Privacy and ZK Technologies | European Blockchain Convention

[Music] good morning everyone and welcome to this panel in today's world which is becoming more digital every day it is really important to answer the question how can we use our most private information in a way that is secure but at the same time verifiable and this question can be answered with zero knowledge and the this is a new cryptographic technology that makes it possible that we verify information without actually revealing it and today we have a panel of experts who are working in this field and in our panel we will discuss the use cases of this technology what this technology actually means and how can we achieve widespread adoption I will start the panel with some introductions um my name is Maria Ana MMS and I'm the founder and CEO of echoland and echoland is a web three Talent platform where we help uh blockchain infrastructure companies and protocols onboard Builders uh and get talent to develop new technology and we also or organize online hackathons uh where we create new Innovative applications I would like to give the word now to my fellow panelists to introduce themselves and then start the panel Jordie yes well hello I'm Jord valina currently I'm the technical I'm a polygon co-founder technical lead there I build the zkm there I'm a developer M that's what I I am I'm an engineer I'm developers insign 12 years old so that's what I like to do and I've been in blockchain since 2015 I been I was involved in uh the beginning of ethereum in some of the early hacks of ethereum I was a white hack there then I created a series of um startups companies I created gith I created dnote I created Iden 3 which currently is Privado ID then we created terth and now currently we are in polygon and besides that I've been developing some tooling for ZK like circom and snjs um yeah and especially the last in the last years the zkm which has been a huge Improvement on the ZK te in my personal site I'm living in Switzerland I'm from Barcelona I'm living in Switzerland uh for the Last 5 Years uh traveling around the world a couple of kids uh right now literally they are 20 23 24 so they they have their own life so that's a little bit myself how do I follow that um let me keep it shorter I guess um my name is Anthony day I work for a project called Midnight we are a layer one data protection Focus chain with smart contracts you can build in typescript uh very s similar to the friends over at Mina um we have programmable data protection where you can have as much of the logic on on your dap be shielded or transparent U primarily because public chains are too public and there's too much data published for Enterprises and large organizations to really bring um daps and business activities on chain privacy projects and also private DTS don't scale particularly well or can't provide Regulatory Compliance MAA is around the corner there's a whole bunch of different use cases around that which we think a ZK is going to be really important for so um test net launching next week so please come check us out and Kurt over to you great yeah very hard to follow uh Jordy and and Anthony so I'm Kurt Hemer I'm the CEO of Mina foundation and we're helping Foster the growth of the Mina protocol and its Community Mina is a layer one native ZK blockchain built on recursive snarks and was actually the first such layer one blockchain to go live with uh zero knowledge programmability in ZK apps launched in June so it's very much the really the beginning of the ecosystem getting Builders and Developers and users uh in production mode on our uh main net and I I'll leave it there so we could dive into the discussion but uh I would urge people to go check out nproc docomo on the technology all right so the first question I think that uh probably a lot of people are asking themselves what actually is zero knowledge proof and why are we talking about it why is it use so um Anthony do you want to answer that I'm going to give the non-technical version of this and then Jord can give the technical version the reason I would like to do that first is that I've heard ZK described as a whole bunch of things that is completely unrelatable to regular humans for example zero knowledge is magical math right and if you're about to go to your CTO or you're about to go into a business meeting and say hey I'm just about to solve all of your application problems with magic do you think somebody's going to turn and say oh what a good idea yes how much is the the monthly R to use this magic to help solve all my application challenges the reality is we need to do better at explaining what zero knowledge can do as opposed to how it works blockchain had the exact same problem and every other technology since has had the same AI Quantum don't explain to me how it works explain to me what it does and so the very simple concept for those people in the audience who who love web 3 who want to see web 3 scale or who want to see wider use of the decentralized Internet is just think about send proofs not data we have a problem in the world today where we are regularly sending on a daily basis sensitive internet sorry sensitive data over the Internet which granted is probably relatively secure to a third party who is to process that information store it in the database govern that data and try really hard to make sure it doesn't leak out into the public somehow this is a horrible way of architecting applications in the internet and it is all predicated the issues are all predicated over sensitive data being shared from one person's computer or a company system to a third party who has to manage it the value of Technology like Zer knowledge proofs is to be able to generate a proof of something a proof of a credential a proof of how much funds you have a proof of