Fhenix, EigenLayer Score Partnership to Develop FHE Coprocessors

With a novel engineering partnership, two projects are about to dedicate significant tech resources and incorporate the build into their technical roadmaps this year. 

Fhenix forges partnership with EigenLayer, leading Ethereum restaking protocol

Fhenix, the first Ethereum L2 network powered by fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), has announced the development of FHE-based coprocessors in collaboration with EigenLayer. As such, the first generation of FHE coprocessors will be secured by Fhenix’s optimistic FHE rollup infrastructure and EigenLayer’s restaking mechanism.

These FHE coprocessors are designed to delegate computational tasks that require handling sensitive (i.e., encrypted) data, away from a host chain — be it Ethereum, a L2, or a L3 — to a designated processor. 

This greatly improves the efficiency of FHE-based operations, while maintaining the same level of security, unlocking the ability to compute over encrypted data at performance levels previously considered impossible.

Fhenix CEO Guy Itzhaki stressed the paramount importance of the collaboration for the progress of ZK technologies on Ethereum (ETH) in terms of scalability, speed and security:

FHE coprocessors represent a significant leap forward when it comes to scaling on-chain FHE. Once considered impossible, FHE coprocessors solve the challenge of analyzing large data sets on Ethereum without compromising on-chain performance. It basically provides a more efficient way to process encrypted data without revealing its contents. With sensitive data not at risk of being exposed, developers are free to create powerful applications for industries ranging from fintech to gaming.

A coprocessor serves as a companion processor designed to offload specific computational tasks from a host chain, be it Ethereum, an L2 or an L3, to a designated processor living outside the scope of the host.

New milestones for privacy in ZK tech on EVM

EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan is excited by the opportunity to integrate his protocol in the process of development ZK-based apps with FHE employed:

It’s exciting to see the use cases for EigenLayer’s expansion through Fhenix’s integration of FHE-based coprocessors. As the multi-chain ecosystem grows, the need for on-chain data that is verifiable and confidential is more important than ever. With EigenLayer operators providing the necessary fraud proofs, developers that utilize Fhenix are free to build powerful applications on a bedrock of secure and computationally efficient data.

EigenLayer enables any AVS to inherit security for objectively attributable faults from Ethereum. The FHE coprocessor uses a restaked rollup paradigm to get a cryptoeconomic guarantee on the correctness of the execution made by the FHE rollup. 

EigenLayer operators certify the correctness of the execution done by the FHE rollup. If these operators are malicious by committing to the correctness of a wrong execution then the stake of these operators is slashed. This cryptoeconomic guarantee removes the necessity of waiting until the end of the fraud-proof period (typically seven days), thus resolving the interoperability tradeoff.