Announcing a cryptographic breakthrough for highly scalable blockchains
Sean Bowe, an engineer and cryptographer at Electric Coin Company (ECC), has discovered a technique for creating practical, scalable and trustless cryptographic proving systems, ending an almost decade-long pursuit by the cryptography community. It’s called Halo.
Halo achieves practical zero-knowledge recursive proof composition without the need for a trusted setup.
Recursive proof composition holds the potential for compressing unlimited amounts of computation, creating auditable distributed systems, building highly scalable blockchains and protecting privacy for all of humanity.
A paper authored by ECC employees Sean Bowe, Daira Hopwood and Jack Grigg is available here. An implementation that recursively demonstrates the proof-of-work of a Bitcoin block hash is also under development.
October 28 | 10 AM MDT
Tune in to hear from ECC leadership about work in progress and plans for the next few months.
‘The Underestimated’ launches in support of community projects in the South Bronx and elsewhere
In August, ECC partnered with South Bronx high school teacher Carlos Acevedo to deliver the first iteration of the Crypto Community Project.
This two-day workshop brought together 12 recent high school graduates to learn about Bitcoin, Zcash and other cryptocurrencies. Students were given a hands-on experience in all facets of cryptocurrencies while creating projects to spur crypto-innovation and adoption locally and organically. The response was extremely positive, and the next session is being planned for November.
Learn more and get involved here.
ECC transparency report released
Electric Coin Company (ECC) is committed to openness and transparency — as we help evolve and support the Zcash digital currency, and in support of our mission to empower everyone with economic freedom and opportunity. To this end, our transparency report details company income, expenses and use of funds during Q1 of 2019.
Key takeaways and the full report are available on the ECC blog.
Development fund update and ECC analysis
We’ve seen a great deal of engagement on proposals from a diverse set of people within the community. Regardless of differing opinions on how support work should be funded, we share a common purpose, recognizing the importance of privacy for financial freedom and that there is much more to be done.
Read our latest analysis of the various community proposals.
FATF recommendations and Zcash compliance
Our Head of Regulation, Jack Gavigan, attended a meeting earlier this year where the FATF finalized its recommendations for how the cryptocurrency sector should be regulated from an AML / CFT perspective.
Read more about how Zcash is compliant with these controls.