EY Upgrades Nightfall With Zero-Knowledge Tech for Private Ethereum Transactions – Decrypt

EY has rebuilt its enterprise-focused Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Dusk as a zero-knowledge rollup, eliminating ready intervals for transaction finality and simplifying the platform’s structure.

The replace, launched Wednesday, replaces Dusk’s earlier optimistic rollup design with a cryptographic strategy that verifies transactions earlier than submission to Ethereum. This removes the necessity for problem intervals that might delay finality for days.

Now dubbed Nightfall_4, EY’s technical transition provides a number of benefits past velocity. 

Changing a “cryptoeconomic strategy with a cryptographic strategy” simplifies Dusk’s structure as a result of, consequently, there could be “no must accommodate difficult incorrect blocks,” EY stated in a assertion.

The transfer supplies “the identical privateness and scaling that model 3 enabled, however now with near-instant finality and a simplified structure,” Paul Brody, international blockchain lead at EY, stated in an announcement.

Although EY stated Nightfall_4 and supporting instruments are publicly accessible, their GitHub repository doesn’t replicate the change and opens a 404 error, which suggests it hasn’t been up to date. EY didn’t instantly reply to Decrypt’s request for touch upon that entrance.

From optimistic rollups to zero-knowledge

Whereas optimistic rollups require game-theoretic safety assumptions and financial incentives to catch fraud, zero-knowledge implementations present stronger cryptographic ensures.

The brand new design additionally enhances privateness by means of zero-knowledge proofs that permit transaction validation with out revealing underlying information.

Dusk stays permissioned for EY’s company shoppers regardless of its open-source code base. The platform allows personal transactions on Ethereum whereas sustaining the principle community’s safety advantages and lowering prices.

Enterprise customers, in the meantime, would nonetheless profit from Dusk’s integration of industry-standard id certificates, which stop nameless utilization whereas preserving transaction privateness.

EY started growth of Dusk in 2019. In a 2022 interview with Decrypt, EY blockchain lead stated the agency needs “to be one of the best on earth at Ethereum.”

The timing coincides with improved regulatory situations for privateness applied sciences, following the U.S. Treasury’s choice to raise sanctions on Twister Money, a beforehand blacklisted crypto mixer.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair