The Bitcoin ecosystem had been forgotten for a long time. Especially after Magic Eden, once the largest Bitcoin ecosystem marketplace, stopped supporting the Bitcoin ecosystem and discontinued its Magic Eden Wallet service, it gave players who hadn't paid attention to the Bitcoin ecosystem for a while a feeling that "the Bitcoin ecosystem is over."
However, not only are veteran Bitcoin infrastructure projects like UniSat and Xverse still working hard, but after Magic Eden, marketplaces like SatFlow and ord.net have also filled the gap. Recently, the emergence of a new Bitcoin asset protocol has brought the Bitcoin ecosystem back into the spotlight.
This new protocol is called Tacit.
What is Tacit?
First, we need to classify Tacit into the "meta-protocol" category like BRC-20 and Runes, which rely on indexers to handle asset confirmation. If there's any difference, it's that Tacit's indexer runs directly in the user's browser, eliminating the need to trust any centralized server (indexer). As long as two computers run the same code and view the same Bitcoin blockchain data, they will arrive at the same balance results.
Tacit's unique aspect is that it is a new Bitcoin asset protocol focused on "privacy." Many players promoting this new protocol directly use analogies like "ZEC on Bitcoin." This has some merit but isn't entirely accurate, because Tacit's hiding capability only applies to the *amount* of tokens (including the total supply amount specified during new token deployment and the specific amount of each transfer), not to the on-chain address graph.
In other words, Tacit hides the *amount* of fund flow, but not the *direction* of fund flow.
Nevertheless, it is still a native privacy asset protocol on the Bitcoin mainnet. Let's use a simple analogy to explain how it achieves this on the Bitcoin mainnet.
An ordinary Bitcoin transaction is like a transparent ledger; everyone can see a transaction and how much money is involved. Tacit, on the other hand, is like putting the transaction into a "black box" (a Pedersen commitment).
People can still see that this transaction occurred. Although they cannot see the amount, you can prove to everyone that "the money I put in plus the money I take out balances the books."
Pedersen commitments and Bulletproofs are used to hide the transaction amount while proving to the entire network that you haven't fabricated tokens out of thin air (e.g., proving the transferred amount is not negative and the total is conserved).
Mimblewimble-style signatures prove that the outgoing amount equals the incoming amount, ensuring tokens cannot be maliciously inflated.
When the sender transfers tokens to the receiver, the amount information is encrypted using ECDH and written onto the blockchain. Only the sender and receiver can decrypt and see the real amount using their private keys; to others, this data is just gibberish.
Finally, the indexer built into the dApp (the user's browser) reads the data on the Bitcoin chain, independently verifies the aforementioned cryptographic proofs, and thereby calculates your real balance.
Since its launch on May 7th, developer ross.wei (@z0r0zzz) has been updating quickly. Currently, Tacit already supports fair launches, has a marketplace, supports token swaps, and even has a mixer.
This mixer is somewhat similar to Tornado Cash—the more people deposit, the higher the privacy (harder to identify which addresses in the pool correspond). However, Tacit's mixer does not rely on smart contracts. It embeds the deposit proof in the Taproot transaction note, and the zero-knowledge proof for withdrawals is handled by the indexer in the browser.
It's even slightly stronger than Tornado Cash in some aspects because Tornado Cash cannot hide the amount being mixed. However, Tacit's mixer cannot mix native Bitcoin because hiding the mixing amount itself requires first wrapping the Bitcoin.
Of course, privacy comes at a cost. According to the GitHub documentation, due to the larger witness data required for hiding, the transfer cost corresponds to a mainnet fee rate of approximately 10 sat/vB, meaning each transfer costs about 25,000-30,000 sat, roughly 10 times the cost of a Runes transfer.
Who Built Tacit?
Developer ross.wei (@z0r0zzz) is a relatively well-known developer in the Ethereum ecosystem. He previously developed ZAMM, which uses a single contract for creating new tokens, managing LPs, farming, and swaps, significantly improving gas efficiency and user experience.
$ZAMM was also a notable project on Ethereum in the past, reaching a market cap in the tens of millions of dollars and receiving a retweet from crypto KOL Ansem.
Tacit isn't something he suddenly created on a whim; he has been interested in Bitcoin technology for a while. This new protocol has also garnered attention from Messari Enterprise Research Manager @AvgJoesCrypto.
In the future, the author also plans to implement privacy-wrapped native Bitcoin (cBTC), silent receiving (generating a new one-time address for each receiving transaction), and hiding the type of currency being transferred.
Relevant Assets
Currently, the token with the highest trading volume is $TAC. This token was deployed by the protocol author himself and was airdropped not long ago based on holdings of the $ZORG staking token from the Ethereum-based $ZAMM. Its current market cap is approximately $4 million, making it the undisputed leader.
The first token launched via fair launch is $FAIR, though trading for this token is not yet available on the marketplace.
Conclusion
This is indeed an innovative Bitcoin asset protocol. Compared to BRC-20 and Runes, it has already implemented amount privacy and plans to achieve more. Compared to RGB, Taproot Assets, and Liquid CT, it doesn't rely on off-chain client-side proofs or exist as a sidechain; it operates entirely using on-chain data.
After repurposing its own protocol components to create a mixer, it has also addressed the hiding of the on-chain address graph.
Although the usage cost is relatively high, this is truly a refreshing and eye-catching innovation not seen in the Bitcoin ecosystem for a long time.