that you are solvent a proof that you have an invitation or a PDF or an nft proof of anything and be able to prove to a third party that that is the case without necessarily letting them know any of the sensitive information we can go deeper on any of that into really gran use cases but at the basic level send proofs not data and then the rest of it Cascades down is that a helpful intro yes I think so maybe we can hear a couple of um examples of the actual applications of zero knowledge proof um who wants to go who wants to answer I'll I'll take that and then I'll pass it to Jordy as well um but I think you know as Anthony pointed out it's really the the power of it is in the zero knowledge fact you're just sending a proof that a statement is true so you're not exposing any of the data and it's really the space we're in is super interesting because we can all see like what the incremental use cases are in 2026 uh some of you might be aware that there now um in Europe the European digital identity will be become mandatory Europe every single European country has to issue a digital identity to its users so how is that identity going to be used well for people who want to go into a nightclub or a bar showing that proving that you're old enough to go in without giving away your name your actual age so there's ways to protect that data or if you're transacting online um so but there's another aspect of zero knowledge proofs which is also really powerful uh you know the the the Privacy aspect or the data protection aspect because you're not actually exposing the data super powerful but there's another power too that Anthony also alluded to and I think Jordy will have more to say on this and it's an incredible economy of computing power so for example the first use case which which was was introduced also on me in a protocol is the consensus state of the entire blockchain is wrapped up into one small recursive proof that's infinitely recursed so what that enables is for validators Block producers anyone who wants to benefit from participating on a blockchain you don't need to reexecute every single transaction and and the same goes when you're talking about um smart contracts or zero knowledge applications so you can benefit from the compu that's already been done just by by relying on that single proof and you know one of the one of the races that like we're we're all in collectively in the industry is how do you improve the power of this technology and I think we're going to see you know again we can talk about use cases around identity and we all see these particularly around kyc but then there's also another world where we don't know what's going to be built yet and if you think about you know when when people were building out the first microprocessors they had no idea some of the applications that would we that would be built out and you know again collectively I think the space we're all in there's kind of four reasons people do something it's faster better cheaper or enabling you to do something new that you hadn't done before that you want to to to do but I'll um Jordy I I'll turn it over to you and I think with your background you have a few things to say I I think you get a great job describing what zero knowledge and you see that there is like these two big families or two big families of applications I mean what we call privacy applications and what we call scaling applications privacy we are talking about protecting data in general these are proofs that the users generate in their in their devices in the mobile phone or in the clients so in general relatively small proofs in order to let's I don't want to say height I mean I would say this um this concept of uh selective disclosure I mean you want it's not that you are not re putting I mean you are not you you explain it very well I mean in order to prove things one way to prove things is just showing the data but there is another way to prove things is that some computation on your data holds and this is this is so this allows you to do kind of a query in your data or in the set of data and just reveal the result of that query and I think this is this is important because it's selective disclosure of what you're doing and this is very much the the Privacy side in the execution side and this is when I have to explain what zero knowledge is where I like to explain because I think that conceptually it's much more easy to understand and this is this concept of proof of computation what means for that so for that is imagine that you have a program a computer program a deterministic program that takes uh let's say one week in a super computer to run well I have a supercomputer and I want to prove to Anthony that the result I mean after running that for a week I want to Pro that that result is okay I give the result to Anthony and Anthony needs to check that this result actually is okay so well what he can do well the naive way to do it is okay let's uh hire the supercomputer you spend one week more you test it again and and then you are convinced that you know but I mean you need to spend one but the idea of the zero knowledge is the idea is that I can send you the result and besides the result I can send you also a cryptographic proof zero knowledge proof in this case or a proof of computation validity proof um proving you that this result is correct so you just spending very few milliseconds you can prove that that result is convinced okay and the cool thing I mean this is the proof of computation okay but the the thing is that uh this is where the zero knowledge where the things links is that I don't even need to so I can't give you the result and I don't even need to so I I'm not revealing the computation but I don't even revealing you the input I mean I don't revealing the input of the program and this