Privacy and post-quantum security are useful features, but I don’t think they are enough on their own to make Neptune stand out. It would be good to have a clear use case that makes these features valuable in practice.
One possibility is financial derivatives. For example, someone could get exposure to Apple stock, gold or a market index through a synthetic asset on Neptune without having to own the underlying asset. The contract would track the market price and handle settlement while keeping financial positions private.
A basic version shouldn’t require too much to get started. We would need:
- common interface for tokens
- price oracles
- asset for collateral and settlement
- contract to handle the positions
The basic mechanism is simple: one party takes a long position and another takes a short one. Both provide collateral, and the contract calculates their gains and losses based on the oracle price. Things like liquidations, collateral requirements and unreliable price feeds would need more thought, but they don’t seem like reasons not to try it.
I’d start with a simple on-chain version first. If it proves useful and transaction volume becomes a problem, lightning channels could allow balances to be updated much more frequently without recording every update on-chain.
There are still practical challenges, especially liquidity and getting enough participants to make the market work. But these are things we could address over time, rather than trying to build everything at once.
To me, this seems like a more concrete direction for Neptune. Instead of focusing only on technical features, we could build an application where privacy has a clear purpose. Private financial derivatives might be a good place to start.