Cloak: A Private, Secure, and Untraceable Decentralized Transaction System
The Cloak white paper was written and published by the CloakCoin core team after the project’s launch in 2014, aiming to address the growing privacy needs in the cryptocurrency space and provide a fully anonymous transaction solution.
The theme of Cloak’s white paper is “Cloak Whitepaper: True Global Transaction Freedom.” Cloak’s uniqueness lies in its proposal and implementation of an off-chain mixing system based on ENIGMA® technology, combined with onion routing and CloakShield® features to achieve end-to-end encryption and transaction anonymity; Cloak’s significance is in providing users with decentralized, secure, and untraceable digital currency transaction capabilities, dedicated to safeguarding users’ transaction privacy and information security.
Cloak’s original intention was to create a digital currency platform capable of offering complete privacy and anonymous transactions, addressing the privacy pain points brought by traditional blockchain transparency. The core idea outlined in the Cloak white paper is: through the ENIGMA off-chain mixing mechanism and PoSA (Proof-of-Stake-Anonymous transfers) consensus, achieve fully anonymous and untraceable transactions on a decentralized and secure foundation, thereby granting users true global transaction freedom.
Cloak whitepaper summary
What is Cloak
Cloak (full name CloakCoin) is a digital currency project focused on privacy protection, launched in 2014. You can think of it as “invisible digital cash.” Its core goal is to make your digital transactions private, secure, and untraceable. This means that when you transfer CLOAK, it’s as if you put your money into a special “magic box,” where it’s cleverly mixed up before reaching the recipient, making it very difficult for outsiders to know where the money came from or where it went.
Its main function is to provide this private transfer service. For example, if you want to send money to a friend but don’t want others to know the details of the transaction, you can use CLOAK. The whole process is like putting a banknote into an envelope, then mixing that envelope among a pile of similar envelopes, passing them around in a complex way, so that only your friend can open and receive your money, while the mailman or anyone else doesn’t know what’s inside or who sent it to whom.
Project Vision and Value Proposition
The vision of the Cloak project is very clear: to make financial privacy simple and accessible, so that almost everyone can enjoy true global transaction freedom. In our digital age, personal data and transaction information are increasingly easy to track. Cloak aims to provide a “safe haven” in the digital world, allowing people to have control and privacy over their financial activities, just like using cash. It hopes to become the “anonymous cash” of the digital world, protecting users’ transaction activities from public scrutiny. Unlike many transparent blockchain projects, Cloak’s core value lies in its powerful built-in privacy features, making it stand out in the crypto world that often pursues transparency.
Technical Features
Consensus Mechanism
Cloak initially adopted a hybrid consensus mechanism called “Proof of Work (PoW)” and “Proof of Stake (PoS).” Proof of Stake (PoS) simply means that the more CLOAK coins you hold and lock (or “stake”), the greater your chance of being selected to validate transactions and create new blocks, earning rewards. It’s like the more money you deposit in a bank, the more interest you earn. Currently, Cloak mainly operates under the Proof of Stake (PoS) model.
Privacy Technology: ENIGMA
Cloak’s core privacy technology is called **ENIGMA**. You can think of it as a “digital blender” or “anonymous transaction service center.” When you want to make a private transaction, ENIGMA mixes your transaction information with that of many other users, like pouring everyone’s money into a big bucket and redistributing it. Specifically, it’s an off-blockchain mixing service, meaning the mixing process doesn’t happen on the main blockchain, which improves efficiency and privacy. It leverages the help of other users (called “Cloakers”) to mix your transaction inputs and outputs, using multiple one-time addresses to split your transaction amount, making it impossible for third parties to trace the real sender and receiver.
Secure Communication: CloakShield
To further ensure communication security, Cloak also introduced **CloakShield** technology. It’s like wrapping your transaction data in layer upon layer of “onion skins.” It uses Onion Routing technology and a key exchange method called ECDH (Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman) to achieve end-to-end encrypted communication. This way, even if someone tries to eavesdrop on the network, they can’t know your transaction content or communication path, effectively preventing traffic analysis and man-in-the-middle attacks.
Privacy Protection: Refers to hiding personal identity, transaction details, and other sensitive information in the digital world through technical means, preventing unauthorized third parties from obtaining and analyzing it.
Onion Routing: An anonymous communication technology that uses multi-layer encryption and multiple network nodes (like the layers of an onion) to hide the source and destination of data, making it difficult to trace during transmission.
Security Audit
It’s worth noting that the Cloak project underwent a professional security audit by Cognosec (a Nasdaq-listed cybersecurity company) to verify its technical security.
Tokenomics
Token Basic Information
The token symbol for the Cloak project is **CLOAK**. Since its launch in 2014, the project has been self-funded, with no pre-mining or initial coin offering (ICO), meaning its token distribution avoids the risk of early centralization.
