Tezos Partners With Bolt Labs to Integrate Privacy Protocol For BTC

Recently, an announcement came in the Tezos news showing that Tezos partners with Bolt Labs to integrate the new layer two privacy protocol for Bitcoin. Bolt Labs also announced that it plans to integrate its off-chain Bitcoin private payments protocol called zkChannels directly to the Tezos blockchain.

As we can see from the news, the company is working with teams at Nomadic Labs and Metastate to complete this new integration via an amendment proposal to be done by 2021. Originally called BOLT, the new zkChannels v1 protocol saw the light of day earlier in 2020 when Bolt Labs announced how it “enables private payments via zero-knowledge proof of knowledge techniques, with cryptocurrencies like Zcash and Bitcoin in mind.”

The protocol also underwent many updates since then, to now be fully compatible with the “Bitcoin-like” digital currencies. We can expect even more network upgrades as Tezos partners with Bolt Labs in the blockchain news in 2021, according to the press release shared with us earlier today.

In the statement, we can see that the zkChannel protocol already offers many vital features such as keeping data asymetrically to continue preserving privacy for end users.

“The customer keeps and updates all relevant channel information and proves, every time a payment is made, that the channel state is consistent with that payment. This ensures the merchant learns nothing beyond the payment amount, so customer privacy is maintained.”

In this manner, both the consumer and the merchant end up viewing different data on the channel and its state. The fact that Tezos partners with Bolt Labs on this one makes it more easier for customers to be aware of the distribution of funds, while the merchant knows the total channel balance but cannot link any received payments to it.

What is also mentioned in the announcement is that zkChannels “can be safely closed down at any time by either party.”

Meanwhile, information from the crypto market today shows that Tezos’ XTZ token is stable on the 12th place, trading at $2.44 with a 2% rise on the day and a market cap of $1.79 billion. Analysts are hopeful of securing the $2.50 mark if all goes well in the news this week.