Penumm is a privacy-preserving infrastructure protocol that protects Ethereum users from metadata leakage by routing traffic through encrypted onion networks and batching transaction submissions.

Penumm addresses critical privacy gaps in the Ethereum ecosystem where users leak metadata to RPC providers and through transaction timing/ordering patterns. The protocol implements multiple privacy-preserving layers:

• RPC Privacy: Prevents blockchain RPC providers from learning client IP addresses, geographic locations, and direct wallet-to-network linkages
• Transaction Ingress Privacy: Reduces transaction-level metadata correlation to make MEV-driven surveillance and censorship more difficult
• Network Privacy: Implements onion routing with fixed-size packets to prevent traffic analysis

• penum-spec: Protocol specification defining cryptographic primitives, packet formats, and network protocols.

• penum-client: Implementation of the Penum protocol client in Rust, responsible for constructing and sending layered encrypted packets through a Penum relay network.

• penum-relay: Multi-hop relay infrastructure implementing the Penum protocol with fixed-size packet forwarding.

• penum-gateway: Exit gateway node that terminates Penum protocol connections and forwards traffic to final destinations.

• penum-private-rpc: Privacy-preserving Ethereum JSON-RPC gateway with onion routing and fixed-size packets, allowing tools like MetaMask to connect through the Penum protocol.

• penum-ingress: Transaction batching and commitment system for reducing metadata correlation in Ethereum transaction submissions.

• penum-socks: SOCKS5 proxy that routes traffic through the Penum protocol, enabling applications to use Penum for network privacy.

• penum-vpn: VPN client with Tauri UI that routes all OS traffic through the Penum protocol.

• penum-tools: Development tools, testing utilities, and debugging utilities for the Penum ecosystem.

Penumm consists of multiple interconnected components:

• Penum Specification: Protocol definition and cryptographic primitives
• Relay Network: Multi-hop onion routing infrastructure
• Gateway Services: Protocol termination and forwarding

• Private RPC: Privacy-preserving JSON-RPC gateway
• Transaction Ingress: Batched transaction submission layer
• Client Libraries: Integration tools for wallets and dApps

• Fixed-Size Packet Protocol: Prevents traffic analysis through uniform packet sizes
• Ephemeral Keys: X25519 key exchange with ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption
• Cryptographically Secure Batching: Reduces timing correlation through secure shuffling
• Commit-Reveal Pipeline: SHA-256 commitments enable censorship detection
• Zero Logging: No sensitive data stored by design
• Fail-Silent Design: Prevents information leakage through error handling
• Full Ethereum Compatibility: Works with existing wallets, dApps, and infrastructure

• Privacy-Conscious Users: Protect Ethereum activity from RPC provider surveillance
• DeFi Protocols: Reduce MEV extraction through transaction batching
• Enterprise Applications: Maintain transaction privacy in business contexts
• Wallet Providers: Integrate privacy features without infrastructure changes
• DeFi Aggregators: Protect user transaction patterns from competitors

For developers and integrators, Penumm provides production-ready, auditable privacy infrastructure with minimal integration overhead and full compatibility with existing Ethereum tooling.

For technical stakeholders, the protocol offers measurable privacy improvements through cryptographically secure batching, commitment-reveal schemes, and traffic obfuscation without requiring protocol-level changes.

All cryptographic implementations use well-vetted libraries:

• x25519-dalek for key exchange
• chacha20poly1305 for encryption
• sha2 for hashing
• rand for secure random number generation

Security audits are planned for all core components.

We welcome contributions to the Penumm ecosystem. Each repository has its own contribution guidelines, but the general workflow is:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Add tests for new functionality
4. Ensure all tests pass
5. Submit a pull request with clear description

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

For technical questions and support:

• GitHub Issues: https://github.com/penumm
• Documentation: Individual repository README files
• Security: security@penumm.org

Penumm builds upon research in privacy-preserving systems, onion routing, and blockchain privacy. We thank the Ethereum research community and privacy researchers whose work enables these implementations.