If you're anything like me, back in 2013 when Zerocash and Ethereum were first announced, you wondered whether it was possible to combine the two ideas. Well, a year or two ago, some researchers came out with a preprint on Hawk, which is a protocol that does exactly that.

I contacted the authors of the paper, and they said they hoped to open-source (most of) their implementation of Hawk some time this semester. This, of course, means someone could theoretically work on this implementation within a couple months and turn it into an altcoin suitable for actual release. Additionally, this kind of altcoin sounds like exactly the kind of thing that the Bolt Network (similar to LN, but it provides privacy) could be implemented on.

What do y'all think of this idea? How many people are interested in it? Do you think it could potentially compete with the likes of Zcash and Ethereum?

(Also, anyone interested in actually implementing this, please contact me! I also want to get in on that.)