QEDIT joins US gov't initiative to advance zero-knowledge proof cryptography 

The Israeli company is contributing to a project funded by a US Defense Department agency 

QEDIT joins US gov't initiative to advance zero-knowledge proof cryptography 

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Israel's QEDIT, a privacy-enhancing technology provider, has announced its participation in a $12.6 million US government-funded research project geared towards harnessing advanced cryptography to preserve the integrity of complex software programs.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the $12.6 million contract was awarded to R&D specialist firm Galois to lead Project Fromager, with QEDIT awarded $2 million of the funding allocation. 

Project Fromager is one of 12 projects being funded in conjunction with DARPA's Securing Information for Encrypted Verification and Evaluation (SIEVE) program, which aims to use Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) to enable the verification of capabilities relevant to the Department of Defense without revealing the sensitive details associated with those capabilities, QEDIT said. 

Jonathan Rouach, CEO and Co-Founder of QEDIT, said, "QEDIT is delighted to partner with Galois and other esteemed academic institutions as part of this landmark research project on behalf of DARPA. This project underlines the pronounced value of ZKP cryptography as a means of delivering a new, more powerful standard of privacy at the highest levels of industry and government. We are proud to accelerate the global deployment of ZKPs for practical applications."

The SIEVE program also seeks to advance the performance and efficiency of ZKPs and broaden the accessibility of ZKP technology to new swathes of platform-agnostic developers.
According to QEDIT, the company offers a suite of enterprise solutions based on ZKP cryptography and other privacy-enhancing techniques to help businesses mitigate risk and stay competitive through privacy-compliant, cross-organizational data collaboration. It enables businesses to safely share intelligence without relinquishing data ownership and without violating local data privacy regulations. 

Project Fromager, which is expected to run through 2024, aims to use ZKPs to swiftly test the integrity of complex software programs to ensure that the code has not been compromised. 

Dr. Alex Malozemoff, Principal Researcher at Galois, said, "We at Galois are constantly striving to close the gap between research and real-world deployment. The current state of Zero-Knowledge Proof technology is right at this point. While Zero-Knowledge Proofs have seen wide deployment in cryptocurrencies, more general approaches are just now beginning to be seen as viable in commercial and governmental settings. We are excited to team up with QEDIT: their industry experience, alongside being leaders in the standardization effort around zero-knowledge, is invaluable to the maturation of these technologies."