I said previously: "No tech from blockchain dates later than 2001. Crypto added nothing." https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/115810916143765604

Both here and on bsky, I got crypto fans saying "ah ah ah zero knowledge proofs!" These are indeed used in Monero (money laundering coin) and assorted failed money laundering coins!

However, claiming *credit* to cryptocurrency for ZKPs seems implausible.

I'm actually looking into this and I can find shit that isn't proposals for other failed money laundering coins.

Closest a proponent got was, well, cryptocurrency *funded* it. (No examples, just the blank statement.) EDIT: found! apparently some research funding from 0xPARC.org

So I'm asking those claiming cryptocurrency drove ZK proof research and uses: which papers, with which effects, and which resulting products, are you thinking of? With checkable details. Thanks.

EDIT: yes, I'm quite aware of the history of ZKPs thanks. I'm asking specifically about the claim by cryptocurrency fans.

@davidgerard@circumstances.run "First conceived in 1985": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof#History

Goldwasser and Micali won the Turing award in 2013 for their work on ZK: https://news.mit.edu/2013/goldwasser-and-micali-win-turing-award-0313

Goldwasser and Micali began collaborating as graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in 1980 while working with Professor Manuel Blum, who received his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees at MIT — and received the Turing Award in 1995. Blum would be the thesis advisor for both of them. While toying around with the idea of how to securely play a game of poker over the phone, they devised a scheme for encrypting and ensuring the security of single bits of data. From there, Goldwasser and Micali proved that their scheme could be scaled up to tackle much more complex problems, such as communications protocols and Internet transactions.

All this was being done long before cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency fans claiming credit for ZKP is absurd.

@abucci now you know that and i know that, also I went to that article looking for something that wasn't "Monero" and "failed Monero"

@davidgerard this is a good intro with historical background: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/11/27/zero-knowledge-proofs-illustrated-primer/

You can also ping @matthewdgreen on bsky

@buherator yes i know what they are. I'm asking about the cryptocurrency claim.

@davidgerard Zero knowledge proofs are in Chapter 5 of Applied Cryptography, which was published in 1996.

@jautero yes, I'm asking about the cryptocurrency claim.

@davidgerard Tangent: I had the impression that cryptocurrency provided something of a jobs program for cryptographers that wasn't university research, industrial conglomerates or international espionage.

In the same way that, say, Theranos provided jobs for a dozen or two biochemists or whoever.

The results are something else.

@mnordhoff it also caused said cryptographers to decay into coiners

there really isn't a lot of cryptographic meat on the non-privacy coins, and Monero has enough to get by to the point where all your actual problems are (b) side-channel attacks (the low volume means Monero users have been caught via volumes moved to get/sell the Monero) but mostly (a) screwing up, because crypto users near universally have the opsec of a rock. A dumb rock.