Reddit Posts
How Much More Private Can ZK Get? An Order of Magnitude
If DeFi is not casually providing you with financial services that were almost exclusive to the elites, it’s not DeFi
No matter how cool your L1 blockchain sounds, maybe don’t release it until you figure out scaling!
Ethereum is great but in its current form it has no chance of going mainstream without L2s
Ethereum is great but in its current form it has no chance of going mainstream without L2s
Polygon essentially invested in almost every possible scaling solution from ZK to Optimistic to PoS
Polygon essentially invested in almost every possible scaling solution from ZK to Optimistic to PoS
Although we are starting to see corporations and enterprises begin to adopt web3. Despite this there is still massive room for growth, what’s stopping massive enterprises from adopting web3?
Polygon Nightfall goes live on Mainnet - Optimistic-ZK L2 hybrid for Enterprises
Polygon Rolling Out 'Revolutionary' Hermez 2.0 ZK Rollup - CryptosRus
For those who are panicking about the future of crypto, you are only panicking about the future prices. The fundamentals are still intact. This leaked email by Sandeep Nail proves it
For those who are panicking about the future of crypto, you are only panicking about the future prices. The fundamentals are still intact. This leaked email by Sandeep Nail.
When it comes to zero knowledge proofs, how does it practically work in a private chain?
Optimism's airdrops are why I don't yet believe it is ready for user adoption or mass adoption for that matter.
Few drops of knowledge of ZK-Proof and future of blockchain applications.
Every single chain and technology NEEDS to have a bug bounty program. It's one of the best ways to improve your technologies security.
AMA with Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync: a zk rollup scaling protocol for Ethereum.
Polygon Announces New ZK-Proof-Based Identity Solution. A month after partnering with Adobe.
Polygon Announces New ZK-Proof-Based Identity Solution
What is your level of knowledge? I made different levels so you can know it
India's regressive crypto tax laws kick in from 1st April.. Monero P2P platforms are already seeing a boom
Loot On StarkNet: ZK-Rollups Enter Blockchain Gaming
Mentions
The bottleneck is political incentive, not verification. ZK can prove compliance, but adoption only happens when power agrees to give up discretion.
I'm not suggesting that people's input not be taken into account. I'm saying that people's input can be taken into account when creating the rule set. And then the rule set can be made machine readable and provably complied with through a ZK circuit that preserves the builder's privacy.
This is actually brilliant - you're targeting the real chokepoint instead of just slapping tokens on existing assets The ZK privacy angle is clutch too because nobody wants their building plans leaked to competitors. City gets compliance verification, architect keeps their IP, everyone wins Only concern is adoption - governments move slower than continental drift when it comes to new tech. How do you bootstrap this when most city planners probably still use fax machines?
Do you mean L2s? - The accountancy giant EY have built Nightfall, their own design of privacy focused L2 (https://blockchain.ey.com/technology) - Deutsche Bank have build Dama 2, a ZK rollup created as part of the *much* bigger international 'Project Guardian' (https://www.db.com/news/detail/20250618-dama-2-litepaper-institutional-blueprint-for-asset-tokenisation-and-servicing-on-ethereum-layer-2?language_id=1) - Robinhood are building an Ethereum L2 (https://financefeeds.com/robinhood-head-of-crypto-explains-strategic-preference-for-ethereum-l2-scaling/) etc etc
Well I don’t leverage. When I started in Aug I just dove into learning candle stick patters and how best to predict and read them. Market psychology. Depending on your goals and how much you have to start with. But best advice I had got in the beginning cuz I didn’t start with a lot. Was trade low market caps they will bring the highest and fastest return. But do you research and then recon them bad boys and make sure you have the trading volume that equals the volatility. Apparently ppl tell me I’m a swing day trader? I have my few projects I like and support and believe in the mission. Then when I get up in the morning immediately pull up news cmc crypto bubbles an start searching for the coins I believe I can make some money with for the day. And then there’s days like lately. I had to just dump and reallocated all my shit into ETH SOL TAO SQD. Only had $1400 into BTC my avg buy in was 87,000 and this was like when it was in the 90’s and I just saw it falling so I pulled the trigger and I’m happy I dad. I wanted to get a whole ETH an I got it!! Eth and Sol are gonna burst next for sure. Then I mean TAO is TAO. SQD being a data infrastructure running off ZK proofs that’s going to explode aswell and it’s a 73.27M market cap!!!!
