Vitalik announces privacy solution for Ethereum with regulatory compliance

Source: Criptonoticias Original Title: Vitalik announced privacy solution for Ethereum with compliance Original Link: https://www.criptonoticias.com/tecnologia/vitalik-kohaku-privacidad-ethereum-compliance/ During his presentation at Devconnect Buenos Aires, Vitalik Buterin introduced Kohaku, a new set of tools designed to enhance data protection on the network, incorporating mechanisms that allow compliance with regulations without sacrificing anonymity.

Kohaku is developed as an open-source initiative, which proposes a modular architecture that enables developers to create wallets with integrated privacy. Its roadmap includes potential extensions, such as mixnets for anonymity at the network layer and browsers based on zero-knowledge proofs.

These mixnets function as networks that mix and reorder transaction traffic, making it impossible to link a message to its origin, which reinforces anonymity at the network layer. Meanwhile, zero-knowledge proof-based browsers grant the ability to validate information without revealing sensitive data.

Buterin acknowledged that Ethereum is still far from the desired level of privacy and that this stage requires a coordinated effort to close that gap.

The documentation of the repository on GitHub confirms that the project is under development and includes components such as Railgun and Privacy Pools. These tools are based on a privacy pools protocol that allows users to shield and unshield their ERC-20 tokens, the most common standard for digital assets on Ethereum.

This code snippet illustrates how a user can send ERC-20 tokens (WETH) to a Railgun address, without revealing the source address or the amount on the public layer of the network.

Compliance with regulations would be achieved through “proofs of innocence,” a mechanism that utilizes zero-knowledge proofs known as zk-SNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge, in English).

This advanced cryptographic technique enables users to efficiently prove the validity of a transaction or the legitimacy of their funds without revealing any sensitive data or transaction history.

In a demonstration on November 16, a wallet built on Kohaku was shown. This used Railgun to hide funds that would otherwise be visible. The long-term intention is for this logic to be integrated directly into any wallet connected to Ethereum, so that privacy is enabled by default.

Beyond the news about privacy, Buterin took the opportunity during his visit to Buenos Aires to put the current moment of Ethereum into perspective. The specialist stated that the network processes 50% more transactions today than at the beginning of the year and emphasized that this growth is the result of constant technical improvements, such as the increase in the gas limit and the advancement of solutions that will make block verification more accessible.