Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology • Hacker News Board

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#101

Post by djoldman » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 8:52 PM UTC

_w1tm wrote: post #90

djoldman wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t that the same argument as “Parents should keep kids away from cigarettes” by tobacco companies who were simultaneously marketing to children? I think most would agree that there's a significant difference between a physical product that shortens the lifespan of virtually all humans who use it, and looking at images and video, no matter how extreme. > And parents aren’t in control of children 24/7. Schools ten…

> Parents and guardians should definitely be aware of and concerned about what internet filters are in place at schools. Neither of the words you used give parents any control over the situation. Legislation is the circumspect way parents are exerting control over websites that are unable to police themselves.

Fair enough. Sounds like legislation may be a good way to enforce internet filtering on school computers.

Schools have traditionally been ground zero for culture war in the USA, so this fits.

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#102

Post by ChuckMcM » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 8:59 PM UTC

0xOsprey wrote: post #98

ChuckMcM wrote: post #91

This is great. It really pissed me off when David Chaum locked all the cool uses of ZKPs behind a patent wall. The DigiCash folks were peak dot com greed types, their business model was "We're going to get big chunk of change out of every transaction ever so we should be valued at 1% of the worlds GDP!" And the world responded with "Yeah, no." I really like Andy Birrells "micro-cents" which exploited the fact you cou…

Here is one we are working on: https://paygo.wtf/ https://x.com/0x_Osprey/status/1925299005191577921

Nice. I wish you success in this.

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#103

Post by wbl » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 9:05 PM UTC

rvnx wrote: post #18

api wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but I'm also not convinced that a ten year old being able to be face to face with hard-core BDSM and incest fetish porn within 40 seconds of opening a web browser is healthy. I don't like this but don't have another solution other than the porn industry self-policing which isn't promising.

Now take an intentionally extreme opposite (as a thought experiment): if we put death penalty to people who participate in distributing or in relaying such content, could all of that be solved without the “internet pass” and IDing your internet history ?

You mean like the SF city government? This is stuff that a lot of people enjoy doing and taking photos of. The headquarters of a lot of startups are in what used to be the leather neighborhood.

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#104

Post by tucnak » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

vvpan wrote: post #86

A cool technology that builds on ZK is zkTLS that can prove that you have access to some data on the internet, for example that you have an account with some service without revealing your username. So more private oauth I suppose?

This is perhaps more important in the age of AI agents, but before we can tackle all these fancy ZKP constructs in the mainstream — we have to, as the industry (and so far consistently failed to) — implement Zanzibar, or whatever ReBAC, and maybe ZKP stuff could "sneak in" that way, in the form of zero-knowledge warrants, or whatnot. Unfortunately, even though it works consumption-wise, it's fundamentally at odds on the provider side.

The providers are clutching their OLAP like pearls! :-)

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#105

Post by wbl » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

MatteoFrigo wrote: post #67

Confiks wrote: post #43

It's a very interesting solution that allows for multi-show unlinkability to be married to hardware binding using existing ECDSA hardware keys. It's not limited to age verification; it can be applied to arbitrary attributes. It's also an unfathomably complex solution [1] which only a few people in the world will grok, and far more complex than existing solutions such as Idemix or BBS+, which lack such a hardware bind…

On the contrary, any undergraduate can understand our solution. In contrast, I don't know anybody who can explain the bilinear pairing in BBS.

I'm not sure sumcheck and MPC in the head are that easy for undergraduates. By contrast cup products are pretty standard in topology and that's where the pairing comes from.

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#106

Post by wat10000 » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

jjmarr wrote: post #19

krunck wrote: post #4

Age assurance will be the gateway to government issued(via corporate proxy) internet usage permits.

Not necessary, Uganda has been levying social media taxes on end-users since 2018 by automatically adding it to your cell phone bill if you access a social media website. About 2.7¢ per day of usage.[1] Virtually everyone gets their internet from an ISP that is regulated in the country that the user lives in. There are no technical barriers to implementing a permitting system in the United States. Linking connections…

Tying usage to connection seems feasible, but age verification (and the hypothetical usage permit) is trying to tie usage to a specific person. You could probably pretend they correspond 1:1 for cellular, but what about wired connections to households with more than one person living in them?

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#107

Post by baby » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

For people interested in zero-knowledge proofs check https://news.zksecurity.xyz/ which is a hackernews but for ZK!

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#108

Post by Labo333 » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

Very interesting in the context where major porn websites blocked access in France (now reverted) and in some US states as a response to age verification regulations that were too difficult to implement without compromising user experience and privacy.

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#109

Post by coldpie » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 9:44 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #91

This is great. It really pissed me off when David Chaum locked all the cool uses of ZKPs behind a patent wall. The DigiCash folks were peak dot com greed types, their business model was "We're going to get big chunk of change out of every transaction ever so we should be valued at 1% of the worlds GDP!" And the world responded with "Yeah, no." I really like Andy Birrells "micro-cents" which exploited the fact you cou…

> This is great.

Do you still feel that way knowing that it introduces a hard requirement for all users to have their private data managed by one of Apple, Google, or Microsoft[1]? I want to be excited about this, and about Passkeys, but the people working in this space keep fumbling this ball :(

[1] "Using the MDOC requires a signature from a hardware security key in the phone" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44458417

Re: Opening up ‘Zero-Knowledge Proof’ technology

#110

Post by baby » Thu, Jul 03, 2025, 9:45 PM UTC

vvpan wrote: post #86

A cool technology that builds on ZK is zkTLS that can prove that you have access to some data on the internet, for example that you have an account with some service without revealing your username. So more private oauth I suppose?

Great intro to how zkTLS works: https://blog.zksecurity.xyz/posts/zktls/