Latest Can Zcash’s Rise Revive The Bitcoin Op_cat Discussion?
In 2014, Ben-Sasson and his co-authors published “Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin.”
The white paper was the culmination of six years of theoretical work. From 2008, Ben-Sasson and his collaborators had been working on general-purpose zero-knowledge proof technology. While they didn’t have a use case, they knew the technology was incredibly powerful.
Everything changed in 2013 when Ben-Sasson gave a talk on ZK at one of the earliest editions of the Bitcoin conference.
These early Bitcoin (BTC) developers and advocates outlined several ways that Bitcoin could benefit from the new methodology. Suddenly, ZK-proofs had found their killer use case.
“So we worked very diligently on publishing something that displays how this technology can solve one of the most important problems of blockchains, which is the fact that when you’re doing a Bitcoin transaction, everyone can see the amount, can pretty much figure out who paid whom and how much.”
This transparency, while by design, means that there is an inescapable element of transparency when using Bitcoin. ZK-proofs offer a solution, but Bitcoin’s code does not allow for their inclusion due to a decision made by Satoshi Nakamoto many years ago.
“The technology is ready. All you need is a soft fork that adds nine lines of code, which Satoshi actually introduced. It’s called OP_CAT. It’s very, very easy. If there’s a will, there’s a way. In this case, it’s a very simple way to give all of that goodness to Bitcoin itself.”
Related: Leap Therapeutics surges 170% after $50M Zcash buy with Winklevoss backing
Cointelegraph also spoke exclusively to Gemini co-founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss at Bitcoin Amsterdam, who explained their belief in Zcash’s potential to complement Bitcoin.
The twins made headlines after announcing the launch of Cypherpunk Technologies, a ZEC-based treasury company, following their acquisition and rebranding of Nasdaq-listed Leap Therapeutics in November.
Source: CoinTelegraph
