Inspired by Vitalik Buterin’s idea of a non-transferrable Soulbound token, Ethereum researcher Anton Wahrstadter has come up with a new proposal for an ERC-721 extension to “sneak” public blockchain transactions involving non-fungible tokens. address will apply.NFT,
To implement stealth addresses for ERC-721 token-EthereumThe current token standard for NFTs—Wahrstätter, proposes to use a privacy-focused piece of cryptography known as zk-SNARKs.
According to the proposal, part of a stealth address, which is essentially a one-time address for each transaction, is inserted into a Merkle tree – a data structure used for data validation and synchronization – thus without Allows sending, storing and burning NFTs. Except for the details of most transactions seen on public blockchains.
While Wahrstätter’s proposal is still in the consideration stage, it has already caught the attention of one of Ethereum’s co-founders, Vitalik Buterin, who described it as “a low-key way to add a significant amount of privacy to the NFT ecosystem.” technical approach”.
“So you’ll be able to [for example] Send NFTs to vitilik.eth without anyone except me (the new owner) knowing who the new owner is,” he wrote in a tweet on Monday.
Idea: Stealth addresses for ERC721s.
A low-tech approach to adding a significant amount of privacy to the NFT ecosystem.
So you eg. Send an NFT to vitilik.eth without anyone except me (the new owner) to know who the new owner is. https://t.co/UdqK6NAYjn
— vitalik.eth (@vitalikbuterin) 8 August 2022
However, Buterin had some objections to Wahrstätter’s proposal, arguing that the idea of anonymous NFT transactions could potentially be accomplished “with very light-weight technology.”
Commenting on the proposal, he said that “the reason you don’t need a Merkle tree or ZK-SNARK-level secrecy is that each ERC-721 is unique, so any possibility to create an ‘anonymous set’ for the ERC” No – 721.”
“Rather, you only want to hide the link to the highly visible public identities of the sender and recipient (so, you can send an ERC-721 to ‘vitalik.eth’ and I can see it, but no one else can take that vitality). Can’t see. eth received ERC-721; they’ll just see that someone has received ERC-721,” Buterin said.
According to the Ethereum co-founder, “the one remaining challenge,” is figuring out how to pay the fees.
“The best I can come up with is, if you send an ERC-721 to someone, also send enough ETH to pay 5-50 times the fees to forward it. If you get ERC-721 without enough ETH So, you can whirl in some ETH to keep the transfer chain running,” he wrote.
‘Whirlwind some ETH’ to protect NFTs
Buterin’s last comment referred to the use of Tornado Cash, a privacy tool designed to obscure the origins of Ethereum transactions by mixing users’ coins.
Tornado Cash came into limelight on Monday when the US Treasury Department approved a mixing service with a list of Ethereum addresses in a list of specially designated citizens. This means that US citizens are now banned from using the tool or transacting with these addresses.
While the move garnered some strong reactions from the crypto community, Ethereum Core developer Preston Van Loon pointed out decrypt Tornado Cash, like any other tool, “can be used for bad and good,” also came amid widespread debate about privacy and transparency in the crypto space.