RAIL is set up to be an insane trade.
Adding to the interesting things Mikey mentioned in the thread:
> EVM privacy protocol for shielding ETH, ERC-20s, NFTs
> Vitalik's favorite privacy project; he shielded millions in ETH
> Native integration in Vitalik's Kohaku SDK for wallet privacy + partnering with MM and OKX Wallet
> Strong tokenomics (I'll dive deeper) + fees
Why have we seen price increase?
Privacy Narrative + No Volume + Extremely Low Organic Float + Ideological Holder Base
The onset interest in the privacy narrative and recognition of RAIL being Vitalik's go-to privacy protocol created only buy pressure.
Before October 8, RAIL was around $1.20 with anywhere between $200k–500k in volume.
It has since seen anywhere from $5-25m in 24-hr volume. How could a couple million in volume (initially) move the price so aggressively?
The answer lies in Etherscan (1°). Mikey mentioned that 77% of the float is staked. That's true, but a bit more is locked up in a bunch of different places: 77% is staked, 2.3% is on Uniswap V3, 0.6% is in the treasury, another 0.6% is in Uniswap V2, 0.4% is in (presumably) an unstaking contract, 0.4% is in Sushi, and another 1% is locked up in a handful of other contracts.
In total, roughly 82.5% is locked, leaving about 10m (of 57.5m) total RAIL circulating among holders. In other words, at current prices ($2.75), our trades our pushing around $28m worth of RAIL.
And that 77% staked is pretty illiquid as well, as it's subject to a 30-day unlocking period (2°). Assuming most folks were staking for the fee share. However, for any folks that got emotional and went to unstake to TP, they'll have to wait till at least November 7.
As a trader, a good sign of being relatively early is if a token is hard to acquire: 80-90% of RAIL volume is on DEXs, the rest is on XT (a CEX no one uses).
And given the holder base that you can confirm from Etherscan, almost no one has serious size, indicating likely no funds have a position:
> Only two holders are above $1m (and the bigger of the two hasn't trasnacted since January of 2022)
> Only four other holders have above $500k
> Less than 60 wallets have 6-figs worth
A real longshot, hyper-appreciation catalyst would be a serious CEX listing.
If privacy (outside of just Zcash) rerates like crazy, exchanges will seek to list privacy tokens. And RAIL should be a compliantly risk-free listing: by that, I mean you don’t transact confidentially with RAIL, it’s mostly a governance token. The protocol itself is what you interact with, being able to shield ERC-20 token transactions. So there’d be no privacy-oriented regulatory risks from listing RAIL.
However, exchanges would need to acquire a portion of RAIL to list it. (Its illiquidity and extremely low circulating float are big detractors.) But if ecosystem development matures and Vitalik pushes the SDK and RAILGUN integrations, it could achieve a level of undeniablility that exchanges would want to acquire it to list it (generating more off fees than the cost to acquire).
To sum up,
> Extremely low float
> Fee redistribution to stakers
> Privacy narrative + Vitalik tacit involvement
> More useful than single-asset privacy (can shield any ERC-20, like a stable)
> Still pre-CEX
> Likely almost no VCs and liquid funds
For retail folks, it's probably one of the most interesting assets that hasn't had a serious run-up yet.
(Sources in 1st reply in thread).
The Railgun Thesis: the EVM privacy coin
Vitalik is building Kahoku, an SDK for implementing privacy features in EVM wallets. The project has serious partners like Metamask & OKX Wallet. The SDK natively integrates with Railgun, one of Vitalik’s favorite privacy projects. Railgun takes a .25% fee on TVL in and out of their privacy pools. RAIL has good tokenomics: 77% of the supply is staked on a 30 day lockup meaning the practical circulating supply is far lower than stated on sources like Coingecko. Privacy is a 1000x opportunity in crypto, ZEC’s ascendency is positive proof of the bid for privacy. Institutions & Retail are likely to prefer a solution like Railgun which will likely be integrated into their favorite wallets and allow them to shield their stablecoins, DeFi Positions, etc…
> What is railgun?
Railgun is an EVM protocol for shielding//anonymizing Ethereum, ERC-20s, NFTs, etc… Most notably, it seems to be one of Vitalik’s favorite privacy projects and is working directly with the Ethereum Foundation. Vitalik himself has used RAILGUN to shield millions worth of his ETH.
> Why is the price mooning?
Vitalik himself has stepped forward with an Ethereum wallet project called Kohaku. Kohaku is an SDK for integrating privacy features into new and existing wallets. Metamask and OKX Wallet are both collaborators on this too 👀
devRel at Metamask seems pretty excited about this
> what’s the relationship between Kohaku and Railgun?
If you’re a real sleuth you can find the project's Github & unreleased docs. You’ll see at one point they experimented with implementing tornado cash but instead have built with Railgun to support the privacy features.
> but what about ZEC?
Thank god ZCash is finally catching a bid. The higher that thing goes the more it confirms the market value of privacy projects. I truly hope it hits $1000.
> Do they make any money?
Yes, the project takes .25% fees, that’s a healthy business even if it drops down to .01% considering the TAM for this is so massive.