is where the zero knowledge comes and this is where the Privacy cams uh in the other case when you had to run the computation again I need you to give you the input so you can run the computation again this case I can give you the output of the result and then you can hide things and for here you can hide any computation I mean I mean I like to talk more maybe let more futuristic um applications but to give you an idea of what can be done and this is something that it will be possible at some point so imagine that uh a system where you can uh you pay taxes and you don't reveal how much you pay you just prove that what you are paying is okay that you are following all the rules that you have all the in all the in all the uh invoices all the movements you check everything you have this information this information is at stated in some notaries in some blockchain so you have all the information that you need to do your tax declaration and then you just pay it you can pay it even anonymously I mean you can pay it with uh some uh and you can prove that actually you are following and you cannot I mean you prove that that's okay and you cannot treat the system and this will not reveal any information about yourself me this is a kind of an example that's definitively possible of course you need all the information that you need to declaration needs to be somehow um anchored to the blockchain we need to be sure that there is some attestations and this is where the things are coming but this is definitely possible this this kind of applications happen uh can happen and this is where we can where this technology can really improve the the the world this selective discloser it's a very cool one and let me let me bring it back to maybe some some more relevant or sorry more recent or current examples anywhere where you are looking to transact on chain where there is an element of compliance or there is an element of requiring to protect sensitive information so for example if we're commissioning a an AML check or a fraud check on a particular wallet I want to work with an onchain um AML kyc provider I want to tell them hey I have a suspicious wallet it's wallet number 105 please go check whether this wallet is dodgy because we think it should be we think it's been sanction screened we think it's been involved in elicit activity if I'm a regulator I don't want to tell the person who is checking and scanning wallets that this is a particular wallet that's of interest because the second I do that that's sensitive information that the third party now has not great analogous to that is you're the CIA right this is the offchain example but again to for relatability you're the CIA you want to look at house number 25 on Smith Street I need to buy some satellite data around what's happening at Smith Street number 25 for the rest of the week just to see what's who's going in and out of the building I need to pay a third party for that but I don't necessarily want them to know that I'm looking at 25 Smith Street because they immediately then know that's that's a house that's of Interest the CIA so what happens today is the CIA buys an entire Town's worth of data and they surveil the entire town in one go so that they can obfuscate what they're actually interested in that is the reverse of a zero knowledge proof it is it is all the knowledge you're Gathering too much knowledge to be able to get the one piece of information you actually need and then at some point later if you want to um disclose that or you need to prove to somebody that that you've done so you can release that information if you choose to but up until that point the two parties have complete trans sorry have complete shielding of the intent and the information same thing with Define right to prevent front running if I want to put a particular order in or that I want to prove that I have a certain number of funds to make a certain order I want to do that without the entire Market knowing at the moment that's hard to do right or if we want to be able to conduct transactions on chain between different banks across different borders I don't want everybody to see all of the transactions the order book that I'm putting or the things that I'm putting in the M Pool because people can make decisions based on that right we cannot have Global Finance on chain with everything being transparent on ethereum all the time or everybody being able to audit or correlate what's happening between different transactions on different smart contracts these things are problems for us today that we're already exploring the use of zero knowledge to help fix web 3 is transparent we we have espoused that as one of the benefits but that is also a blocker for widespread adoption too much transparency will scare people away it's not good for business and at the moment everybody who's using defi who who's transacting without zero knowledge or some form of alternative um shielding is at risk they're transacting at risk and you know what it's encrypted it's on chain it's fine in a postquantum world that encryption may not be as secure as we think it is and it's on a blockchain forever or hands up anybody in here whose um ens whose e address is their first and second name right and if I can if I yeah no one's putting their hand up but we're all thinking about it right sorry this is a family show but if your F if your eth address is your first and second name and that's available on chain and I can go and search you with human readable language I can now go and find out the crypto equivalent of your bank account and your browser history go change your ens address real quick because that's now public information that people can correlate and it may not be important now but it may well be important someday and these are some of the challenges with scaling web 