Fhenix debuts upgraded Nitrogen testnet with Ethereum encryption

Fhenix, a Layer-2 (L2) network powered by Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), has launched its upgraded Nitrogen testnet, as highlighted in recent reports shared with Finbold on Wednesday, November 20. 

The new upgrade comes with advanced decryption capabilities and other features designed to enhance decentralization, security, and the overall experience on the network.  

Guy Itzhaki, Fhenix Chief Executive Officer (CEO), described Nitrogen as an important milestone for the platform:

“The Nitrogen testnet is a major step towards providing a permissionless, censorship-resistant platform for confidentiality with FHE. The introduction of the Threshold Network, along with new features such as Parallel Decryptions and Security Zones give developers the tools they need to create powerful confidential applications on Ethereum and bring us one step closer to the Fhenix mainnet launch.”

Nitrogen testnet features

One of the highlights of the Nitrogen testnet upgrade is the Threshold Network, a trust-minimized mechanism that boosts decentralization by securely handling decryption operations while Parallel Decryptions address the computational intensity of FHE schemes enabling asynchronous decryption.

For tweaking application security and performance, developers on Fhenix will also have two Security Zones at their disposal.

Zone 0 focuses on enhancing security and minimizing trust requirements.

On the other hand, Zone 1 aims for performance, using a single local keyset for decryption. 

Moreover, to reduce transaction costs and improve scalability, the Nitrogen upgrade also integrates Celestia, a modular data availability (DA) network which helps modular blockchains develop applications for mass adoption. 

Finally, the upgrade introduces native random number generation with the FHE.rand() function.

FHE-powered solutions on Ethereum

By addressing challenges in security, performance, operational costs, and the overall user experience, Nitrogen is expected to contribute to Fhenix’s ecosystem of confidentiality-oriented applications. 

As such, the upgrade marks a significant step forward in the network’s mission to enable secure, scalable, and user-friendly FHE-powered solutions on Ethereum (ETH).