ING Bank to Introduce Open Source Privacy Improvement Add-On for Blockchains

The ING Group which is a Dutch multinational banking and financial services corporation is intended to launch Zero-Knowledge Set Membership (ZKSM) in a press release on Oct. 21. It will be an open source blockchain tool.

ZKSM is able to provide validation of specific alphanumeric data, without damaging data’s overall security. Also, it performs as a privacy ‘improvement’ to distributed ledger technology (DLT), like blockchain.

Here, ING claims that the tool enables a blockchain to confirm a piece of data belongs to a specified set. And notably, it does not reveal its full characteristics. For instance, a citizen, based in E.U. could prove he or she is from the EU, but indicating their exact country of residence is not required, as given in the press release.

The press release also states that “One of the major challenges in implementing new DLT is protecting private information on a public ledger, where changes must be verified by each participant in the network.”

Elaborating the motive behind the latest release, Annerie Vreugdenhil the head of wholesale banking innovation at ING said, “the lender wished to help clients “transform their business models.”

She added, “One of the key elements in this process for clients is how to deal with data and privacy. ZKSM is the next step in this journey.”

Remarkably, The bank had launched similar data privacy enhancements previously in November 2017, beginning with Zero-Knowledge Range Proof (ZKRP).