3 that we need to address now and we believe that ZK is part of the solution to get there sorry sorry about that but I I think Anthony youve just outlined exactly why zero knowledge is here to stay and so fundamental to Bringing blockchain to mainstream users uh and again as AI moves more and more to the edge in capturing data so much data around us like we definitely want zero knowledge baked in to those devices I just quickly wanted to mention also one use case that I'm really excited about which um is zero knowledge data clean rooms and if uh this is a practical example which can be done today if you think about for example a marketing scenario where different companies uh either group companies or companies within um one brand group want to collaborate on consumer insights and consumer data but without having to share or expose all of the individual data on the consumers that they have so typically this is done today through thirdparty aggregators they take the entire data set from one company a another from Company B they an animize it and then feed it back but with zero knowledge each company can prove that they have certain demographics or user behaviors within their data set generate zero knowledge proofs of that that get then verified on a blockchain that attests that what that company has said is true and then other groups can then benefit from those same insights without sharing uh any of the private data for those uh customer insights and that scales into Data monetization as well right that's not necessarily just a a deal room or an m&a type of product if you if you get to transacting m&as with onchain data which um heres was the first I think the first ever m&a deal in in web 3 am I right I'm not sure probably yes I I want to believe so I I remember reporting on it s this is really cool m&a has come to blockchain um but Jordy I wonder whether we can also talk a little bit about Primitives that Z that are being built around ZK to because if you look at products like ZK email or ZK login these are really interesting very cool things where where ZK is being used to bring web 2 style functionality like login with your Gmail address or your whatever email address you use to help people build dabs are those things that you see and think that's kind of that's kind of useful I like that yeah this is I mean this is and this is probably one of the things that's changing in the last years and what's enabling I mean the the evolution of ZK has been just exponential high but in the last years the one of the big difficulties traditionally in the ZK is is that in order to take advantage of the ZK you needed to use some specific cryptographic Primitives for that but Z has evolved so much faster that the idea is that we can we don't need to go there anymore I mean prob it's a little bit more expensive and that means that all the cryptographic um Communications that happens in the world and this is I mean when you are connecting to a web page you are using a cryptographic protocol to authenticate the page I mean you are using you are signing a lot of uh informations digital signatures um digital documents I mean there is a lot of information cryptographic information that happens in the current world the idea is that today with the current technology we can take advantage of all this cryptographic information that actually Som howow they prove things I mean a signature is also proving that you have a key without revealing a key okay so it's uh we can take advantage of all this information and put it in inside the zero knowledge so we can make proofs out of all these communications that happens in today's in today's day and this is possible and this is practically possible since now I mean the technology currently is uh aable uh today it was not one year ago or two years ago yeah which which is nice that that's you're getting then to ZK acting like we said blockchain is successful when it's underpinning applications and no one notices when ZK is underpinning your login to AAP you know if you have a wallet onui today you can log in with your Gmail account or other accounts it will create a cryptographic proof of that you have signed in with Google it will add a little bit of salt to the transaction so it's Unique and you will then be able to log into a web3 wallet with an email address and a password which solves a ux problem that most people are struggling with around wallets and and paries and so on I think another important takeaway for the audience is that ZK is not magical math it is usable technology we've got to tooling and capability that is usable by dap developers and user today right now we've got smart contracts writable and typescript we've got ZK modules and sdks that can be built in that have functionality that's useful it does not have to be built by at least at this point now we've got beyond the point where using ZK Primitives has to be with ZK Engineers just the one side comment I mean there is no magical math math is math okay so it's it's like it's that I like I mean it's I understand I mean is ZK of course has some say relatively complex and uh some math that's not uh easy to understand I would say it's easier that it would it looks like but it's not it's not something that everybody can understand at first chance but I mean but uh cryptography is also as difficult I would say it's even as difficult as as uh the ZK math I mean it's a math that's in there I mean RSA signature is very complex maap but these are Primitives that are being used today by app developers who are not necessarily cryptographers but we've made those tools and capabilities available to developers and I think it's important that the audience knows that ZK tooling is available now it shouldn't be seen as oh that's a bit scary a bit different C I don't know whether you've had