Offshift Dev Update, Early January 2022: Pilot Upgrades

January 14, 2022

Offshift is working with Zokyo to develop the platform that will finally bring private decentralized finance – PriFi – to Ethereum Layer 1.

Here’s a progress update for early January, 2022.

Just before 2022, the Offshift Pilot went live . The Pilot is the culmination of nearly a year of development collaboration between Offshift and Zokyo; but the work doesn’t stop there. The team continues to add features and functions to the Pilot as we inch toward Mainnet, which is set to launch in Q1 2022. The launch of mainnet will enable users to leverage Offshift’s Mint-and-Burn Mechanism to mint the debut batch of zkAssets.

The team is improving private key storage and implementing more complex payment logic, as well as integrating Chainlink oracle price feeds for zkAsset minting.

Additionally, the team is building a simple user interface that allows users who don’t have command-line experience to interact with the Pilot. The UI will enable our marketing team to demo the platform at ETHDenver as well, where Offshift is a Meta sponsor.

The team anticipates all current upgrades to be completed by the end of next week. After a few days of internal testing, Zokyo will begin the process of performing a formal audit.

Let’s pause here for a moment for a reminder about the relationship between Mint-and-Burn, Chainlink, and zkAssets (see our CSO Alex Shipp’s recent tokenomics article for the most thorough overview).

The Offshift platform allows users to seamlessly migrate value between the public side (Ethereum) and the private side (Offshift). This process is known as Shifting. Users will burn XFT on Ethereum and mint a zkAsset of their choice on the private side, with the amount of zkAssets minted equal to the USD value of the XFT at the moment of burning. To get back to the public side, users will Shift their zkAsset back to Ethereum, burning the zkAsset and minting the equivalent USD value in XFT.

Critical to this bi-directional Mint-and-Burn Shifting is the maintenance of reliable price feeds to ensure zkAssets are priced in tandem with their non-zk counterparts. For example, zkETH should be priced the same as ETH. This is where Chainlink steps in. Chainlink provides the price feeds for Offshift, ensuring zkAssets receive trustworthy price updates so users can confidently Shift between public and private.

Zokyo has been working with the Mint-and-Burn Mechanism to ensure zkAssets are looped into Chainlink price feeds, starting with: BTC, ETH, XAU, and USD. And many, many more to come!

Stay tuned for more updates from Zokyo ahead of mainnet launch. And until then, join us for the latest: