Governance

A privacy pool on frame transactions: what works, and the case that does not yet

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Based on a feed excerpt; full article content has not been acquired. Source evidence retrieved 06/11/2026, 13:13:25 UTC.

Briefings

A privacy pool on frame transactions successfully pays its own gas on Nethermind master, allowing withdrawals to bypass relayers. However, two critical limitations prevent universal adoption: the proof check exceeds the validation gas cap, and a pool cannot pay for a call originating from the user's own address. Measurements show a 300,000 gas budget holds one attacker peer at 50 ms, indicating tight node capacity. The protocol currently refuses double spends with reused nullifier keys, requiring a spec change to scope keys to the payer.

Key points

• A private withdrawal costs 679,322 gas on Nethermind master, where the pool pays its own gas without a relayer.
• The proof check for the withdrawal exceeds the EIP-8141 validation gas cap, causing the transaction to fail on standard nodes.

Context

This finding comes from measurements by Daniil Ankushin and Manuel Arto on Nethermind master. It demonstrates that a shielded pool can pay its own gas, enabling private withdrawals. The case that does not yet work involves exceeding validation gas limits and the inability to pay for user-initiated calls.

Limitations

Measurements were conducted on specific local builder machines (AMD EPYC 4344P and 9645 host) and cannot confirm if the gas cost is due to code or hardware constraints. The protocol currently refuses double spends with reused nullifier keys, and a spec change to scope keys to the payer is proposed but not yet implemented.

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