If you don't think it's fun then you are not going to put in the research needed to find opportunities. But if you are just looking for a tip for an area to look into - Zero Knowledge Proofs - you can see the teams working on block proofs for Ethereum at https://ethproofs.org/teams - maybe some of them might be worth a bit of research...? If you don't know what 'Zero Knowledge' means or what it is for then, if you actually want to understand the tech I would suggest the ZK Whiteboard Sessions: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj80z0cJm8QErn3akRcqvxUsyXWC81OGq That series will give you a decent background to let you dig into the different groups and methods being worked on, certainly enough to help you avoid falling for bullshitters in the space and therefore have a better chance of picking a winner if you decide to invest in the field. Enjoy!
Unfortunately the corrupted US govt is here to control and deceive us like clockwork just like how they are being controlled. Alot of US politicians have dual citizenship and pledge allegiance to another country if y’all didnt know. This is why privacy coins have already been a hot topic and will continue to be. Please don’t not call me antisemitic this is truth and reality that all US infrastructure is controlled for the gain of themselves and to the elites they send money to, to avoid getting blackmailed. Some notable relations in crypto: -Barry Silbert: Founder and CEO of Digital Currency Group (DCG), a major investment firm in the space. Charlie Shrem: Early Bitcoin entrepreneur, founder of BitInstant, and a key figure in Bitcoin's early days. -Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF): Founder of FTX, a major (though now defunct) crypto exchange, who has a Jewish background. -David Sacks: A prominent Jewish venture capitalist and PayPal COO, named "White House A.I. and Crypto Czar" for the Trump administration. -Rabbi Michael Caras (@thebitcoinrabbi): A Chabad rabbi who connects Bitcoin and Jewish law (halacha), bridging the two communities online. -ETH - Ethereum Co-founder Joseph Lubin, a Jew, previously worked in finance at Goldman Sachs. He single-handedly created ConsenSys, building MetaMask, Infura, these foundational tools for Ethereum. In simple terms: ETH is the 'water, electricity, and coal' of the crypto world. Regardless of whether it rises or falls, you still need to use it; it’s the legitimate child of the military. -WLD coin Founder Sam Altman, the big guy who previously worked at OpenAI, a Jew with an extraordinarily strong background. -Founder Eli Ben-Sasson, one of the pioneers of Zcash's zero-knowledge proofs, from Israel, really knowledgeable in cryptography. STRK is an L2 project, specializing in ZK technology, using mathematical methods that allow you to verify without revealing details. -Solana Founder Anatoly, previously an engineer working on chips at Qualcomm. The investor lineup is very fierce: Multicoin, A16z, and David Sacks (a Jew), one of the PayPal Mafia. -XRP - Ripple Founders Chris Larsen and Jed McCaleb, with a lot of early money from the old financial sector, including funds like A16z. Although the SEC has been chasing lawsuits for two years, it just won't die. Why? Because there are people backing it up, it's really not something a regular small project can compare with. -Donald J Trump The current US President has expressed strong support and took significant actions solidifying the U.S.-Israel relationship, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moving the U.S. Embassy, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, increasing military aid, and challenging Iran, fulfilling campaign promises that demonstrated deep commitment to Israel's security and interests.
Ahh, I didn’t realize they had made that much progress, although I knew they were working on ZK rollups for a while. The big issue I remember was the network congestion and high fees every time a big event was occurring. Are L2s still necessary or is L1 (ETH) all that’s needed at this point?
Trails (from Sequence) is an intent-based orchestration layer that simplifies cross-chain payments with 1-click experiences that handles the routing of any token/wallet/chain without users managing bridges or swaps. It complements Agglayer's pessimistic proof approach beautifully: Agglayer provides the secure, unified settlement foundation, treating chains "pessimistically" to guarantee no over-withdrawals via ZK proofs and the unified bridge, while Trails adds user-friendly, high-conversion orchestration on top making the whole flow invisible and reliable. We're integrating them to accelerate OMS. Agglayer ensures cryptographic safety and liquidity unification across ecosystems while Trails enhances real-world payment UX. This keeps everything open while delivering the best of both worlds.
