Bid to Connect Ethereum and Zcash Blockchains Reaches New Milestone

Work on integrating Zcash's privacy-focused tech with ethereum’s distributed applications platform has reached a new milestone.

According to a blog post by Ethereum Foundation team lead Christian Reitwiessner and Zcash Company engineer Ariel Gabizon, new code has been tested as part of effort to create a means to verify zk-SNARK proofs written in Solidity, ethereum’s smart contract language.

Zk-SNARKS are zero-knowledge proofs that provide a means to shield certain types of data (like who is sending what amount of digital currency), and form a central component of Zcash.

As Reitwiessner and Gabizon wrote:

"We tested the new code by successfully verifying a real privacy-preserving Zcash transaction on a testnet of the ethereum blockchain. The verification took only 42 milliseconds, which shows that such precompiled contracts can be added, and the gas costs for using them can be made to be quite affordable."

The idea of using Zcash’s elements to obscure the nature of ethereum transactions has been explored in the past, forming part of what the two organizations call Project Alchemy.

According to Reitwiessner and Gabizon, the effort seeks "to enable a direct decentralized exchange" between the two blockchain-based networks.

However, there’s still work to be done. "Truly achieving the mentioned functionalities – creating anonymous tokens and verifying Zcash transactions on the ethereum blockchain, will require implementing other elements used by Zcash in Solidity,” the pair wrote.

Disclaimer: CoinDesk is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which has an ownership stake in Zcash Company.

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