Summer of Protocols

Toyota’s manufacturing broke a paradox – cost vs. quality – they made things cheaper by making things better. 

Digital protocols do something similar. They break the tension between trust vs. transparency. You can have more trust with less interpersonal transparency, because with zero-knowledge proofs, you just need to provide evidence to the protocol, not other people. 

Think about how comfortable we are sharing information with Google and chachipiti compared to transacting with strangers. More information does mean better mutual outcomes, but we assume that we need more transparency to get there. 

People turned their nose up at Toyota… because it was paradoxical. It’s possible that ZKPs take off and everyone will look back and be like, “uh, doi”.

now that we have zkps, i like to believe that in a decade or less, we’d wonder why we ever risked sensitive leaks.