Ethereum Devs Work On ‘secret Santa’ Protocol To Power Privacy

A Solidity engineer proposed a protocol earlier this year using zero-knowledge proofs and transaction relayers to enable a Secret Santa-like feature on Ethereum.

Ethereum developer Artem Chystiakov shared his research on the Ethereum community forum on Monday, titled “Zero Knowledge Secret Santa (ZKSS),” which proposes a three-step “Secret Santa” algorithm. The paper was first introduced in January on arXiv.

Secret Santa is a popular gift-giving game played around Christmastime, in which a group of people exchange gifts anonymously. Each person buys a gift for another person as their “Secret Santa” and also receives a gift from their “Secret Santa.”

Recipients of the gifts never learn who their Secret Santa is.

Chystiakov said there are three main hurdles to playing Secret Santa on Ethereum, which this protocol could solve.

Blockchains don’t have true randomness, so participants must contribute their own random choices, and the game must be designed to prevent anyone from participating twice or giving a gift to themselves.

It could also apply to whistleblower systems, where users need to prove they’re an authorized employee while submitting information anonymously, or to private airdrops or allocations, where tokens need to be distributed without revealing who received what.

When asked about open-source implementations or deployment, Chystiakov said, “We’re working on it.”

ZK-proofs are a cryptographic method for proving knowledge without revealing the specific information. The ZKSS protocol also utilizes a transaction relayer, which acts as a middleman that submits transactions, thereby keeping the sender’s identity hidden.

Related: Retail vs. whales: Who actually drives the Santa rally?

Source: CoinTelegraph