Ren Protocol- Privacy Reimagined

Launched in 2019, Ren Protocol is an open protocol enabling the permissionless and private transfer of value between any blockchain. The network is dedicated to delivering bleeding-edge interoperability features on the blockchain through its Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zkSNARK) cryptography and its secure multiparty computation protocol. It features its own token REN.

Whereas most blockchains are built on the foundation of decentralization, where users are promised a future where they can control their own data and developers can build applications on a trustless distributed computer, still, the issue of privacy has failed to receive the attention it deserves.

Thus, Ren focuses on building around privacy with special regard to financial applications that have emerged as highly valuable. This is by ensuring that decentralized applications truly respect the privacy and sovereignty of users and their data. 

Number of Contributors

Developers on RenVM use RenJS, a software development kit (SDK) that they have to install to interact with the network.  Although the network does not have any public projects yet,  conventional developer procedures apply when building on Ren and interested developers can join a chat on telegram where they can raise issues or give suggestions.

REN has 7 officially authorized contributors, with Go, Typescript, Rust, Shel, and Javascript being the most used programming languages.

Number of Issues

According to Github, currently, there are 68 repositories for the Ren project. Six are, however, the most popular include; Multichain, RenJS; Darknode-sol; REN; Bridge-v2, and; Hyperdrive.

Multichain which is an abstraction over multiple different underlying blockchains (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, etc.) has the highest number of issues at 6 to the master. Since its debut, one issue has been closed on this repository. There are also some 21 open pull requests with 113 of them having been closed. A pull request is a mechanism for a developer to notify team members that a feature or fix, developed on a separate branch, is ready. This lets everybody involved know that they can review the code.

Look at the rest of the repositories here.

Number of Commits

There have been thousands of individual changes to files on Ren. As of writing, excluding merges, 2 authors have pushed 29 commits to master and 33 commits to all branches, in the past 30 or so days. On the Ren-JS which is the official JavaScript library for interacting with RenVM, 123 files have changed and there have been 4,782 additions and 3,903 deletions. 

On the other hand, for Multichain, 2 authors have pushed 13 commits to master and 13 commits to all branches. 7 files have changed and there have been 103 additions and 30 deletions within the same timeframe.

Number of Releases

There have been several releases for the Ren project, with every repository boasting a handful. The most significant release was the RenVM in May 2020. RenVM serves as a robust and permissionless tool for all of DeFi to utilize.

Other releases, some of which are still in the works like the “blockchain blitz,” aim to add support for as many new chains as possible. 

These additional releases include the Host 2 Host (H2H); RenJS V3; Airwaves v0.6 Release and; Loki v0.4.9 release. Stay updated about the network releases here.  

Number of Forks

Hundreds of changes have been forked to existing repositories on the Ren project since launch. A fork is a copy of a repository. Forking a repository allows you to freely experiment with changes without affecting the original project. So far, the multichain repository has the highest number of forks at 111, followed by Darknode-sol at 84. 

Track the latest developments on the Ren Protocol HERE.

PN: “This data is not final and may be updated from time to time”