StarkWare plans to integrate EY’s Nightfall privacy protocol into Starknet, aiming to enable institutions to make private payments and access decentralized finance (DeFi) on public Ethereum-aligned infrastructure while maintaining auditability.
Integration Targets Institutional Privacy on Public Rails
The collaboration is designed to bring enterprise-grade privacy to Starknet, a Layer 2 network that uses zero-knowledge STARK proofs to scale Ethereum. By incorporating EY’s Nightfall, Starknet will offer transaction privacy for businesses seeking to use public blockchain infrastructure without exposing sensitive details.
Starknet settles transactions to Ethereum, giving institutions a path to use open networks with enhanced confidentiality. The parties say the approach preserves auditability, allowing compliant access to on-chain activity when required by regulators or internal controls.
What EY Nightfall Brings
- Private transfers: Nightfall leverages zero-knowledge technology to obscure transaction details from the public while proving validity on-chain.
- Institutional controls: The protocol is designed to support selective disclosure for compliance, enabling audits without revealing data broadly.
- Public blockchain alignment: Built for enterprise use on open networks, Nightfall aims to combine privacy with the security and neutrality of Ethereum.
Why It Matters
Enterprises have been cautious about using public blockchains due to privacy concerns. The Starknet–Nightfall integration seeks to address this by allowing confidential payments and DeFi participation with transparent settlement and optional audit trails. If widely adopted, it could lower barriers for institutional activity on Ethereum-aligned infrastructure.
Background: Starknet and EY Nightfall
Starknet is a zero-knowledge rollup developed by StarkWare that scales Ethereum by batching transactions off-chain and posting succinct proofs to the mainnet. EY Nightfall, developed by Ernst & Young (EY), is an open-source privacy protocol intended to help enterprises transact on public blockchains while keeping business-sensitive data private.