Ethereum lunar maths show signs of return to earth.

That was the sensation at the EthCC, a conference of ethereum developers in Paris on Thursday, where a track dedicated to privacy hit a dark note compared to years past.

Indeed, despite a software upgrade in October that has improved privacy, it has been shown that such methods exceeded the ethericeum's processing capacity, as computer cryptography intensified almost the chain of blocks.

While developers like Andrew Miller had predicted an increase in privacy-focused ethereum applications a few months ago, the conference showed how an almost grim silence followed while scale and security barriers s & # 39, were more difficult to solve than expected.

As evidence, ZoKrates, a programming language aimed at giving average developers the ability to code private contracts, has struggled to get out of the configuration phase.

In a presentation presented today, code creator, Jacob Eberhardt, said that Ethereum will need to add more cryptographic variables in a software-wide upgrade to the system so that the concept works. Yet Eberhardt also lamented that, given the controversy that may follow such a suggestion, it may not be the one that will be adopted so easily.

"We do not want to continue adding new crypto," said Eberhardt.

Matthew Di Ferrante, developer at the Ethereum Foundation and founder of the ZK Labs Smart Contracts Company, echoed this warning. In a discussion of the relationships and trade-offs between privacy and scalability on the Ethereum, Di Ferrante went so far as to warn the public.

"If you think that Ethereum is not scalable now, or that blockchains are not scalable now, the more you are alarmed, the more everyone likes to talk about magic, but few people can write the code, "he said.

The statement is remarkable in view of the urgency of the ideas at stake.

In particular, evidence with zero acquaintance, because of its ability to compress information in a concise format, could potentially reduce information on the ethereal chain of blocks, thus allowing for better timing. ;ladder.

According to Di Ferrante, such achievements are still possible, they are just a little further.

He told the public:

"Progress is slow but that does not mean that it is not possible."

Waiting for privacy

For example, Di Ferrante highlighted the blockchain vote to illustrate the problems encountered today.

"A vote of a thousand people would require a thousand signatures each of a thousand bytes each, you will never be able to verify a single signature because of the block gas limit," says Di Ferrante.

Such a case of use is the focal point of Di Ferrante's research, which seeks to anonymize evidence using ring signatures – a way to obscure the information in a way that is recoverable aggregating data within a group.

Di Ferrante found that by using bi-linear pairings, an elliptical curve form that is active in the ethereum virtual machine, various shortcuts in complex cryptography can be made to minimize the compromise of extensibility.

However, while his prototype has a functional implementation, Di Ferrante told the audience: "It's just ridiculous, it's too inefficient, if people started to use this as main service, the channel would come down again. "

And this was not the only note that gave pause to the conference today.

Currently, to generate a ZoKrates contract, each individual must adopt the phase of installation himself, which may slow down the adoption of zero-knowledge cryptography in companies built on the platform. ethereum form.

In the generation of a zk-snark, information is produced that could allow the holder of the information to falsely manufacture transactions, provided that the data generated by the zk-snark does not occur. have not been destroyed.

While zcash corrected this by introducing many participants to destroy the data, thereby enhancing security, such criteria would be harder to apply in ZoKrates because the configuration is restricted to each individual node.

Light at the end of the tunnel

However, the conference was not without optimism, too.

In another conference, "Silur", a member of the monero research lab, described his work to implement an improved annulus signature in blockchain-agnostic code, which could work equally well in monero, ethereum, or bitcoin.

Also known as RuffCT, StringCT or RTRS RingCT, these signatures provide a more complete form of privacy compared to their predecessors by masking not only the transaction amounts, but also the destinations and addresses of the senders.

Basically, it succeeds in a secure way, without depending on a reliable configuration. The work will be explained in more detail in a forthcoming white paper, Silur said.

And maybe propelling research is the need for such tools today.

Speaking at CoinDesk, Gregor Zavcer of DataFund, an ethereum-based start-up that allows users to recover the sovereignty of their data, said that until zero-knowing cryptography on ethereum becomes more mature, the The company will keep the data of its users in a centralized and encrypted database in a secure manner.

Down the line, Zavcer hopes that advances in privacy could "change the paradigm of interaction" when it comes to data exchange. "We could design the process so that the individual can really share information as needed to know," Zavcer said.

And the challenges that privacy faces today are not just technical, he told CoinDesk. When it comes to DataFund, "it's about how we integrate in a friction-free way and adds value."

In addition, advances in privacy may change the way we integrate with the digital world more generally. Due to the possibility for users to be selective with regard to the information they reveal online, Zavcer stated:

"If we can model online interactions according to the expectations of the physical world, then evidence of zero knowledge would allow a conversation, not just a data dump."

Image created by Rachel-Rose O 'Leary for CoinDesk

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