Congrats to Monero from a BitcoinCasher. XMR is one of the few cryptocurrency projects with a focus on utility. But watch out, because BCH will be able to support ring signatures and ZK privacy schemes after the May LAYLA upgrade.
Feels like a watchlist project for now. Small exposure if you believe in ZK and modular narratives, but conviction probably depends on seeing real usage, developer traction, or integrations beyond early experiments.
**Summary:** * Ethereum is integrating zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs directly into its base layer, moving beyond external rollups. * The goal is to use native zkEVM to verify transactions via compact proofs, reducing computation and data exposure. * ZK technology is now a midterm roadmap priority, with plans for gradual adoption across the stack. * This shift aims to enhance security, scalability, and privacy while preserving Ethereum’s core principles. * Recent technical advances have made ZK systems practical for mainnet integration.
tldr; Ethereum is advancing its roadmap to integrate zero-knowledge proofs (ZK proofs) into its base layer, aiming to enhance verification while minimizing data exposure. This technology, initially academic, is now part of active development plans due to recent breakthroughs. ZK proofs allow secure verification without revealing sensitive data. Ethereum's adoption began with zk-rollups in 2021, and plans now include a native zkEVM for compact cryptographic proofs. These upgrades aim to improve scalability and security while maintaining Ethereum's core principles. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
Fun fact Silvio Micali literally invented zero knowledge proofs : What Are ZK Rollups? The Future of Smart Contract Blockchains - Blockworks https://share.google/foJd1GOlMYQF8BMpt
Technologies that will still be used a decade from now: * Data availability and security (Ethereum) * Cross-chain interoperability (Chainlink) * ZK privacy for contract data (Midnight) These technologies will be around, but I make no guarantees about their price movement.
So, fair point, but hiring thousands of people to find an Orb in person is way more expensive than just running a script from a basement. It’s not perfect, but it makes botting a lot harder. The "total control" part is the real scary bit, though, I'm just hoping the ZK-proofs actually keep the data private like they claim. Still a huge gamble...
It has always been a variation of homomorphic encryption, ZK, and TEE powering privacy protocols. Some use a combination of the two, e.g., encryption for confidentiality and ZK for verifiability/integrity. A lot of times, for compliance, these "privacy-oriented" chains use "viewing keys" to allow selective disclosure. These shit are stuff back in 2022. The tech has improved for better scale, aka ZK compute advancement. But the ideas are hardly novel. I am still flabbergasted by how VC+dev communism spun this old ordeal as something "novel" or the last "100X" improvement.
"Scam" implies fraud. This is an open-source protocol using ZK proofs. The code is public, the mechanism is transparent. You not understanding how something works doesn't mean it's scam. The trust issue you're worried about is exactly what the ZK proofs solve, neither party needs to trust each other. Not saying it's risk-free (smart contract bugs, liquidity issues, etc. are always possible), but "scam" implies deliberate fraud, which this isn't. Maybe try understanding how something works before calling it fraud.
Space and Time (SXT) it’s backed by Microsoft and is teamed up with Chainlink ….it launched only 8 months ago and is current at .0273 cents a coin with a market cap of 38 million. Its utility is a 1st if it’s kind. Its a decentralized data platform and data blockchain that provides a verifiable, tamperproof data warehouse for Web3, bridging traditional data with blockchain, using its unique "Proof of SQL" technology (a ZK coprocessor) to let smart contracts run complex SQL queries on large datasets, proving the results cryptographically for trustless verification. It helps developers build data-intensive dApps by making blockchain and off-chain data. It will make many super wealthy in the coming years
I am not aware Litecoin implemented ZK proofs and privacy features. Just google now MimbleWimble stuff 🤔😄 Ok, it is just obfuscation. Anyway it seems “privacy features” are hyped and became the 2026+ narrative for crypto. There are more attempts to address/solve it, so let´s see. My bet is the above mention.
Grvt has been leaning hard into ZK and infra stuff instead of meme farming, so it’s good they are leading the charge with this. Education is boring but necessary.
