Hello Again Eth Friends:
I’m back with a further update on Nightfall, the privacy technology we have been developing for the last few years focus on Enterprise users on Ethereum. TL;DR: It’s going live on the mainnet and the Polygon Proof of Stake Network. We’re working on the final go-live components, but the official announcement has been made:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-ey-and-polygon-organizations-update-source-code-for-blockchain-privacy-based-protocol-nightfall-301724406.html
and we have some coverage here:
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/01/18/ey-and-polygon-ready-privacy-focused-ethereum-for-enterprise-release/?outputType=amp
I’m really proud of where we are. I hope you all take this as the same bullish signal that I do: we’re in the world of blockchain and Ethereum for the long haul. When I first asked EY to take investing in blockchain seriously, I told them there would be ups and downs. We’re still here, grinding away at the hardest problems in cyrpto, IMHO.
Here’s where we stand:
This deployment of Nightfall will be fully decentralized.
EY will do the deployment, though we are getting others to help with the trusted set-up, and we will maintain some server infrastructure to support usage and access, though we will not act as a propose for anyone who isn’t an EY client. We considered a “community deployment” model before, but it looks complex and we wanted to make sure it was done right
You will need an enterprise x.509 to access the network – so only for business users. Privacy yes, but not anonymity.
Here’s what’s coming:
Upgrades to Nightfall. We’ve been very focused with Polygon on getting production ready. We’re going back to a focus on improving algorithm and performance now. My aim is for a new version later this year that improves performance significantly.
Complex smart contracts with Starlight. This is the “companion app” to Nigthfall that allows you to turn a solidity smart contract into a zero knowledge circuit. We’re aiming for production beta in February.
The goal is that by May, we will be in a position to show complex smart contracts and business logic implemented with privacy over public Ethereum.
Going forward, Nigthfall is going to be more of an EY-driven project as Polygon is going to focus on scaling. As always, though, Nightfall will remain public domain and open source and we’re actively seeking the support of others to join this effort. If you want to help, engage with us on the Github: https://github.com/eyblockchain/ and go to the Nightfall_3 repo.
Thanks, Paul Brody
u/pbrody
