The role of Rayls in democratising Digital Finance

In a webinar broadcast on LinkedIn, Marcos Viriato (CEO and Co-founder), Alex Buelau (CPTO and Co-founder), and Mario Yasetig (Head of Research at Parfin), the core developer of Rayls, discussed the advancements in digital asset technology and our blockchain infrastructure. They also shared insights on how Rayls is building bridges to connect financial institutions with blockchain technology.

This article revisits key ideas from the webinar while exploring emerging trends in fraud prevention within tokenisation.

Sophisticated governance

One of Rayls' standout features is its governance system. It includes capabilities like the audit role, which facilitates secure and reliable audits, and the option to connect permissioned networks with public ones, offering a balance of flexibility and transparency.

Built on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the largest ecosystem of developers, dApps, and compatible with smart contracts, Rayls acts as a bridge for financial institutions combining the openness of Ethereum’s public network with the functionality of subnets entering the blockchain universe. It is tailored to meet their needs, enabling tokenisation and digital asset management in a secure and compliant way.

“Rayls was designed from the outset for financial institutions, with a focus on privacy and scalability—both critical for any financial system. We chose Ethereum because it boasts the largest ecosystem, the highest number of developers, and uses the Solidity programming language, which many professionals are already trained to use. It’s no coincidence that most innovations, such as NFTs, meme coins, ICOs, and DeFi, originated from this standard. The first question that often arises when discussing Rayls is whether it’s Layer 1 or Layer 2. The answer is that Rayls is neither L1 nor L2. Instead, Rayls is a unique combination of an Ethereum-based public, permissionless Layer 2 network and a component of permissioned networks—what we also call subnets”. Alex Buelau

That’s why we call it the UniFi Blockchain - it delivers the best of both worlds: the security and compliance of traditional finance (TradFi) with the endless possibilities of decentralised finance (DeFi).

With this robust infrastructure, financial institutions gain access to a flexible environment capable of addressing both local and global challenges. Key benefits include:

• Fraud Prevention: Rayls leverages zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) encryption mechanisms within DvP (Delivery vs Payment) to verify data without exposing sensitive information. The Enygma protocol, as we called it, ensures privacy and fraud prevention on-chain, making transaction histories inaccessible to unauthorised parties.

• Atomicity: Every transaction is executed instantly and fully, ensuring that complex operations are completed in their entirety. This is critical to prevent risks if any single step fails.

• Scalability: The ecosystem supports efficient handling of increasing transaction volumes without compromising performance.

• Programmability: it allows developers to automate and customise processes via smart contracts, providing more accebility to on-chain settlements.

• Composability: Rayls enables developers to integrate existing protocols, building modular dApps that unlock new capabilities.

Advancing with Drex

2024 marked a significant milestone for Drex, the Real Digital and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) operated by Brazil’s Central Bank (Bacen). Among 13 use cases explored in its second phase, Rayls is being practically tested by at least five participants, demonstrating its ability to address privacy, scalability, composability, and security requirements for the Drex network.

Rayls’ privacy solution was selected by Bacen to support Drex transactions. In a year where many nations accelerated efforts to incorporate digital assets and CBDCs into their economies, this collaboration has provided valuable insights for evolving protocols across the ecosystem.

Key achievements during the Drex pilot phase include:

• Addressing privacy and security gaps.

• Adapting the system to diverse use cases, ensuring scalability and efficiency.

• Proving that the combination of adaptable EVM, robust governance, and advanced privacy solutions meets the demands of financial institutions.

Initiatives like Drex highlight how TradFi and DeFi can merge to create an integrated, secure, and increasingly inclusive financial ecosystem.

“In the first phase of the Drex pilot, we were the only solution to deliver all four workflows. Based on these use cases, we refined and evolved the versions to address Bacen’s requirements and the needs identified by the participating institutions. The combination of these updated versions with Enygma, our new privacy protocol, on the Rayls subnet will already be tested in the next phases of Drex. We’re very excited about what’s ahead, as this brings significant efficiency, such as atomicity on the blockchain”. Marcos Viriato

The present and future of Blockchain in Finance

In the same week that Google unveiled Willow - a chip capable of solving problems in five minutes that current supercomputers would take septillions of years to complete - the conversation around quantum-privacy and cybersecurity has never been more relevant. These principles have been at the core of Rayls since its inception, which means that our team is working steps ahead of our time to remain diligent and prevent fraud.

“We analysed all the existing privacy solutions developed to date, and the first question that came to mind was: what if a quantum computer appears in 10 or 20 years? Will we still be able to maintain the same level of privacy as we operate with today? This was the starting point for our design. What we decided to create is what we are now calling Enygma - a protocol that delivers privacy, scalability, and auditability in one solution”. Mario Yasetig

As digital finance evolves, it brings complex challenges but also unprecedented opportunities to revolutionising the global economy.

We’re just getting started — the potential is endless.

Watch the webinar recording here.
*Broadcasting in Portuguese, with English subtitles.

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