5 ms·

It would be nice to see an example of a real world application as opposed to crypto make believe. We know that the entire "web3" has the computing power of a R

It would be nice to see an example of a real world application as opposed to crypto make believe. We know that the entire "web3" has the computing power of a Raspberry Pi while running on the computing hardware equivalent of a contry's worth of datacenters, so yeah, anything that helps "scaling" that mess is probably just some very exotic solution to a fake problem that was simply invented as a cover for some convoluted financial fraud.

gbersac 3y ago
Finance is a well established use case for blockchain.
- rantallion 3y ago
  I believe that was already covered by "some very exotic solution to a fake problem that was simply invented as a cover for some convoluted financial fraud".
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  How specifically?
  - Double_a_92 3y ago
    The only halfway decent project I've seen is the Stellar protocol, which might be used as intra-bank network and/or for real digital currencies. But it's not completely trustless (the banks need to trust eachother), and there is no ponzi scheme going on, since the tokens are just data that represent real assets (held at the banks you need to trust).
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - jjtheblunt 3y ago
      Does that differ much from electronic transfers as done currently between banks?
      - kjs3 3y ago
        It has 'blockchain' in the description.
      - Double_a_92 3y ago
        The individual banks (and users) would need less trust between eachother, as long as the group as a whole is generally trustworthy.
- forgetfulness 3y ago
  Cryptocurrency doesn't count, that's more like baseball cards than finance.
ChadNauseam 3y ago
I don't understand how a technical audience like HN wouldn't be interested in stuff like this. Sure, maybe it's all exotic solutions to fake problems. They're still pretty cool solutions! ZK-tech allows you to prove that you evaluated `f(x)` and got `y`. Normally someone would have to evaluate `f(x)` themselves to verify that `y` is the output, but if you encode `f` as a ZK circuit, in addition to getting the output you also get a succinct proof that you evaluated `f` correctly, In other words, you get `f' : x → (y, proof)`. The proof can then be verified in constant time for SNARKs, or log-poly time for STARKs. And depending on how you construct the proof circuit, you don't even necessarily need to know `x` to verify the proof! How crazy is that? To me, this seems like cryptography from the future. It's not even something that would obviously be possible. It wasn't invented by cryptocurrency developers, but it's impossible to deny that cryptocurrencies have advanced the field dramatically. (Reducing the overhead of creating the proof, for example.) There are tons of applications for this, too. Imagine you wanted to have a registry of "known-humans", a list of public keys where each private key belonged to a unique person. Now, a user wants to log into your website, and you want to verify that they're on this list. It's not obvious how to do this in a privacy-preserving way, that is, how does the user prove they control a private key associated with a public key on the list, without revealing which one? With ZK-tech, it's easy. The user downloads the list, encrypts something with their public key, then decrypts it, and does this all in a ZK circuit that produces a cryptographic proof that the process was done properly with a key that's on the list. Then they send the proof to the website, which is able to verify it without knowing the secret inputs (the private key, or the which public key was selected). There are other ways of accomplishing this that don't use ZK-tech, this was just a simple example.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

gbersac 3y ago

Finance is a well established use case for blockchain.

rantallion 3y ago
I believe that was already covered by "some very exotic solution to a fake problem that was simply invented as a cover for some convoluted financial fraud".
jjtheblunt 3y ago
How specifically?
- Double_a_92 3y ago
  The only halfway decent project I've seen is the Stellar protocol, which might be used as intra-bank network and/or for real digital currencies. But it's not completely trustless (the banks need to trust eachother), and there is no ponzi scheme going on, since the tokens are just data that represent real assets (held at the banks you need to trust).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jjtheblunt 3y ago
    Does that differ much from electronic transfers as done currently between banks?
    - kjs3 3y ago
      It has 'blockchain' in the description.
    - Double_a_92 3y ago
      The individual banks (and users) would need less trust between eachother, as long as the group as a whole is generally trustworthy.
forgetfulness 3y ago
Cryptocurrency doesn't count, that's more like baseball cards than finance.

ChadNauseam 3y ago

I don't understand how a technical audience like HN wouldn't be interested in stuff like this. Sure, maybe it's all exotic solutions to fake problems. They're still pretty cool solutions! ZK-tech allows you to prove that you evaluated `f(x)` and got `y`. Normally someone would have to evaluate `f(x)` themselves to verify that `y` is the output, but if you encode `f` as a ZK circuit, in addition to getting the output you also get a succinct proof that you evaluated `f` correctly, In other words, you get `f' : x → (y, proof)`. The proof can then be verified in constant time for SNARKs, or log-poly time for STARKs. And depending on how you construct the proof circuit, you don't even necessarily need to know `x` to verify the proof! How crazy is that? To me, this seems like cryptography from the future. It's not even something that would obviously be possible. It wasn't invented by cryptocurrency developers, but it's impossible to deny that cryptocurrencies have advanced the field dramatically. (Reducing the overhead of creating the proof, for example.) There are tons of applications for this, too. Imagine you wanted to have a registry of "known-humans", a list of public keys where each private key belonged to a unique person. Now, a user wants to log into your website, and you want to verify that they're on this list. It's not obvious how to do this in a privacy-preserving way, that is, how does the user prove they control a private key associated with a public key on the list, without revealing which one? With ZK-tech, it's easy. The user downloads the list, encrypts something with their public key, then decrypts it, and does this all in a ZK circuit that produces a cryptographic proof that the process was done properly with a key that's on the list. Then they send the proof to the website, which is able to verify it without knowing the secret inputs (the private key, or the which public key was selected). There are other ways of accomplishing this that don't use ZK-tech, this was just a simple example.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]