Blockchain Startup Bison Trails Now Powering ZKValidator Nodes Across Cosmos, Polkadot, Kusama, and NEAR

Announcements, Blockchain, News | September 24, 2020 By:

Blockchain infrastructure-as-a-service company Bison Trails has announced that it is now powering ZKValidator, a purpose-driven validator being used to secure Polkadot, Cosmos, NEAR, and Kusama.

Based in New York City, Bison Trails provides an easy-to-use platform to launch and run highly-available nodes on any blockchain network effortlessly. It offers geographically distributed infrastructure for the pioneers of tomorrow, to secure networks, and enable the entire blockchain ecosystem to flourish.

Founded by Zero Knowledge podcast host Anna Rose and DeversiFi CEO Will Harborne, ZKValidator helps facilitate privacy-focused standards development and acts as a bridge between the zero-knowledge research community and the engineers designing network protocols. ZKValidator is on a mission to further research into Zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a cryptographic means to prove that a secret is true or valid without revealing any other information about it. ZKV uses rewards generated by validation to support Zero Knowledge initiatives across PoS networks. It currently operates nodes across Cosmos, Polkadot, Kusama, and NEAR, where a community of token-holders delegate their digital assets and earn rewards for helping to secure the network.

According to the release, the integration is significant because Bison Trails’ enterprise-grade platform enables ZKValidator to run a community-focused Staking as a Service to promote privacy research and participate in governance on emerging PoS networks. In addition to handling network upgrades, security, and all aspects of node operation, the platform democratizes access to blockchains by removing technical barriers, which will enable the ZKV team to expand by allowing anyone in the community to run public validators and support ZKV’s mission by staking their digital assets.

“Bison Trails makes it easy for anyone to run secure infrastructure across multiple blockchains,” said Anna Rose, co-founder of ZKValidator. “As they roll out support for new PoS networks, we have discovered opportunities for the ZKValidator to branch out in different directions. Because Bison Trails is doing the technical due diligence, we can work to promote privacy and the use of zero-knowledge systems on the networks we work on.”

The idea to run public validators so that anyone can support ZKValidator’s mission by staking their digital assets, arose serendipitously when Joe Lallouz, Bison Trails’ CEO, was a guest on the Zero Knowledge Podcast.

“ZKValidator is a very real use case of how we can help a team of a few people become as powerful as a team of 50 people,” said Lallouz. “Bison Trails is proud to support ZKValidator across multiple networks with our infrastructure platform, removing all of the technical barriers of running their own community-funded validators. It’s very cool to see people with the economic and political knowhow of governing protocols serve on the Kusama Council and the NEAR Validator Advisory board while we run the infrastructure. This fits perfectly with our mission of democratizing access to blockchains.”