Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, made a suggestion about the possibility of a “low-tech approach” when integrating privacy features into non-fungible token (NFT) transactions.
While proposing his own solution, Buterin hinted that Merkle trees and zk-SNARKs (Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) were a more difficult approach for generating stealth ERC-721 tokens addresses.
The co-founder suggested that smart contract wallets can incorporate a feature that enables senders to hide their addresses from third parties.
Senders would need to include “enough ETH to pay fees 5–50 times” through the transfer chain in order to utilize this method, according to the co-founder. However, Buterin added that there may be “a better general solution that employs expert searchers or block builders somehow.”
As the crypto space continues to expand, some realised that it is difficult to strike the balance between semi-anonymity and transparency on the blockchain. There were reported instances of users reportedly stealing IP addresses off of NFT marketplace OpenSea and MetaMask in January.
