Zakura proposes assigning a unique viewing key to each ZEC cross-chain swap to guard against future quantum computer attacks

PANews reported on October 19, citing CoinDesk, that the team behind Zakura, the new Zcash software, published an engineering article proposing to assign a unique viewing key to every ZEC swap completed through NEAR Intents, in order to defend against the privacy threat posed by future quantum computers. When a user swaps ZEC for USDC, NEAR Intents publicly posts one of the user's Zcash addresses on the NEAR public chain for refunds; that address carries a public key generated from the viewing key, and a future quantum computer could use Shor's algorithm to reverse-engineer the key and link all of the account's incoming transaction records and memos. Zakura's approach gives each swap its own viewing key while the spending key remains in the user's main account, and locates refunds through private information retrieval (PIR). The team said wallets such as Vizor that are built on its open-source library could support this within weeks, ahead of the January quantum-resistant payment goal set by Zcash developers.