Neither because they don't have a good way to bridge between EVM network to their network without going through an exchange and you probably have to KYC. If you have a non-KYC way to switch assets then go for that. This method involves EVM network with ZK bridges to a ZKP network (Manta). meaning when you use the EVM bridge the target wallet shouldn't have any connection to your wallet. However, I think people can still guess based on the transaction amount and time of transfer. That was why Tornado Cash had people deposit same amount like 0.1 ETH or 1 ETH to make it harder to guess. But people depositing a lot of ETH will make it much easier to guess. You may need another layer of privacy on top of using a ZK network/ZK bridge. Any Tornado Cash clone is as good as the amount of users that uses it. For a small amount I probably wouldn't worry too much. It's more like if people somehow want to make private a large amount of transfer they need more layers of privacy.
Pedersen commitments only hide amounts. They were never meant to provide full graph or behavioral privacy. Most of the leaks you’re describing (co-spend analysis, timing, transaction structure) come from UTXO topology and wallet behavior, not from Pedersen itself. That’s a system-level tradeoff, not a primitive being “DOA.” Saying “any crypto using Pedersen is dead” is like saying TLS is broken because metadata exists. True in a narrow sense, but misleading in practice. Also, this critique largely doesn’t apply to chains like Algorand at all. Algorand isn’t trying to implement private cash at L1 with Pedersen commitments. The base layer is intentionally transparent and optimized for finality and verification; privacy is handled at the application layer via ZK proofs where you can precisely control what’s hidden and what’s provable. Different goals, different architectures. Treating one design’s tradeoffs as a universal failure just muddies the discussion.
Kaspa's Kasplex zkEVM Layer 2 mainnet has been live since August 2025, providing full EVM compatibility that allows Ethereum developers to deploy dApps, DeFi protocols, and tokens while benefiting from Kaspa's high-throughput PoW sequencing, low-latency settlement, and native $KAS gas. Another notable L2 effort, Igra Labs, is advancing rapidly with its EVM-compatible based ZK rollup—its closed mainnet is scheduled to launch on January 15, 2026, further expanding options for programmable applications on Kaspa. On Layer 1, development continues on vProgs (verifiable programs): a native ZK framework for off-chain computation with on-chain verification, designed to enable modular, sovereign, and atomically composable applications without bloating the base layer or requiring bridges. With the upcoming DAGKnight consensus upgrade expected in Q1 2026 to deliver sub-second finality and enhanced security, Kaspa is building a robust dual-layer architecture that combines proven L2 solutions today with innovative L1 programmability ahead.
I qoute from this article: “The trilemma has been solved — not on paper, but with live running code, of which one half (data availability sampling) is on mainnet today, and the other half (ZK-EVMs) is production-quality on performance today — safety is what remains.” TL;DR: Ethereum did NOT solve the trilemma, they still need to tackle security, so this post is nothing but air.
He's close in that he's realized identity solves the Sybil problem. ZK signals, yes. But his architecture has mandates about storage, and the EVM is prone to the halting problem. Vector ZK signals will be produced by individuals, stored by individuals, and validated by individuals.
tldr; Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced that the integration of ZK-EVMs and PeerDAS has resolved the blockchain's scalability issues, enabling high data throughput while maintaining decentralization. He described this as solving the 'Blockchain Trilemma' with live code. However, full security hardening will take years, with ZK-EVMs expected to become the primary validation method between 2027 and 2030. Incremental upgrades, including increased gas limits and distributed block building, are planned to enhance the network's efficiency and security. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
* It hasany great use cases, but utility doesn't necessarily translate to price goes up * Tons of token unlocks for the next year * Possibly overpriced * It takes at least half a decade for traditional infrastructure to re-architecture itself to be able to use ZK protocols, and another half a decade for it to grow. Whichever traditional platforms migrate to Midnight won't start affecting its price until a decade later.
It's a .eth maxi. Ivory tower stance is norm. Many drank the koolaid of the L2 industrial complex instead of simply admitting not focusing on scaling Ethereum was the wrong decision. ZK alone does not fix this mess. Consensus is beginning to shift as more talent has left EF. Ethereum will likely go back to scaling the L1 for market demand, and deliver on initial promises. Maybe it doesn't, and remains digital silver. Not what I would prefer.
