Nym partners with Aztec to provide integral infrastructure privacy in Ethereum chains

As a transport layer of the privacy stack, the Nym mixnet is an integral part of a developer’s building suite. Nym is today announcing a…

Author: Nym

July 2, 20234 mins read

As a transport layer of the privacy stack, the Nym mixnet is an integral part of a developer’s building suite. Nym is today announcing a partnership with Aztec Network to make this even more accessible to Ethereum developers.

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Aztec has recently launched a first-of-its-kind hybrid zkRollup supporting both public and private smart contract execution, named Aztec. It combines public and private execution into a single zkRollup, providing seamless composability across encrypted and unencrypted transactions.

Previously, a Proof of Concept integration was done with Aztec Connect, Aztec’s privacy infrastructure that served as the encryption layer for Ethereum. Following its sunset and being fully open sourced out, Aztec has focused on the development of a next-generation layer 2 chain.

Scaling problem with private blockchains

This integration partnership with Nym will solve a major component of the privacy stack for Aztec.

To be a private blockchain, all states must be end-to-end encrypted which includes a massive pool of commitment and encrypted note preimages. Information such as assets, values and sender data is needed for you to spend the note.

You will need to acquire the state that belongs to you in an unencrypted form and also obtain the global public state to prove ownership of selective parts.

Aztec Connect previously used trial decryption to overcome this, which involved downloading both global private and public chain data. This approach however has a scaling issue.

The state becomes more extensive which makes trial decryption inefficient and there is no existing single solution.

In comparison in the Web2 world, you could simply ask the server what belongs to you. This does not work for private blockchains as the server would require your private keys, which should not be compromised.

Privacy leak in the public state

The public state is of course more open and consists of commitments in the Merkle trees. This means that there are no security concerns on private keys.

The public state does not require decryption as there are no preimages visible and it contains all the commitments as hashes.

However, when someone provides the public state, privacy information is inadvertently leaked. Sophisticated bad actors could potentially triangulate who owns what parts of the state by combining this information with network data.

Nym CEO Harry Halpin says, “From preventing MEV to DDoS attacks, you need network-level privacy and Nym is happy to provide these cutting-edge capabilities to Aztec. Using zero-knowledge systems for privacy makes no sense without network privacy from Nym, it’s like wearing a face mask but forgetting to put on your pants.”

The Nym mixnet plays an important role to solve this.

How the Nym mixnet protects the public state

By routing requests through the Nym mixnet, identifying information including location and IP address are obscured and anonymises requests.

The server thus receives an anonymous request for a specific portion of the public state and privacy is preserved.

Your encrypted notes remain separate from this request and the server is unable to provide them.

The linkability issue in public state is thus resolved. Transaction profiling, which is a concern when privacy is compromised, is prevented from happening.

The importance of infrastructure privacy

Nym’s role in the privacy stack is more necessary than ever. This crucial role of enhancing privacy at the network level, which is below the level of even a protocol, is the only way to protect users and developers from being vulnerable to targeted attacks.

By anonymizing requests and securing public state access, Nym strengthens privacy in the blockchain ecosystem, which has a major privacy problem.

Privacy partnerships

Nym and Aztec are core members of the Universal Privacy Alliance (UPA), which was formed to advance the understanding of privacy as the very basis of free and flourishing digital societies.

One of the unifying principles of UPA is that “privacy by design is essential”. A holistic approach to privacy protection is necessary when designing and implementing blockchain solutions. User privacy should remain a top priority and not as an afterthought. Privacy by design will prevent any chance of attacks like MEV and DDos.

This partnership between Nym and Aztec is just a first step towards full-stack privacy.

With the right combination of technologies and a commitment to user-centric privacy, we can build a more secure and confidential decentralized future together.