Recently, the crypto market fluctuations have seen most cryptocurrencies exhibit red numbers. While many remain unfazed by the market dynamics, some sectors of the crypto community have turned more pessimistic, and their bags are seemingly going down instead of up.

Despite this, some projects have shown a remarkable performance this week. Among the top gainers today, privacy protocol Railgun has skyrocketed 53% in the last 24 hours after a week of support from crucial figures in the crypto industry.

On Monday, news broke that Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin had transferred 100 ETH, worth around $325,000, to Railgun. The project is an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) privacy protocol that allows DeFi private transactions.

Although the move raised criticism, most replies supported his use of privacy tools. Some users pointed out that Buterin’s every on-chain move is watched and speculated on.

Ethereum’s founder later addressed the news, expressing support for the project’s use of the Privacy Pools protocol, which “makes it much harder for bad actors to join the pool without compromising users’ privacy.”

Privacy is normal.

Railgun uses the privacy pools protocol ( https://t.co/DekkatsMR5 ) which makes it much harder for bad actors to join the pool without compromising users' privacy.https://t.co/MG0huDzpAu

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) April 15, 2024

Buterin also stated in his post that “privacy is normal,” an idea he has expressed several times before. He has researched the use of Privacy Pools to achieve an equilibrium between blockchain privacy and regulatory compliance.

After the post, Railgun (RAIL) skyrocketed 257%. The token went from trading at $0.56 to changing hands for $1.97 in a few hours. Moreover, the rest of the privacy tokens market saw a pump, with tokens like Monero (XRM) and Oasis Network (ROSE) rising 7% and 12.3%, respectively. As of this writing, privacy tokens are 4.7% up, per CoinGecko data.

On Tuesday, the crypto news platform Wu Blockchain highlighted the alleged links between the privacy protocol and the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group. The post affirmed that Lazarus Group “is also a user of the coin mixer Railgun.”

Moreover, the news platform pointed out that, in January 2023, the US FBI claimed over $60 million worth of stolen ETH was laundered through Railgun. Additionally, the post stated that the privacy protocol became the “main alternative” after the Tornado Cash sanctions.

Railgun shut down Wu Blockchain’s claims, deeming them “not true and false reporting.” The post stated the news was “a mistaken, false allegation in the first place.”

However, they clarified that the Lazarus Group is blocked from using the protocol’s system due to the “Private Proofs of Innocence” (Private POI).

The Private POI tool was implemented a year ago and gives “cryptographic assurance that funds entering the RAILGUN smart contract are not from a known list of transactions or actors considered undesirable by respective wallet providers.”

Congratulations to the exchange website @Poloniex who since yesterday are serving spot markets for $RAIL token! pic.twitter.com/P1RL8bKWsZ

— RAILGUN – Private & Anonymous DeFi (@RAILGUN_Project) April 19, 2024

Despite the controversy, the price of RAIL remained above the $1 support level, hovering between $1.00 and $1.30 in the following days. RAIL continued an upward trajectory after its listing on the crypto exchange Poloniex.

At writing time, RAIL is trading at $1.85, an 18.2% surge in the last hour. According to an X user, a whale recently bought 152,034 RAIL tokens, which could have fueled the price jump.

Moreover, following its remarkable week, RAIL has increased 156% in the last seven days, with its daily trading volume rising a stellar 376% from yesterday.

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