Confidential Wrapped Ethereum

Abstract

Transparency is one of the key benefits of public blockchains. However, the public visibility of transactions potentially compromises users' privacy. The fundamental challenge is to balance the intrinsic benefits of blockchain openness with the vital need for individual confidentiality. The proposal suggests creating a confidential version of wrapped Ethereum (cWETH) fully within the application layer. The solution combines the Elliptic Curve (EC) Twisted ElGamal-based commitment scheme to preserve confidentiality and the EC Diffie-Hellman (DH) protocol to introduce accessibility limited by the commitment scheme. To enforce the correct generation of commitments, encryption, and decryption, zk-SNARKs are utilized.