Zcash developers plan a fix to keep ZEC swaps private from future quantum computers

But a future quantum computer could theoretically exploit a small gap in NEAR Intents, a cross-chain swapping service, to connect a user’s private ZEC transactions to their wallet, undermining that privacy.

In a new engineering post, it proposed giving every ZEC swap made through NEAR Intents its own private key.

The change would close a gap that a future quantum computer could use to piece together a user’s payment history.

When someone swaps private ZEC for USDC through it, the service posts one of their private Zcash addresses on NEAR’s public chain, so it knows where to send back any unused ZEC.

As such, no quantum computer has been demonstrated that can recover these keys.