Open Application Network introduces blockchain privacy development incubator

The Open Application Network (OAN), the newly live open source public infrastructure for the creation and hosting of Open Apps (OAs) from AION, announced today the “Tetryon” privacy test network, an incubator for prototype implementations of privacy-preserving primitives and applications.

This initial release of Tetryon enables users to employ on-chain SNARK verification within AVM-smart-contract-systems, by leveraging a modified ZoKrates tool-chain. This is made possible by non-intrusive modifications in the AVM that expose to smart contracts operations over the Alt-Bn 128 elliptical curve.

“The Open Application technology in production today can, at best, offer pseudo-anonymity; this has primarily limited its current usage to tokens and cryptocurrencies. The use of cryptographic primitives (e.g. zero-knowledge (ZK), fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), etc.) offers exciting possibilities to enable privacy-preserving interactions between user data and applications operating on it. However, research at the intersection of systems design, applied cryptography, and computer security is required to construct protocols that enable developers of Open Applications to deliver services that articulate cryptographic guarantees about user data.”
– The OAN Team

Tetryon

The OAN’s Tetryon privacy test network is an independent initiative of the OAN research team. As such, it is a prototype implementation maintained separately from the production efforts in AVM and Kernel development.

The first capability introduced is for developers to validate zkSNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge) on-chain. In particular, efficient operations on the Alt-Bn 128 curve enable the implementation of a family of SNARKs where the verification depends on the computation of elliptical curve pairings (e.g. PGHR13, G16, GM17).

Lastly, to facilitate the exploration of the privacy test network’s capabilities in an offline environment, OAN has released the Tetryon sandbox. The sandbox is a collection of projects that demonstrate how to interact with the various system components from both the Java and Javascript ecosystems.