EY Open-Sources Tech It Says Slashes Cost of Private Ethereum Transactions

Accounting multinational EY has released blockchain technology that it claims greatly reduces the cost of private transactions.

In an announcement on Thursday, the firm said the third-generation of its zero-knowledge proof tech for the ethereum blockchain - originally dubbed Nightfall - is now available in the public domain.

In the updated code, EY said it's made additions that allow private transactions at scale by batching up to 20 ZKP transfers in one transaction - a factor it says "Significantly" reduces costs.

The latest additions to EY's ZPK tech include batching tools and an enhancement that cuts the size of on-chain Merkle trees - a data structure fundamental to blockchains.

A key factor of the advance, EY said, is that lowering the costs of transactions in this way makes the public ethereum blockchain more competitive with private blockchain networks.

The third-gen code is "The most important EY blockchain milestone in making public blockchains scalable for ," said Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY."In the prior iteration released in April 2019, public blockchains were already getting competitive with private networks," he said.

"With this iteration, we cut the cost per transaction by more than 90% again, making private transactions more accessible for mainstream business application."

The new release isn't restricted to use on the public chain, but can also be deployed on private versions of ethereum.

"On private blockchains, it provides a second layer of security and privacy, supporting more complex privacy models across multiple organizations within industry consortia," EY said.

"I believe we will look back upon the industrialization of ZKPs as a key milestone in the wide enterprise migration from private to public blockchains," said Brody.