EY has rebuilt its enterprise-focused Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Dusk as a zero-knowledge rollup, eliminating ready durations for transaction finality and simplifying the platform’s structure.
The replace, launched Wednesday, replaces Dusk’s earlier optimistic rollup design with a cryptographic method that verifies transactions earlier than submission to Ethereum. This removes the necessity for problem durations that might delay finality for days.
Now dubbed Nightfall_4, EY’s technical transition affords a number of benefits past pace.
Changing a “cryptoeconomic method with a cryptographic method” simplifies Dusk’s structure as a result of, because of this, there can be “no have to accommodate difficult incorrect blocks,” EY mentioned in a assertion.
The transfer offers “the identical privateness and scaling that model 3 enabled, however now with near-instant finality and a simplified structure,” Paul Brody, world blockchain lead at EY, mentioned in an announcement.
Although EY mentioned Nightfall_4 and supporting instruments are publicly out there, their GitHub repository doesn’t mirror the change and opens a 404 error, which implies 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 way of zero-knowledge proofs that enable transaction validation with out revealing underlying information.
Dusk stays permissioned for EY’s company purchasers regardless of its open-source code base. The platform permits personal transactions on Ethereum whereas sustaining the principle community’s safety advantages and decreasing prices.
Enterprise customers, in the meantime, would nonetheless profit from Dusk’s integration of industry-standard identification certificates, which forestall nameless utilization whereas preserving transaction privateness.
EY started improvement of Dusk in 2019. In a 2022 interview with Decrypt, EY blockchain lead mentioned the agency needs “to be the very best on earth at Ethereum.”
The timing coincides with improved regulatory situations for privateness applied sciences, following the U.S. Treasury’s determination to carry sanctions on Twister Money, a beforehand blacklisted crypto mixer.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