Few words with a technical call-out that does nothing to dismiss all the problems created from using L2s as an L1 replacement. Mentioned issues still exist. More misleading marketing, because most have no idea how to push back. Intellectually dishonest. ZK does not solve mention criticisms. Scale Ethereum main state. Encourage execution rev to ETH stakers. Ship ZK on Ethereum. A step in right direction. Does not fix problems of separate states. Just scales all the downsides of L2s as L1 replacement.
bro at least flesh out some semblance of a thought rather than just saying "you don't understand ZK". All a comment like this does is make me think *you* don't understand what ZK is, otherwise you could've just made your point instead of feigning superiority.
This is a lot of words to say you don’t understand ZK
Yes and it uses ZK proofs 🤣🤣🤣
With a powerful enough virtual machine, you stop having to do hard fork upgrades for every new feature. That's reasonable ossification. BCH is getting loops and functions next year, making it not just computationally equivalent to ETH, but also more byte efficient. That means Zero Knowledge privacy techniques can be efficiently implemented just using BitcoinCash script, and so can post-quantum signature schemes. No ZK upgrade, or quantum upgrade. Just a powerful scripting environment.
Nobody cares for ZK, it's just a buzzword with no substance. ZkSync blockchain is the evidence.
Hey devs, Sharing Allianza – open-source bridgeless interop protocol with ZK proofs. No custody, no wrapped tokens – native transfers direct. Live on testnet: Bitcoin ↔ Polygon/Ethereum/Solana bidirectional. Latest Bitcoin → Ethereum tx: https://sepolia.etherscan.io/tx/0x67a984d6e156dc2de1f783ffb1b1a6ed7c0a5ff1ca55f9af9c447fa30b642fba Quantum-safe with QRS-3 hybrid signatures. Test free: https://testnet.allianza.tech Repo: https://github.com/allianzatech/blockchainallianza Feedback on design, security, scaling or new chains welcome. PRs open! Thanks!
> The viable hedge against bitcoin. This is a great thesis from Messari Its thesis is entirely orthogonal to BTC. BTC is built around a social lindy meme as a SoV. It is hard to co-opt because you need to develop a lindy holder base over time. ZEC's entire thesis is that it's a PoW chain with ZK-proofs for privacy. ZK, homomorphic encryptions, and TEE services practically enable any chain to have privacy for its native assets. Since ZEC isn't private by default, you don't get any advantage from transferring off-ramp from a CEX to your hardware wallet over a smart contract chain with optional privacy. > It is crypto's best bet that AI will make privacy valuable. In that case, you would want to bet on a smart contract platform with private services. > It's a hedge against Bitcoin's upgrade path in regards to quantum. There is no plan for Satoshi's coins, either these will be dumped on the market or the bitcoin social contract will be broken. ETH will get a quantum upgrade, too. Most top smart contract platforms will do. There is no differentiating angle for ZEC. The reality is, most old chains will have lost keys with non-empty balances. I can bet it is true for ZEC, too. If that is your worry, you should bet on newer chains, not dinos like ZEC. > 8 years of fair distribution There is a HUGE GRAVEYARD of dead old PoW tokens. This is not saying much. Also, CT is now filled with former pumpfun shillers who have recently been converted into ZEC peddlers. The current distribution has changed hands a lot after it pulled 10X+. You have a lot more mercenaries than missionaries holding that token now. > Zcash founders like Zooko were working on private money before Satoshi. This story is starting to be told by genzcash on X etc. Zcash has moral authority other coins don't have. WTF? That is like desperately grasping for straws now. > Fair PoW distribution is valuable I only agree to the initial distribution. But it doesn't matter much later on. Otherwise, you won't see smart contract platforms overtaking most dead PoW chains you don't even know. The general argument for PoW is, you don't need to be close to big capital to access the token. This is not true as the chain hash scales up with ASIC investments. Generally, PoW with a limited supply faces the security budget issue. Only trading-related app chains like Hyperliquid have proven able to earn enough to pay their validators without inflation. BTC has a chance to overcome this problem because it has a massive institutional backing. > Monero has bad tech and it's been exposed. It is all hearsay from a single incident in Japan, with no concrete evidence. The entire argument against Monero has been that it uses too few dummy accounts. It is still not mathematically clear why it is enough to compromise identity. I am willing to hear concrete mathematical proof on how this can lead to unraveling identities. All this argument about machine learning blah blah can expose Monero blah blah sounds like crypto AI hocus pocus like "Solana discovered AGI via its memecoins". **Give a concrete probabilistic argument with graph theory!** On the other hand, Monero is set to receive an upgrade to increase the number of dummy accounts.
