More privacy on the blockchain of Ethereum

Ethereum has often held a mirror this year due to the slow transition to ETH 2.0. Still, Vitalik Buterin thinks it is time for Ethereum to set the bar high and work on privacy.

The driver is Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of the Ethereum foundation, published a blog on the HackMD website. He wrote that the Ethereum network needs more privacy.

Buterin proposed a function where users can keep their activity on the blockchain secret by means of a “mini mixer.” The principle of anonymity sets must be used for this.

Anonymity sets

He explains anonymity sets like this:

“Cryptographers use the term anonymity set to describe a series of users where something could come from. For example, if I have sent you 1 ETH and you cannot tell exactly who it comes from, but you can tell it comes from me, Alice Bob or Charlie, then the anonymity set has size 4. The greater the anonymity, the more privacy you have, “said Vitalik Buterin.

Privacy is needed for adoption blockchain

Itamar Lesuisse, CEO of smart wallet provider Argent, fully supports more privacy on the Ethereum network:

“If you only look at the simplest use case, when I say,” Hey Christine, can you send me ten dollars in ether? Here is my receiving address. Now Christine immediately knows how much money I have. “

“The big advantage of blockchain is that it is inherently transparent, but for some users this may be a reason not to use blockchain on a large scale.”

Completely anonymous ERC-20 tokens

A delegation from Ernst & Young is also working on blockchain under the name Nightfall. The focus of Nightfall is on a series of smart contracts, microservices and zk snarks to provide ERC-20 tokens with complete privacy on the Ethereum blockchain. This code is still quite experimental, but could ensure that all tokens on the Ethereum blockchain can compete with monero and zcash. But because of the phase the code is in, that is mainly speculation.