---
# System prepended metadata

title: 'Coconut Credentials: a selective disclosure credential system for FRAME'

---

# Coconut Credentials: a selective disclosure credential system for FRAME

Full disclosure: I (Bernardo) have no relations with NYM. I just think it's an amazing project and I would really like to work with their technology as a part of my job a Parity's Delivery Services team.

## Context 

Gavin Wood frequently mentions the Snowden NSA revelations as one of the main driving factors behind his vision for the Web3.

In some interactions with W3F's Jeff Burdges, [I learned that `sphinx`/`loopix` Mixnets are the cutting edge technology for private communications](https://forum.parity.io/t/waku-whisper-revamped/909/2?u=bernardo_araujo_rodr).

[NYM](https://nymtech.net/) is a team implementing this technology for general purpose applications of anonymous communication. Together with their Nyx blockchain (Cosmos) and [Coconut Credential scheme](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07344.pdf) they have an incentive scheme for scalable infrastructure of anonymous communication.

You can see a list of NYM's team members [here](https://nymtech.net/team/).

Delivery Services had some [brief interactions with the NYM team](https://github.com/paritytech/delivery-services/issues/173) in 2022, mediated by the Growth team (Rohan, then Robin). They were looking for guidance in how to build Nym's credential system (Coconut) as a Substrate Pallet. We also have a [Telegram group](https://t.me/+lnj2yobKC3k2NWZh) with NYM's team.

Finally, we have a recent hire at Parity that could provide us with a lot of insight on this front. [Gonçalo Pestana](https://github.com/gpestana) joined the FRAME team in late 2022, where his main responsability is to help Kian on the Staking activities. Gonçalo has a solid background on privacy preserving networks and substantial understanding on the topics mentioned above.

# Coconut Credentials as a FRAME pallet

Dave Hrycyszyn (NYM's Co-Founder and CTO) has expressed in public writings his interest of bringing Coconut into Substrate (e.g.: see last paragraph of [this blogpost](https://blog.nymtech.net/nyms-coconut-credentials-an-overview-4aa4e922cd51)).

NYM's original request on their interaction with Growth was the writing of a FRAME pallet for their Coconut Credentials.

As a high level description, this pallet would provide functionalities similar to Gautam's [RBAC](https://github.com/gautamdhameja/substrate-rbac/) pallet, but with non-interactive ZK proofs (no one knows which key can sign for each role).

Even if the interaction has cooled down since then, I (Bernardo) strongly believe there's a big potential there! With the right advisory from W3F's Jeff Burdges and FRAME's Gonçalo Pestana, we can achieve a very impactful and consequential contribution to FRAME.

## Forum posts


## References

- [Coconut: Threshold Issuance Selective Disclosure
Credentials with Applications to Distributed Ledgers](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.07344.pdf)
- [Nym's Coconut Credentials - An Overview](https://constructiveproof.com/posts/2020-03-24-nym-credentials-overview/)
- [Security Analysis of Coconut, an
Attribute-Based Credential Scheme with
Threshold Issuance](https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/011.pdf)
- [Coconut Docs](https://nymtech.net/docs/coconut.html)