ZK proofs already exist on Ethereum, so I'm wondering what the big difference is? Why is Midnight "a privacy layer for BTC and XRP" moreso than Ethereum? Why is it more attractive to use Midnight? How does the security compare? Anything cross chain kinda sucks cause it usually involves bridges and where tens of billions of dollars are securing BTC and hundreds of billions are securing Ethereum, how much is securing Midnight?
There are several really cool things about Midnight: 1. It was originally an Ethereum project. I don't know the history of how it eventually became aligned with Cardano. 1. It offers selective/programmable privacy. Most smart contract blockchains only have public data/state. Midnight smart contracts can have both public and private data. They can also selectively reveal transformed data without needing to revealing all of the private data using ZK proofs. It provides for interesting use cases 1. Can be used to reveal whether a person satisfies financial conditions for a loan without revealing the person's financial data 1. Allows a person to vote without revealing the person's vote or identity 1. Allows for people to reveal selective health information without revealing the full health record or the identity of the person 1. They emulated something similar to Tron's Bandwidth/Energy model for gas. Instead of using NIGHT tokens directly as gas, the NIGHT token generates DUST daily that can be used as gas without consuming NIGHT.
Have u seen the code of these L2's? Like ZK or SEI. They are pure joke. They say: we deliver enterprise level solutions, you open the code and what you see is .unwrap() everywhere. Lol no, that's not enterprise level. Not even a prod level. Why bother with them.
The jump from ZK-proofs to Garbled Circuits is the most interesting part of this for me. ZK is great for "proving" you have the money, but GC is a different beast for actually computing over private data without ever decrypting it.
>The coming year is set to be crucial for Ethereum scaling. In 2026, the Glamsterdam fork will bring perfect parallel processing to the chain and ratchet up the gas limit to 200 million, up from 60 million today. A significant number of validators will switch over from reexecuting transactions to verifying zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs instead. This sets the Ethereum layer 1 on a path to scale up to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS) and potentially beyond, though that target won’t be hit in 2026. Sounds very good.
Or something like Stacks STX. They are going to be implementing ZK that finalizes into Bitcoin basically receiving Bitcoin stamp without revealing the ZK
From my (possibly poor) understanding, ZK cannot settle as fast as LN. Paying a taxi ride or grocery shopping takes just a few seconds. I also believe with LN I'm paying lower fees than I would with ZK. Am I wrong?
Even though in IT terms cryptos has been around for ages, in evolutionary terms we're still at a very early stage. A few simple examples: - the economic models so far are limited to the sustainability of each project's ecosystem, not the economy of entire nations, also because most developers don't have economic expertise and those who do don't have much IT competences.... - Many aspects are still to be defined, e.g. you understand well that to be currencies of the physical world, there needs to be a certain recoverability of funds because if, for example, someone has an accident and loses his/her memory, no longer knowing where he/she hid a seed phrase, it's unthinkable that no recover what is theirs could exists. There needs to be a way for "the network" recognising the legitimacy of a claim, to act by consensus to destroy lost sources and generate new ones. There needs to be the ability to mark a transaction as "under duress" to again, by consensus, recover it if one suffers a theft. To date, no crypto has solutions for these basic problems yet. - Realistic TPS are needed. Solana is currently the only one that could be used to pay for a coffee at a café, otherwise you go to Lightning (with its problems) or layer 2 with its own. Various cryptos claim they can scale and maybe it's true, but it's theory so far. Digital identity will have to be part of blockchains like ZK proofs, so notarial acts and other contracts from the physical world will be smart contracts. Otherwise, a democracy in code must be created where the functioning of a society is guaranteed by the code itself, the rules as code, and it must be able to evolve, taking into account that nothing is forever. These are all aspects where a great deal remains to be developed and even theorised about how it can be done. So every crypto presents its general recipe and some particular recipes, but the road is still very long and it is more necessary than ever to reach levels of being current currencies.
Hedera offers privacy features that can make HBAR-based activity private when you use the right tools (HashSpheres, ZK proofs, encrypted memos, confidential compute, etc.).
