4 ms·
> No, I cannot adequately explain why the hyphen moves. Draw your own conclusions. The hyphen is there because ZK-SNARKs are a subset of SNARKs. Where a genera
by remcob 6y ago
> No, I cannot adequately explain why the hyphen moves. Draw your own conclusions.
The hyphen is there because ZK-SNARKs are a subset of SNARKs. Where a general SNARK may leak some or all of the knowledge as part of the proof, a ZK-SNARK can not leak a single bit.
- baby 6y agoI don’t know if I would call that a subset, my understanding is that not all zero-knowledge proofs can necessarily be transformed into non-interactive proofs
- inopinatus 6y agoThat’s one valid location, but since other subsets of the same set of descriptors exist, the hyphen could equally go anywhere. Or nowhere. Hence my annotation of explanatory inadequacy.
- gnu8 6y agoThe hyphen did not move, it is actually a different one. Zero-knowledge loses its hyphen when the phrase is compressed into an acronym, and a hyphen is added as a separator.
- inopinatus 6y agoIndeed, but this remains a nominal explanation. It validates the possibility of one hyphen placement but does not explain why any of the equally available alternatives are not chosen. Why not ZK-S-N-ARK, and other combinations besides? Heck, what kind of diseased mind thinks hyphens even belong in initialisms and acronyms? Don’t even get me started on the use of arbitary case variants (“zk-SNARK”). My thesis being, justifying any one particular placement of a hyphen is a necessary but not sufficient part of an adequate explanation. Just as Alice was vexed by Humpty Dumpty.
- gnu8 6y agoIf you expand ZK-S-N-ARK it becomes Zero Knowledge-Secure-Noninteractive-Argument of Knowledge, or Zero-Knowledge-Secure-Non-interactive-Argument of Knowledge if you reinsert the hyphens that had been removed by the acronym compression process. To me it seems that binding those words together with hyphens makes the name harder to understand. What exactly is meant by Knowledge-Secure-Noninteractive-Argument? Surely a lunatic must have pasted all of those words together. The phrase doesn't just change its meaning but loses it because some of the words were not glued on with hyphens and fell off. In other words, my point is that arbitrary and gratuitous hyphens can make it more difficult to understand what ZK-SNARK means. The only system of hyphenation needed is the one that causes people to parse the meaning in the way that the writer intended.
- inopinatus 6y agoYes, that is the Humpty Dumpty argument. However it is still merely necessary, and not sufficient. When you enumerate the entire set of letter combinations and hyphen positions and assign “lunatic ratings” to each variant, you’ll find many that aren’t so preposterous. Ergo, the chosen form is merely a nominal preference.
- gnu8 6y agoThis is what my objection really is. At best, the non-preposterous combinations will mean the same thing as the original. Most combinations will carry a different meaning or none at all. There's no reason to treat it like a search space to test all of the possible arrangements, because there is no additional meaning to uncover that way.
- inopinatus 6y agoThis is a sufficient argument for no hyphen at all.