StarkWare has announced the integration of the Nightfall privacy layer from the Big Four auditing firm Ernst & Young (EY) into its L2 network, Starknet.
1/ The Starknet stack now enables confidential payments & DeFi for institutions.
Today, we’re bringing Nightfall, EY’s ZK privacy layer, to Starknet.
Ethereum-secured rails, now ready for enterprise scale 🧵 pic.twitter.com/irme37L276
— StarkWare (BTCFi arc) 🥷 (@StarkWareLtd) February 17, 2026
“For major players, the issue is simple: public blockchains offer scalability, liquidity, and global reach, but full transparency reveals balances, counterparties, and strategies. Institutions cannot operate this way,” the developers noted.
According to the statement, Nightfall “bridges this gap.” The protocol uses zero-knowledge proofs and functions as a third layer on top of Starknet. The network serves as a layer for verification and settlements.
Nightfall aims to retain the advantages of a public blockchain while offering capabilities such as:
- maintaining transaction privacy;
- conducting audits;
- complying with regulatory requirements, including KYC procedures.
According to the StarkWare team, the protocol integration allows institutional players to selectively disclose information about their on-chain financial activities. This opens up numerous use cases for corporations using Starknet, such as:
- private B2B payments and cross-border transfers;
- treasury management with confidential balances;
- 24/7 transactions with tokenized assets;
- non-public DeFi operations.
“With Starknet, you get all this with Ethereum security, high throughput, composability, and access to broad liquidity in the ecosystem,” the developers emphasized.
EY introduced the first version of Nightfall back in 2018. The company later released the solution’s source code.
Earlier, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao linked the slow adoption of crypto payments to a lack of privacy.