• it’s no secret that accelerating applied ZK tech is a top priority for us at 0xPARC. why is this?
• last week, kooshaba submitted a PR to remove the DF whitelist server... by putting auth in a zkSNARK instead
  • i.e. ZKP that you know a whitelist key, and the ZKP is tied to your specific address
  • this was the last remaining part of the DF architecture that was not capable of running fully trustlessly (and auditably). going forward, DF will not need any specially permissioned server.
  • in retrospect, once you know how to work with zkSNARKs, it is clear that this whitelist change is “easy” (conceptually) to do. and once you have one example of this, it becomes obvious that this is a part of a much wider pattern
  • to give another example (not the most impactful, but one of the easiest to understand), a very straightforward extension of this is password authentication systems where passwords never need to be passed in plaintext over the wire, or handled as plaintext in service provider memory
  • zooming out, easy-to-use tools like ZK (and other advanced tools like MPC) enable something very general. ZK offers the promise of rearchitecting any internet application that fundamentally assumes that private user data must be stored by a trusted service provider.
• today, the web2 internet is architected based on the assumption that certain service providers must be trusted to custody and handle user data, in order for certain functionalities or niceties to be possible.
  • when people complain about the gradual centralization of the internet over the past two decades, they are often referring to the gradual strengthening of this assumption over time
  • moxie may be right that users won’t run their own servers. but not all hope is lost—ZK and related technologies mean that users may not need to
  • ZK crypto—in ways that are complementary to blockchains, which are likely insufficient on their own—provides a suite of tools to invert the data architecture of the centralized internet
  • in the 10-20yr timespan, ZK and ZK-adjacent tools may be the best shot that we have at actually inverting the structure of our global communications networks, and giving control back to users. in this task, ZK may be as important, or perhaps even more important, than blockchains
• this vision is not a new one; parts of it can be seen in the visions of the 90s cypherpunks
  • the cypherpunks imagined worlds where end users manage keypairs and self-sovereign identities, and where major swaths of financial/social activity happens on “neutral ground” protocols rather than on gatekept platforms.
  • unfortunately, cryptography at the time was not expressive enough
• beyond just “fixing our shit,” there is a positive vision that is harder to make concrete but perhaps even larger in scope. ZK is fundamentally important because it enables new primitives which our current internet application architectures previously assumed were not possible
  • even the limited cryptographic tools we had at the time in the 90s—public-key signature and encryption schemes—enabled fundamental new affordances for the internet. to name one example, ecommerce would not be possible at its present scales without public-key crypto—we take secure communication and HTTPS for granted!
  • the idea that trusted service providers must custody user data is a limitation on innovation. there are certain things you simply can’t build, because there is no way to bootstrap the necessary legitimacy into a single trusted service provider.
    • cryptocurrencies are one example of an unlock made possible by new consensus tech—previously, it was impossible to create new fiat money except via a very small number of mechanisms that don’t feel like great foundations from the self-determination perspective, such as monopolizing violence. we expect to see parallel innovations in the next 10-20yr made possible by new cryptography tech
    • for example, one could imagine a canonical, permissioned, and stateful global communications system (global permissions and authentication system; social media protocol; global message board; etc.) whose canonicity is enabled by it being a neutral protocol. previously, it was impossible to create new such systems except via a very small number of mechanisms that don’t feel like great foundations from the self-determination perspective, such as total domination of a market, or essentially government charter.
  • in challenging our fundamental assumptions about what is possible in communications technology, ZK will enable new applications and coordination mechanisms.