Ethereum Hard Fork Will Encrypt Transactions, Could Boost Wall Street Acceptance
A coming upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain would allow transactions, not just users, to remain private on the network.
Similar to bitcoin’s network, users on the Ethereum blockchain remain anonymous—transactions however did not, as they were authenticated by allowing everyone participating in the network to see them.
The incoming upgrade, which implements what is known as “zero-knowledge proof” and is set to take place in just a few weeks on October 17th, would add an additional layer of encryption that would also make transactions private.
Zero-knowledge proof is currently present in other blockchain networks like Zcash, which rather infamously demonstrated its commitment to the concept when it burned the hardware used to create the network with blowtorches.
This little tweak to Ethereum could potentially remove one of the biggest obstacles to the technology’s acceptance by Wall Street and others in finance, who, despite expressing interest in blockchain have remained wary of its traditional transparency.
Questions about user privacy and data security have nipped at banks’ experiments with blockchain for years now, barring the technology from wider enterprise use.
