Relayers

Relayers are independent trusted parties in Portal Gate mechanical design that will be used to protect users' privacy of withdrawal.

Usually, when a user initiates a withdrawal request to a smart contract, it will only be successfully processed if his/her withdrawal account has enough Ether to cover the Ethereum network fees for this operation. However, pre-funding ETH to the withdrawal account could potentially establish a connection between the user's deposit and withdrawal accounts. Then, the user identity risks being deanonymized.

To solve this issue, relayers allow users to process withdrawals without pre-funding their withdrawal accounts, but paying gas fees on their behalf instead.

1) To initiate a relayer-assisted withdrawal, a user needs to choose a relayer from the relayer list.

2) Then, the user uploads the recipient address to generate the ZKP and proceed with the transaction.

3) The relayer processes the withdrawal and receives a separate fee for this service from the user. In other words, the withdrawn tokens (adjusted for fees) are sent to the user's withdrawal account.

Testnet Relayer Flow

Note that during the early stages, some or all of the relayers may be run internally until external relayers are announced and deployed.

For further information on Relayers, click here.