive privacy technology service, and any project requiring user privacy can use Mystiko's SDK toolkit to integrate Mystiko into their protocols, which is the "plug-and-play" feature mentioned above.
Projects using Mystiko's privacy SDK tools include Camo Wallet (wallet), Cable (bridge), Ninja (payment), and Wizard (DEX).
Additionally, it supports cross-chain communication protocols like LayerZero, Axelar, and Celer, providing toolkits to build completely anonymous cross-chain transfer products.

(3) What products does Mystiko Network offer?
The most basic product of Mystiko Network is the Privacy SDK toolkit, which helps chains, bridges, wallets, and dApps integrate privacy with ZK technology.
The first project developed based on this technology is Camo Wallet. Users can store assets, trade, and make cross-chain transfers completely anonymously in this wallet. Thanks to the ZK-SNARK proof generated by Mystiko for each transaction, Camo Wallet offers high anonymity and security.
In terms of compatibility, users can transfer or withdraw funds through Camo Wallet using public wallets like Metamask.
(4) What are the applications of Mystiko Network?
According to official information, Mystiko products can be applied in the following scenarios:

• Cross-chain transfers: This is the core function of Mystiko, allowing users to deposit assets on one chain and withdraw funds from another chain without exposing any transaction details.
• MystikoPay: Completely on-chain payments, where no one can see the user's payment history. All receipt histories are private, which is particularly useful for companies and merchants to prevent sensitive business income details from being exposed on-chain.
• Secret vaults: Users can transfer assets to completely secret and extremely secure addresses, ensuring complete privacy. Any wallet can provide this functionality to users by implementing the Mystiko Wallet SDK.
• Private DEX: Users can trade on a private DEX just like on Uniswap while protecting their financial privacy. DEXs can now add such features for users by implementing the Mystiko protocol.

(5) Project data
From the data perspective, the project supports transactions across 6 unique blockchains, exceeding $272 million: Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, Linea, and Base. It has generated over $5 million in fee revenue for hundreds of ZK-Rollup miners and relayers within the network.

Alright, that's the introduction to the project information. The focus of this article is still on whether we can make money.
4. What opportunities are there in Mystiko?
Mystiko is a benchmark for cross-chain privacy, with a total token supply of $XZK being 1 billion, private placement price at $0.09, public offering price at $0.15, and listing price at $0.27.

The current market price is $0.03713, nearly three times lower than the private placement price.
FDV is $37.55 million, making it the smallest market cap and lowest rising token among the top ten privacy projects. Other privacy projects have already issued tokens two years ago and have at least completed one rising cycle. $XZK had its TGE on June 18, and the token price has not exceeded the private placement price since July. After such a long cycle of washing, retail investors have very little holding left, and all airdrops have been distributed.
From on-chain data, it seems that large holders have been accumulating over the past week, with large holder positions increasing by 0.09%. They may be waiting for favorable market news, such as token burns or other incentive activities.

Currently ranked around 1100 in market cap, the token price is severely undervalued. With the arrival of the altcoin season, the profit potential is enormous.
Similar to the early stages of Chainlink, XZK is also steadily developing under difficult conditions. With strong partnerships and a reliable V2 SDK, it is poised to gain significant value when the market recovers.
Historically, privacy coins like ZCash and XZK have faced regulatory scrutiny. However, the recent victory of Tornado Cash against OFAC and Trump's cryptocurrency-friendly policies may significantly boost these tokens.