Ethereum and Filecoin would integrate the ZCash privacy protocol

The Ethereum Foundation is interested in exploring the Halo 2 protocol that the Electric Coin Company (ECC) team has been working on, the company behind the development of the ZCash (ZEC) cryptocurrency.

The ECC signed a cooperation agreement with the Ethereum Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to the development of the Ethereum network and its related technologies. The objective is explore research and development for Halo 2, with the possibility of integrating it into your ecosystem.

The Filecoin Foundation and the Protocol Labs research laboratory have also joined the agreement. Both are working together on the development of their platform and cryptocurrency for storing data in the cloud.

ECC Vice President of Growth Josh Swihart said that joint work could “improve interoperability between Filecoin, Zcash and Ethereum and open avenues for greater privacy in all of these projects,” according to a published note from the Electric Coin Company. yesterday, September 20.

Imagine a scenario where people write smart contracts in Ethereum using Filecoin for storage and ZEC protected within that contract to pay for file storage. We are early, but this partnership is about possibilities.

Josh Swihart, Vice President of Growth at ECC.

As part of the agreement, Bootstrap, ECC’s non-profit parent organization, will receive $ 2 million for Filecoin, Protocol Labs and the Ethereum Foundation to join the investigation and joint development on the use of ZCash protocol transaction verification systems.

The ZCash Privacy Halo Interesting Ethereum and Filecoin

The Halo 2 protocol, which has interested Ethereum and Filecoin developers, will be implemented in ZCash in January 2022, although it was initially scheduled for October of this year.

The update called Halo Arc for ZCash, includes a series of products, but the most tangible for users will be the ability to ensure that your transactions are even more private.

It is because Halo 2, which is software that operates without confidence from zero knowledge proofs, means that it eliminates the need for a reliable configuration, one of the main criticisms that privacy has received in Zcash. This consists of a set of initial parameters that will be destroyed at a later stage, in order to prevent them from being used to forge transactions.

The zero knowledge protocol or zk-SNARKS is the mechanism used in this network to verify a transaction and add it to the blockchain without revealing any details to the public.

By leveraging the resources of Halo 2, the amount of test data stored on the Filecoin network could be reduced significantly. It also has the potential to contribute to scalability by facilitating integration with other blockchains, the ECC note notes.

On the other hand, the agreement between ECC, Filecoin and Ethereum will facilitate further development of Halo 2, with the idea of ​​improving the verifiable delay function or VDF. “A VDF is a cryptographic primitive with many use cases, including use in smart contract applications, as well as the choice of leader in Proof-of-Stake consensus protocols,” explains ECC.

As a benefit for Ethereum, the statement mentions that this implementation “would allow novel technologies such as your virtual machine having zero knowledge”, thereby adding privacy.

According to what was reported by CryptoNews in January of this year, by implementing Halo 2, the ZCash network will eliminate the trusted configuration (also known as trusted setup), it would increase scalability and make the system more attractive for developers to build on.

At the same time, by eliminating the trusted setup, the possibility of attacks would be reduced, giving greater guarantee on the integrity of the ZEC supply.

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