Bitcoin Private's foundation will distribute $150,000 grants to research teams working on cryptography and cybersecurity. The grants cover projects ranging from three months to one year, with funding
Bitcoin Private's foundation will distribute $150,000 grants to research teams working on cryptography and cybersecurity. The grants cover projects ranging from three months to one year, with funding disbursed on a rolling basis.
The move follows similar efforts elsewhere in crypto. The Ethereum Foundation announced in January it would fund research into blockchain scalability. Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's creator, said network scalability was "perhaps the single most important key technical challenge that needs to be solved in order for blockchain applications to reach mass adoption." The Ethereum Foundation allocated $50,000 to $1,000,000 for this work.
Bitcoin Private arose from a fork combining two existing blockchains. The snapshot occurred February 28 at Bitcoin block 511,346 and ZClassic block 272,991. Any holder of Bitcoin or ZClassic at those block heights can claim Bitcoin Private tokens at a 1:1 ratio. Someone with 10 ZCL and 1 BTC would receive 11 BTCP.
ZClassic's price movements reflected investor interest in the fork. The token traded at $1.83 on December 1, jumped to $188.97 by February 20 as traders sought to capitalize on the opportunity, then plummeted after the snapshot completed. Current ZCL prices stand at $5.18.
Bitcoin Private relies on zero-knowledge proofs, abbreviated as zk-SNARKs. This technology allows users to verify transaction validity without revealing sender, receiver, or transaction amounts. Edward Snowden described zero-knowledge proofs as "may be the future of private trade." Vitalik Buterin made this comment: "Personally, I think zk-SNARKs are a hugely important, absolutely game-changing technology. They are the single most under-hyped thing in cryptography right now."
Zcash deployed zk-SNARKs in 2016. ZClassic emerged as a hard fork of Zcash that removed the 20% "founder's tax." Bitcoin Private aims to fuse Bitcoin's brand recognition and user adoption with the privacy capabilities of Zcash and ZClassic, bringing zk-SNARK functionality to the Bitcoin network.
The foundation outlined several research directions: enhancing privacy for light-weight clients such as Electrum, improving usability between Bitcoin script and zk-SNARKs, boosting the speed of zk-SNARK generation, and strengthening peer-to-peer network anonymity.
Bitcoin Private's future hinges on user adoption. As scrutiny on Bitcoin's transparent transaction history mounts, users may gravitate toward blockchains with hidden transaction details. Should this happen, zk-SNARKs and Bitcoin Private could become the standard for private transactions.
