Protecting Your Privacy With Zero-Knowledge Proofs

In Brief

• Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) is a technology that allows you to prove you know something without revealing what that information is.
• Businesses and organizations are already using Zero-Knowledge Proofs in order to protect user privacy.
• The Elusiv Protocol enables users to privately send and receive funds by using Zero-Knowledge Proofs.

In our digital world, privacy has become a commodity. From the simple act of browsing the internet to more complex financial transactions, our data is constantly being collected and sold without our knowledge or consent. This loss of privacy can have serious implications for both our personal and professional lives. Luckily, there are technologies emerging that have the potential to help us take back control of our data — one of them being Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP).

What is a Zero-Knowledge Proof?

A Zero-Knowledge Proof is a method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that they know a value x, without conveying any information apart from the fact that they know the value x.

In other words, it allows you to prove that you know something without revealing what it is that you know. This has obvious applications when it comes to protecting sensitive data.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs in Practice

While Zero-Knowledge Proofs are still in their infancy, there are already some businesses and organizations beginning to implement them in order to protect user privacy. The Elusiv Protocol uses Zero-Knowledge Proofs to allow private sending and receiving on Solana. Therefore, the connection between the sender and the recipient of a transaction needs to be disconnected. This can be achieved by first having the sender account interact with the Elusiv program and then having only the Elusiv program interact with the recipient account. The first interaction sets the spending authority for the funds transferred to a pooled account. The second interaction utilizes that spending authority in order to transfer funds to the recipient. Zero-Knowledge Proofs are used to reference the spending authority and send the proper funds to the beneficiary without directly interacting with the program.

But ZKPs aren’t limited to just sending and receiving privately; they have a wide variety of use cases such as authentication processes, finance or online voting. In fact, many popular applications and websites are already using Zero-Knowledge Proofs without most users even realizing it! The ING bank released its Zero-Knowledge Range Proof (ZKRP) solution, which allows users to prove that they have a secret number that lies within a known range. For example, a mortgage applicant can prove that his income is within the permissible range without revealing his exact salary. Some authentication Apps use ZKPs to authenticate users without exchanging secret information such as passwords. And when it comes to online elections, ZKPs can allow voters to vote anonymously and validate that their vote was included in the final count. As we move towards an increasingly digital world, it’s more important than ever to make sure that our personal information is kept private. Technologies like Zero-Knowledge Proofs offer us a way to do that while still enjoying all the benefits of the digital age.

Conclusion:

As we become progressively reliant on digital technologies, protecting our privacy online has become more critical than ever before. Zero-Knowledge Proofs offer a powerful solution for safeguarding sensitive data by allowing us to prove that we know something without revealing what it is that we know. While still in their early stages of development, ZKPs are already being implemented by businesses and organizations across a variety of industries — with even more adoption expected in the years to come.

Collaborate with us

Elusiv is a compliance-in-mind Zero-Knowledge protocol for privately sending and receiving SOL or SPL tokens on the Solana blockchain. Furthermore, we propose Elusiv VMs, an extension of Elusiv, to enable more rapid development of solutions leveraging more general ZK circuits. If this problem space resonates with you — we’d love to have you involved — send us an email at hello@elusiv.io. Keep up to date by joining our Discord and following us on Twitter.