According to block explorer data, the current circulating supply of CLOAK tokens is about **6,077,872**. As of December 4, 2025, its market cap is around $176,000.
Token Utility and Rewards
CLOAK tokens have several main uses:
- Private Transactions: The core use is, of course, private and untraceable transfers.
- Staking Rewards: If you hold CLOAK tokens and keep them in your wallet (i.e., stake them), you can earn about **6%** annual interest rewards. This is a way to support network security and earn returns by holding tokens.
- ENIGMA Mixing Rewards: Any CLOAK holder can choose to become a “Cloaker,” participating in ENIGMA’s mixing service to help other users make anonymous transactions. In return, these “Cloakers” receive extra rewards from transaction fees, with the fee rate ranging from **0.2% to 1%** of the transaction amount.
Team, Governance, and Funding
Since its founding in 2014, the Cloak project has always been self-funded, without large-scale fundraising through ICOs or similar means. The white paper and official materials mention a “development team,” but do not list specific core members. The project emphasizes community-driven and open-source spirit, meaning community members play an important role in its development.
Roadmap
Cloak has a long development history and a clear plan. Here are some key milestones and future plans:
Historical Milestones:
- June 2014: CloakCoin project officially launched.
- September 2014: Introduced the PoSA (Proof-of-Stake-Anonymous) mechanism.
- 2017: Released ENIGMA’s open-source code and rebranded.
- February 2018: Published a revised CloakCoin-ENIGMA white paper detailing ENIGMA technology.
- 2018: Listed on Binance, OpenLedger, and other exchanges, and released multiple wallet updates.
- January 2018: Underwent Cognosec’s cybersecurity audit.
Future Plans (Please note, the following plans are mainly from the roadmap published by the project before 2023. Given the current date is December 2025, these may have been completed or are in progress):
- Wallet Development: Plans to develop iOS mobile wallet, Electrum web wallet, Raspberry Pi wallet, and continued development of Android wallet.
- Security and Technical Upgrades: Plans for a second ENIGMA security audit, implementation of HD wallet (hierarchical deterministic wallet) functionality, hardware wallet integration, improvement of the staking algorithm, and migration to a new Bitcoin codebase.
- User Experience: Improve wallet UI and UX design, enhance ENIGMA and CloakShield security performance.
- Marketing and Community Building: Increase PR and marketing activities, expand supported languages, participate in crypto expos and conferences, build strategic partnerships, organize offline meetups, and seek more exchange and platform listings for CLOAK.
- Team Expansion: Recruit more developers and coordinators to grow the team.
Common Risk Reminders
Any blockchain project comes with risks, and Cloak is no exception. Please exercise caution with any crypto-related activities.
- Technical and Security Risks: Although Cloak’s privacy technologies ENIGMA and CloakShield are well-designed and audited, any complex technical system may have unknown vulnerabilities. Additionally, ENIGMA’s mixing mechanism relies on participation from the “Cloaker” network; if there are too few participants, mixing effectiveness and anonymity may be affected.
- Economic Risks: The cryptocurrency market is highly volatile, and CLOAK’s price can fluctuate sharply. According to the latest data, CLOAK’s trading volume and market cap are relatively low (as of December 4, 2025, market cap is about $176,000, 24-hour trading volume is extremely low), meaning its liquidity is very poor, trading may be difficult, and prices are more easily manipulated.
- Compliance and Operational Risks: Privacy coins face increasingly strict regulatory scrutiny worldwide. Some countries or regions may restrict or even ban the use of privacy coins, which could impact Cloak’s future development. Additionally, the project has been self-funded since 2014, and many roadmap plans are now in the past, which may suggest a decline in development and operational activity, posing a risk of insufficient team engagement.
- Competition Risks: There are other more active and mature privacy coin projects in the market, so Cloak needs to keep innovating to stay competitive.
Verification Checklist
If you want to learn more about the Cloak project, here are some links you can check:
- Block Explorer: You can view all CLOAK transaction records and network status via block explorers. For example: explorer.cloakcoin.com or chainz.cryptoid.info/cloak/
- GitHub Activity: CloakCoin’s source code is hosted on GitHub. You can visit its GitHub page (for example: github.com/CloakCoin) to check code update frequency and community contributions. At present, some core repositories were last updated a while ago, so you may want to pay attention to its latest development activity.
Project Summary
In summary, CloakCoin is a long-standing privacy coin project that has, since 2014, been dedicated to providing users with private and secure digital transactions through its unique ENIGMA mixing technology and CloakShield encrypted communication. It emphasizes community-driven and self-funded development, and offers staking and mixing rewards to incentivize network participants. However, given the rapid evolution of the crypto market and changing regulatory environment, as well as the project’s current trading volume and market cap, those interested should pay close attention to its latest development progress, community activity, and potential liquidity risks when researching further.
Please remember, the above information is for educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Always do your own independent research (DYOR) before making any decisions.