experience with your community but for app developers from web 2 who are coming in with JavaScript and typescript experience developing applications that involve the circuit concept of ZK instead of just kind of linear programming is a slight depart but at this point if you're a developer and you've still got useful tooling it's not impossible to get past right it's just a new way of slightly thinking about the programming logic differently no and I I I think it's interesting that projects like Mina as well as uh midnight as well have landed on typescript the most popular web 2 programming framework make it easy for developers make it easy I I think Maria wanted to easy for developers I I wanted to just give an example that is like super simple I think to understand how we at our talent platform implemented ZK technology um so essentially what we do is we connect companies with talent and sometimes um you don't really know where the talent comes from right there are certain sanctioned countries so Talent usually doesn't want or people don't want to really disclose their personal information like ID uploaded somewhere right but we implemented zero knowledge proof in a way that if you upload your personal information such as your ID or passport with your face it's encrypted so we don't see it the company hiring you doesn't see it but it can confirm that you don't come from a sanctioned country so this technology is available nowadays and uh my next question would be why use this technology and not uh like something available on the market well because I don't want anyone having or seeing this information right it's encrypted uh but maybe you guys um can say why would we use ZK technology not something else non-blockchain related I would say uh in most of applications the only way to read away of the ZK Tech is about the central Authority so somehow you need to trust on a central on a central Authority and I would and even some applications even that doesn't work I mean the case of scaling a central Authority needs to check it anyway but um so the the nice thing of Z Cas is I mean that you can prove things without you prove it yourself I mean you don't need a third party that's somehow a reputational third party that somehow exactly uh proves uh Ts for you and other and sees the information right so you can prove from yourself so this keeps you your privacy it's more autonomous it's more decentralized you know how you have much less dependency the end and this is I mean this is a philosophical thing and here prob I I want to emphasize emphasize this because web 3 is about creating common goods web 3 is about creating applications that don't belong to anybody that they that they belong to humanity they are they are there look at Bitcoin I mean who's the owner of Bitcoin nobody is the owner of Bitcoin when we are creating web three applications this is what we are creating what we want to create we want to create public goods Public Services services that are there that the people can use it that you don't need to ask permission to use it you as a human you can use it and they are available they are not controlled by anybody they are just there me internet for example is the first try of uh the humanity to create something that looks like that and even that has some aui I I just have a quick question have we done our job do you all believe that zero knowledge is fundamental to Bringing blockchain to mainstream you raise your hand if you think we've convinced you of that no pressure CT is asking you to raise your hands and Believe in Us please put your hands up oh man I I think we have more work to do we've got some work to do I think the ultimate thing just to build on what Jordi said is for those Banks and regulators and those people working in compliance sitting in the room or listening with ZK you can have the public goods of smart contracts and unchange transactions but sensitive data never leaves your perimeter sensitive data never leaves your your system and yes data protection is a spectrum but specifically for midnight we started with the promise of you want to transact on chain you want to Shield sensitive data you want the data to never leave your system for regulated Industries with sensitive IP with businessto business type of transactions a whole bunch of companies have on- premise Computing for a good reason they don't want their their information in a public Cloud they don't want sensitive information in the hands of third parties they even don't want to send their sensitive data to two or three multi parties to do computation the second that sensitive data leaves your premises or your perimeter somebody else is able to potentially correlate and take that sensitive data and so if it's very important or if it's high- Risk Technology like ZK to help people maintain control of their IP while transacting on chain is super super important and these are the industries right the digital assets the high value the real world assets the Trad defy tradify cd5 whatever we call it these are the mass adoption use cases that we want to see happen but at the moment they're not there because people think that public chains are too public privacy chains are not compliant and sort of DT Consortium Chains Don't scale well we can get past that ZK is a mass adoption machine and please consider us and do Reach Out Jordi is an absolute Legend Kurt has been at this for a lot longer than I have and me and are doing amazing things and if you're interested in Midnight come check us out too and Maria thank you for trying to keep on time we failed but we tried all right thank you everyone and thanks everyone for listening I hope you understood what is ZK and how it is we can implement it in the world and uh achieve adoption in the web 3 space thanks look for selfie guys I'm sorry