Oasis launches Ethereum-compatible privacy blockchain Sapphire

Oasis has launched its confidential Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible blockchain, Sapphire, which it says will allow decentralized applications (DApps) to tap into improved privacy features.

With Sapphire and the Oasis Privacy Layer (OPL) now live, existing DApps on EVM networks can make use of the blockchain’s privacy-first features without having to carry out cross-chain swaps for respective tokens.

Cointelegraph reached out to Oasis to unpack the core components of the Sapphire blockchain and how it hopes to help drive cross-chain Web3 development focused on privacy features for smart contracts.

Oasis Foundation director Jernej Kos said that OPL, in particular, allows developers who have built DApps on any EVM network to integrate a variety of Sapphire’s features without having to migrate to the Oasis blockchain:

“Being fully EVM-compatible means that developers can build private smart contracts in an environment that they are already familiar with — for example, Solidity smart contracts running on the EVM as known from Ethereum.”

Kos added that the functionality also improves the ability to deploy DApps across different chains and make them compatible. Another example would be having a core decentralized autonomous organization smart contract on Ethereum while handling fully private voting on Sapphire, with the end results being sent back to the core DAO contract.

“In this way, the privacy capabilities of Sapphire are exposed to any other chain.”

According to the Oasis Foundation director, the majority of DApps being developed on Oasis are privacy-centric and enable users to have full control over their on-chain data and how that gets shared and accessed. This is also evident in a list of different tools and platforms that have been built within the Oasis ecosystem.

Kos highlighted confidential decentralized exchanges, privacy-enabled blockchain gaming, account abstration, confidential nonfungible tokens, private voting, sealed-bid auctions, key management and decentralized identification as use cases that have come to the fore from builders on the Oasis chain.

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