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Community-driven makes me think of Diamond (DMD).
A lot of the other goals mentioned also seem very reminiscent of Diamond DMD.
So my first thought is wouldn't it make sense to add zksnark stuff to Diamond DMD?
Pretty much all the other goals seem already achieved, with only the zksnark stuff left to do?
-MarkM-
Hi MarkM,
Thank you for the excellent and insightful question. It’s a crucial point, and it gets right to the heart of why we believe the Zensia project is a necessary endeavor.
You are absolutely right to draw a parallel with Diamond (DMD). We have a great deal of respect for the DMD project, particularly for its incredible resilience and its long-standing, community-driven ethos, which has been its hallmark since it was founded back in 2013. Its ability to survive and adapt is a testament to its community's strength.
The core of your question—"wouldn't it make sense to add zk-SNARK stuff to Diamond DMD?"—is where our foundational philosophies diverge. The difference can be best described as iteration vs. inception.
Diamond's strength lies in its successful history of iteration. It has pragmatically evolved over the years by integrating proven, successful technologies from across the industry. Its most recent major upgrade to DMDv4, which made it fully compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), is a perfect example of this. This has made DMD a powerful and interoperable platform for transparent smart contracts, and its entire ecosystem is built upon that transparent, account-based ledger.
Zensia, on the other hand, is a project of inception. Our guiding principle is to explore "how Satoshi would design Bitcoin in 2025," which means starting from a blank slate with privacy as the primary, non-negotiable foundation. We believe that for privacy to be truly robust and the default for all users, it cannot be an optional layer or an added feature. It must be woven into the very fabric of the protocol from the first line of code.
This brings us to the technical challenge of simply "adding zk-SNARKs." True, protocol-level privacy of the kind Zensia envisions requires a fundamentally different architecture—a shielded ledger where transaction amounts, senders, and receivers are not public by default. DMD is built on a transparent ledger, which is essential for its EVM compatibility and current dApps.
Attempting to retrofit a native privacy model onto DMD would not be a simple "addition." It would require a fundamental, breaking change to its core architecture. This would not only be an immense technical challenge but would also invalidate the entire existing ecosystem of tools, smart contracts, and applications that the DMD community has worked for years to build.
So, while we share the goal of a community-driven project, our architectural destination is completely different. We believe that trying to force DMD down a path of native privacy would be a disservice to its own unique strengths and accomplishments.
Instead, Zensia is charting a new course to see what is possible when a system is designed for privacy from day one. We see these two approaches not as competitive, but as complementary and vital to a healthy, diverse decentralized ecosystem.
Thanks again for the thoughtful engagement. It’s exactly this kind of critical thinking that helps push open-source projects forward.
All the best.
