The arrival of $USDC on the Qtum network over the next few weeks presents an excellent opportunity to reevaluate our approach to privacy. We consider confidentiality to be a crucial foundational layer for building a stronger and more versatile ecosystem on our platform.
To lay the groundwork for this initiative, we have officially partnered with a security firm to perform a comprehensive audit of Qtum Core this October. As soon as this assessment is finalized, our team will launch the development phase of our new privacy solution.
Our focus on this area actually dates back 6 years ago, when we first published a whitepaper exploring privacy options for Qtum. You can still view the original publication at https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/156.pdf. Within that text, we outlined our vision: "We propose an efficient privacy protocol using zk-SNARKs based on smart contracts. It helps to make several decentralized applications, like digital assets, stable coins, and payments, confidential."
We ultimately had to suspend that initial development effort because multiple exchanges warned us that implementing such features would result in delisting. Fortunately, the broader industry narrative surrounding these technologies has shifted significantly since 2020.
Even though that early paper is somewhat dated now, the core reality remains unchanged: Qtum is perfectly positioned to integrate Phantom tech directly into our UTXO+EVM layer1 stack. Consequently, we are currently drafting an updated and modernized version of our privacy whitepaper.
We will be sure to keep the community fully informed as we make progress on these exciting developments.
To lay the groundwork for this initiative, we have officially partnered with a security firm to perform a comprehensive audit of Qtum Core this October. As soon as this assessment is finalized, our team will launch the development phase of our new privacy solution.
Our focus on this area actually dates back 6 years ago, when we first published a whitepaper exploring privacy options for Qtum. You can still view the original publication at https://eprint.iacr.org/2020/156.pdf. Within that text, we outlined our vision: "We propose an efficient privacy protocol using zk-SNARKs based on smart contracts. It helps to make several decentralized applications, like digital assets, stable coins, and payments, confidential."
We ultimately had to suspend that initial development effort because multiple exchanges warned us that implementing such features would result in delisting. Fortunately, the broader industry narrative surrounding these technologies has shifted significantly since 2020.
Even though that early paper is somewhat dated now, the core reality remains unchanged: Qtum is perfectly positioned to integrate Phantom tech directly into our UTXO+EVM layer1 stack. Consequently, we are currently drafting an updated and modernized version of our privacy whitepaper.
We will be sure to keep the community fully informed as we make progress on these exciting developments.
