August Stash Development Update


Hi Everyone,
 
Stash is very excited to announce that the team has managed to integrate Zk-Snarks into the Stash code base.
 
This means all users of STASHPAY.IO will be able to send shielded transactions that will allow for the amount, origin and destination to be kept private while still verifying transfers on the blockchain.
 
This is a huge milestone for the STASH project as the integration of Zk-Snarks is very complex, time consuming and required solving numerous, challenging technical problems.
 
Stash is only one of a handful of projects that have managed to integrate ZkSnarks into a separate code base.
 
Some of you may be wondering what is Zk-Snarks?
 
Zk-Snarks stands for Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge. It is a form zero knowledge cryptography. Zk-Snarks essentially works on what is known as zero-knowledge proofs. The idea of zero-knowledge proofs originally comes from several MIT researchers back in the 1980s.
 
Zero-knowledge proofs means that between two parties of a transaction, each party can verify to the other that they have a specific set of information but without revealing what that information is. This is very different than other proof systems where at least one party needs to know all the information.
 
STASHPAY.IO uses Zk-SNARKs to prove that the conditions for a valid transaction have been satisfied without revealing any critical information about the values or addresses involved.
 
While the team is very pleased with the result there is still further work to be done. STASH developers are now moving to full testing on the STASH testnet including further testing of shielded transaction as well as incentivized nodes (iNdodes).
 
We are also in discussions with third parties about reviewing and testing STASHPAY.IO before it's release. We're excited about what's been achieved and will keep you all updated on further progress.
 
Regards
 
STASH Team