Zero-Knowledge Proof
Contextual Quote
"In the double-slit experiment, a particle travels as a wave of possibility, every path at once, until something observes it.
Observation collapses the wave into a single fixed point.
Your personal life online behaves the same way.
Unobserved, you are a person with context, history, intention, room to change your mind.
Observed permanently by every institution that can buy access to your data, you become a profile. A score. A history that has already decided what you are before you say a word.
Zero-knowledge proofs do something radical here.
They let you prove what is true without revealing everything else about you."
- DarkFi [1]
Description
1. From the Wikipedia:
"In cryptography, a zero-knowledge proof or zero-knowledge protocol is a method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true, while avoiding conveying to the verifier any information beyond the mere fact of the statement's truth. The intuition underlying zero-knowledge proofs is that it is trivial to prove the possession of certain information by simply revealing it; the challenge is to prove this possession without revealing the information, or any aspect of it whatsoever."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof)
2. Crypto Altruists:
“Zero Knowledge Proofs allow individuals to share aspects of their identity without revealing who they are. This enables individuals to build a verifiable reputation online, while also having control over which aspects of their identity and credentials that they share.”
3. Benjamin Life:
"Cryptographic zero-knowledge proofs enable verification of claims without revealing underlying data. This allows for the verification of impacts without compromising privacy or creating new forms of surveillance.
For instance, labor conditions in supply chains can be verified without exposing individual worker data. A company could prove that all workers in its supply chain earn living wages without revealing specific salary information, addressing what technologist Jaron Lanier identified as the asymmetric relationship between data providers and platform controllers."
(https://omniharmonic.substack.com/p/beyond-narrow-optimization?)