The big four accounting firms are continuing to add more and more resources into blockchain technology, while Ernst & Young (EY)  just deepened its own commitment. The global professional services firm unveiled its Public Edition (PE) prototype of its EY Ops Chain, which uses the public Ethereum blockchain to deliver the “world’s first implementation of zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology.” Businesses will have the opportunity to securely issue and sell ICO-like tokens tied to payments or products and services on the public blockchain, thanks to its new technology, while it will also keep transactions private.

EY’s Paul Brody, who leads global blockchain innovation at the firm, said the new technology “empowers blockchain adoption,” adding that “Private blockchains give enterprises transaction privacy, but at the expense of reduced security and resiliency. With zero-knowledge proofs, organizations can transact on the same network as their competition in complete privacy and without giving up the security of the public Ethereum blockchain.”

EY’s new platform took place at EY’s Paris and London-based blockchain labs and is a product of R&D. It harnesses ZKP technology, which is a protocol that encrypts transactions on the blockchain while keeping the consensus algorithm intact that is also used by leading privacy coins such as Zcash. According to Ernst & Young, PE supports tokens that contain similar features as the ERC-20 and ERC-721 Ethereum tokens.

CCN reports that EY has been pushing towards enterprise blockchain adoption for quite some time now, and this latest solution may be what it needs to accelerate the process. It is encouraging businesses to utilize a public blockchain like Ethereum, whose market cap is currently hovering at more than $20 billion, rather than relying on an in-house or another private blockchain whose security and liquidity loses significance in comparison to their public-blockchain counterparts.