Offshift & Zokyo Partner on Confidential Token Development

March 30, 2021

Strategic partners lay out roadmap for PriFi solution

Today we want to recognize that, previously, we had planned to utilize Aztec Protocol’s on-chain privacy solution to launch our mainnet in April. When we initially set out to develop our private derivatives protocol, we planned to use the existing work published by Aztec Protocol in EIP-1724 , which outlines a confidential token standard on Ethereum.

After months of working on our own implementation of EIP-1724, which included a number of unanswered outreaches to the Aztec team, and working with market-leading blockchain development company Zokyo on a solution, our research has recently determined that an implementation of EIP-1724 is not feasible. You can find that research here .

Significant components of Aztec’s documentation are private, and there are still unanswered questions about the security of their solution. Additionally, we would likely be dependent on Aztec’s crypromodule and sdk, and their solution relies on a “trusted setup,” which could potentially introduce vulnerability.

A far better, but far more difficult solution, is to build our own confidential assets from the ground up. For this, we’re pleased to announce we’ve formed a strategic partnership with Zokyo , which allows Offshift to leverage Zokyo’s industry-leading engineers, cryptographers, and security experts to accelerate development of our zkAssets, and ensure contract security through their industry-leading security audits.

Said Hartej Sawney, Founder at Zokyo,

“After collaborating together on the confidential token standard research, we’re thrilled to partner with Offshift strategically to help build their PriFi solution together securely.”

Offshift is committed to doing PriFi the right way — trustless and on-chain. This shift in product development approach is exciting for the success of the project, but it does mean readjusting our go-to-market timeline. Here’s a look at our modified roadmap:

Stage 1: Technical Paper Development (1.5–2 months from now)

Already underway, in stage one we build on the cryptography research we’ve already completed and produce a Yellow Paper describing the protocol in detail.

Stage 2: Pilot — Shielded ERC-20 transfers contract utilizing a centralized trusted party (+3–4 months)

Development of a contract for shielded payments for ERC-20 tokens. The process of depositing will be centralized — the user must lock funds on a special contract, after which the owner of the contract creates an issuance transaction to the user account (who locked the funds). In this case, the amount in all further transactions will be hidden from all users. When withdrawing funds — converting them into standard ERC-20 tokens — the user needs to send confidential tokens to the account of the contract owner, after which the latter will be able to issue the equivalent of standard ERC-20 tokens. The stored values can be burned by the owner of the contract.

Stage 3: MVP — Contracts for trustless deposit and withdrawal of ERC-20 tokens (+1–2 months)

In this phase, there will be no single party through which this operation is performed — a special contract will burn tokens and return hidden commitments. When withdrawing funds, the contract will accept commitments and proof of ownership, and issue the corresponding number of ERC-20 tokens to the user’s account.

Stage 4: Production Release (+1–1.5 months)

Documentation, testing, audits, and deployment.

Said Offshift Project Lead Johnny,

“We couldn’t be more excited about teaming up with Zokyo to build zkAssets. Their team of top-notch engineers and cryptographers will not only significantly speed up development, but also put a well-respected name behind our otherwise anonymous dev team.”

As with everything we do at Offshift, our decision to join forces with Zokyo was made to establish technical authority at the intersection of zero knowledge and DeFi and to continue leading private decentralized finance. We look forward to the path ahead.

About Offshift

Offshift is leading private decentralized finance (PriFi) with the world’s first Private Derivatives Platform. It leverages zero-knowledge (zk) proofs and sources reliable, real-time price feeds from Chainlink’s decentralized oracle network to enable users to mint zkAssets, an unprecedented line of fully private synthetics. Offshift’s mostly anonymous team has developed a trusted reputation for their thorough privacy research, development and execution.

To learn more and get involved, visit the links below:

About Zokyo

Zokyo builds, secures, and incubates blockchain solutions for startups and enterprises worldwide. Zokyo’s Blockchain Security team has helped secure, and deploy blockchain solutions that manage over $5 billion dollars worth of digital assets. Their security team leverages a real world attacker mentality to reduce risk and fortify code.

Zokyo’s combined knowledge, expertise, and presence in blockchain position them to help businesses identify, mitigate and guard against the risks they, and the community, face in the ever-changing landscape of cybersecurity. Endorsed by industry leaders, Zokyo is a trusted security and development partner to both early stage startups and the Fortune 500. Learn more at Zokyo.io .