UBS Tests ZKSync's Layer-2 Tech, Showing Deeper TradFi Interest in Crypto

4 months ago

Swiss banking elephantine UBS said that it completed a proof-of-concept of its UBS Key4 Gold offering connected the Ethereum layer-2 web ZKsync.

The simulation, which was conducted connected a ZKsync trial network, is simply a motion of renewed involvement successful blockchain exertion among accepted fiscal institutions. This isn’t UBS’ archetypal experimentation with blockchain. The slope antecedently launched a tokenized money marketplace concern fund, uMint, which is besides built connected Ethereum.

UBS’ Key4 Gold is 1 of the bank's offerings that lets its Swiss clients acquisition a nonstop assertion to carnal gold. “It allows for fractional golden investments with real-time pricing, heavy liquidity, unafraid carnal storage, and optional carnal delivery,” the squad said successful a property merchandise shared with CoinDesk.

The task already exists connected the bank's backstage blockchain, the UBS Gold Network, but the squad was looking for ways to standard its task portion preserving its privacy. “They came to the decision that lone zero-knowledge made consciousness for them, and truthful they wanted to truly enactment this successful signifier for a merchandise that they already person unrecorded and what this could look similar if they usage the validium instead,” Pearl Imbach, a Senior Business Development Manager astatine Matter Labs, the main developer steadfast down ZKsync, told CoinDesk successful an interview.

ZKsync is simply a zero-knowledge rollup, a benignant of layer 2 scaling system that aims to summation the velocity of blockchain transactions and trim their fees, by utilizing zero-knowledge cryptography. A validum is a antithetic benignant of layer-2, akin to that of a rollup, but stores the information of those transactions off-chain.

The trial transaction whitethorn awesome that UBS could beryllium looking much intimately astatine utilizing layer-2 technologies to powerfulness immoderate of its activities. However, the slope didn't accidental whether they would travel retired with their ain layer-2, and Matter Labs' Imbach told CoinDesk that a rollup mightiness not beryllium the close acceptable for them. “Is this the close merchandise [for UBS]? Perhaps not, but it is thing we're conscionable talking openly about, and reasoning astir what could really beryllium a bully usage lawsuit for them,” Imbach told CoinDesk.

This isn't the archetypal clip a banking elephantine has utilized ZKsync's exertion for its ain products. Deutsche Bank said successful December that it was besides readying to physique a layer-2 with ZKsync’s technology, indicating however blockchain exertion tin co-exist oregon adjacent marque accepted fiscal institutes' products enactment better.

“What we are offering now, with privateness connected apical [of the blockchain] is thing that is ace interesting, and we're doing much and much of these usage cases now,” Imbach told CoinDesk.

Read more: Deutsche Bank's L2 Blockchain to Be 'Public and Permissioned,' Says Tech Partner

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