{"id":126351,"date":"2025-04-02T23:17:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T23:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=126351"},"modified":"2025-04-02T23:17:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T23:17:16","slug":"ey-updates-privacy-l2-as-nixed-tornado-cash-sanctions-ease-fears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/?p=126351","title":{"rendered":"EY updates privacy L2 as nixed Tornado Cash sanctions ease fears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Cointelegraph.com NewsBig Four accounting firm EY, formerly Ernst &amp; Young, has changed its enterprise-focused Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Nightfall to a zero-knowledge rollup design as it says corporate clients are more comfortable with privacy solutions with easing US sanctions.<br \/>\nEY said in an April 2 announcement that Nightfall\u2019s new source code, \u201cNightfall_4,\u201d simplifies the network\u2019s architecture and offers near-instant transaction finality on Ethereum while making it more accessible to users than its previous optimistic rollup-based version.<br \/>\nEY\u2019s global blockchain leader, Paul Brody, told Cointelegraph that switching to a ZK-rollup model \u201cmeans instant finality, but it also makes operations simpler since you don\u2019t need a challenger node to secure the network,\u201d which verifies the correctness of transactions.<br \/>\nThe move away from optimistic rollups means Nightfall users won\u2019t need to challenge potentially incorrect transactions on Ethereum and wait out the challenging period, leading to faster transaction finality.<br \/>\nNo such feature is present with zero-knowledge rollups, meaning that a transaction becomes final as soon as it is added into a Nightfall block, EY said.\u00a0<br \/>\nIt is the fourth major update to Nightfall since EY launched the business-focused Ethereum layer 2 in 2019.<br \/>\nNightfall enables the firm\u2019s business partners to transfer tokens privately using Ethereum\u2019s security while being cheaper than the base network. It also uses a technology that binds a verified identity to a public key through digital signatures to try to stem counterparty risk.<br \/>\nNixed Tornado Cash sanctions \u201chelped people feel comfortable\u201d<br \/>\nBrody said the US Treasury\u2019s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions on the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash \u201chad a chilling effect on legitimate business user interest.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cEven though we long ago took steps to make Nightfall unattractive to bad actors, since it cannot be used anonymously, the removal of OFAC sanctions has really helped people feel comfortable that using a privacy technology will not be risky,\u201d he added.<br \/>\nNightfall\u2019s code is open source on GitHub but remains a permissioned blockchain for EY\u2019s customer base, competing with the likes of the IBM-backed Hyperledger Fabric, R3 Corda and the Consensus-built Quorum.<br \/>\nBrody said that EY\u2019s blockchain team is working toward \u201ca single environment that supports payments, logic, and composability.\u201d<br \/>\nCurrently, the firm requires Nightfall and Starlight, a tool that can change smart contract code to enable zero-knowledge proofs \u201cto enable complex multiparty business agreements under privacy,\u201d he added.<br \/>\n\u201cWe\u2019ll spend some time supporting Nightfall_4 deployments initially,\u201d Brody said. \u201cThen we\u2019ll move on to the development of Nightfall_5.\u201d<br \/>\nMagazine: What are native rollups? Full guide to Ethereum\u2019s latest innovation\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/news\/ey-updates-ethereum-scaler-nightfall-zk-rollup?utm_source=rss_feed&amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;utm_campaign=rss_partner_inbound\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"feedzy-rss-link-icon\" rel=\"noopener\">Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Cointelegraph.com NewsBig Four accounting firm EY, formerly Ernst &amp; Young, has changed its enterprise-focused Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Nightfall to a zero-knowledge rollup design as it says corporate clients are&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126351"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=126351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126351\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=126351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=126351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cryptospotters.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=126351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}