Interview with CEO Shahaf Bar-Geffen

COTI is one of the veteran projects in the cryptocurrency field and we had the opportunity to speak with Shahaf Bar-Geffen, the CEO.

The team is on the verge of major developments, with the current priority on V2 of the protocol, focused on providing a privacy-focused Layer Two Ethereum solution.

With bold plans to launch its main network by the end of 2024, Bar-Geffen also discusses the merits behind the decision to go this route, the fundamental challenges facing the industry and how COTI plans to address them.

The main focus of COTI

In our most recent podcast episode, Shahf Bar-Geffen explained more about the project’s recent progress and also provided some important clarification on its roadmap for the near future.

For starters, he said the team’s current focus is the release of COTI V2, a privacy-focused Layer 2 Ethereum blockchain. But why privacy?

Bar-Geffen identifies the root of the current challenges facing blockchain-based technology, in general, but also for the Internet itself.

“The best outcome of the Internet, and again, this is not just for blockchain, and communication networks will be a decentralized network that can keep secrets, that can keep your data private.

So that’s exactly what we’re doing with COTI right now. We’re doing it on top of an existing network, so we’re off to a very strong start in terms of liquidity, and we’re doing it with a very unique technology that no one has ever used before.”

And this is where it is essential to clarify some important points. In light of recent events where institutions around the world have clamped down on early anonymity solutions, we asked Bar-Geffen how COTI V2 is different.

He explained that the team is working on a feature known as “selective disclosure,” where the main focus is “confidentiality rather than anonymity.” With this, users can decide if they want to show their transaction details and to whom exactly. In opposition to Monero, COTI’s CEO explained that the method is very different.

He explained that transactions can be confidential as long as users want them to be, while allowing regulators to audit them if there are doubts about their nature.

This is fundamentally different from fully anonymous solutions where bad actors can transfer funds and carry out various illicit activities such as money laundering, he said.

What is the Tech Stack that powers COTI V2?

COTI is the first blockchain-based project that integrates a technology called fuzzy circuits.

In essence, fuzzy circuits bring privacy to the chain with a computation speed up to 1,000 times faster than other encryption systems, such as fully holomorphic encryption (FHE), for example.

Bar-Geffen explained that its original purpose and structure “were not very useful for solving blockchain privacy due to performance issues.” But all that changed.

A group of researchers from a company called Soda Labs came in, and we helped them fund practical research on how to actually use this on Blockchian. And they did.

But that’s not all, the Garbled Circuit technology can also handle transactions that affect a shared private state between multiple parties, which can make it superior to ZK-based solutions.

According to a previous post:

It is also immune to the single point of failure weaknesses that have been revealed in TEE solutions. The result is an on-chain privacy protection solution that is both scalable and more secure than alternative solutions.”

The roadmap for the following months

Shahaf Bar-Geffen recalled that COTI introduced the concept for the V2 network earlier this year, followed by blockchain’s fuzzy circuits.

He explained that the developer network also went live recently and already has more than 400 smart contracts built on top of it. The network uses a technology called GC EVM (from Garbled Circuits), which is an expansion to EVM, allowing developers to code in Solidity with a few new parameters.

Essentially, developers can write smart contracts in Solidity, but determine which data should be kept confidential.

In addition, COTI has recently finished building the test network, which should be deployed in the coming months and should pave the way for the launch of the main network later this year.

“That should be pretty stable and will bring us to the mainnet in the fourth quarter of this year. So the idea is to have the mainnet, which is an Ethereum-2 layer focused on privacy.

Enabling easier KYC procedures, focusing on AI-related initiatives and building DeFi solutions will be some of the other key things in the coming months for COTI, the executive added.

To learn more about what else COTI is working on, as well as the ABC Growth Fund, check out the podcast above.

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