Are you living under a Rock? Here are some of the major advancement; Ethereum Smart Contracts, Rise of Decentralized Finance (DeFi), Layer 2 Scaling (2020–2024), Stablecoin Expansion, Proof-of-Stake Revolution (2020–2023), Cross-Chain & Interoperability (2020–2024), Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) (2020–2025), Institutional Adoption (ETFs), Real-World Asset Tokenization (2023–2025), Solana’s High-Performance Chain (2019–2025), Crypto Gaming Boom (2021–2025), Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK tech), Regulatory Frameworks Worldwide
I think Midnight has the edge though on true regulatory risks with privacy coins : https://midnight.network/ tldr; Midnight is a Layer 1 blockchain developed by IOG (Cardano's core team), engineered for compliant, programmable privacy via its "Rational Privacy" model. It uses a dual-token system (NIGHT for governance/security, DUST for private, non-transferable transaction fees) to eliminate regulatory risks associated with standard privacy coins. The platform enables selective disclosure via ZKPs and utilizes Compact (a TypeScript-based language) for ZK smart contracts, making it the dedicated privacy backbone for the Cardano ecosystem and enterprise use cases.
Stablecoin routing makes sense but implementation details matter more than the pitch. The core value is just token swapping with payment abstraction, which DEX aggregators already do. Question is whether enterprise packaging creates real differentiation. Privacy for B2B payments is actually useful. Companies don't want every payroll transaction or vendor payment publicly visible. Competitors can analyze transaction patterns and supplier relationships from on-chain data. ZK privacy solves a real problem for enterprise payments. Our clients doing cross-border stablecoin payments constantly hit token mismatches. Sender has USDC on Polygon, recipient wants USDT on Arbitrum. Current flow needs multiple swaps and bridges adding fees and failure points. Router abstraction fixes this. The middleware concern is valid though. Adding another layer creates new dependencies. If AnomaPay goes down or has liquidity issues, payments fail. Enterprises hate dependencies on unproven infrastructure for critical flows. Fee abstraction is table stakes for enterprise adoption. Non-crypto users don't understand gas tokens. Deducting everything from payment amount in stablecoin terms removes massive onboarding friction. Devnet status is concerning for serious evaluation. Until mainnet with real liquidity and proven reliability, it's vaporware. Lots of projects have great whitepapers and terrible execution. Practical barrier: most enterprises doing stablecoin payments are still figuring out basic treasury and compliance. Adding privacy layers complicates legal and accounting workflows. Market might be smaller than the pitch suggests. Honest take: routing concept is solid and privacy has enterprise value, but succeeding requires solving liquidity, reliability, and compliance challenges way harder than the technical implementation. Watch for mainnet usage and enterprise case studies, not devnet announcements.
> layer 2 networks continue to expand The only 'real' Bitcoin L2 (as in a layer that is actually secured by the L1) is Lightning, and that has been reducing in capacity over time... the amount of Bitcoin that was using Lightning dropped by about 30% between August 2024 and August 2025: https://news.bitcoin.com/data-shows-sustained-slide-in-lightning-network-capacity-channels-through-2025/ It seems intentionally midleading to use a phrase like "continue to expand" when it is doing the opposite... There are of course other chains that claim to be 'L2s' and often use phrases that sound plausible like 'ZK rollup'... but as far as I can tell all of these are just variations of sidechains/commit chains... not actually using Bitcoin L1's security but instead they are just completely seperate networks that post commits to Bitcoin, presumably to trick non-technical Bitcoin maxis into supporting them! They are equivalent to the relationship between Gnosis or Polygon with Ethereum L1... tangentally linked but not in the ways which actually count. > I am not the delusional one here. I never used that term, and I wasn't replying to you.
> Reliance on Layer-2s for scaling is still unhealthy. Why? Rollups settle to Ethereum L1 and use blobs on Ethereum L1 for their data availability. Are you maybe just thinking that 'L2' means sidechain? If so then you have very much misunderstood the term. As an example of the difference, a user with assets on a rollup can always exit directly back to the L1 just by making a transaction on the L1, a feature sometimes referred to as an escape hatch. This works even if the rollup operators turn evil and censor all transactions on the L2 or even shut it down completely... and this isn't just theoretical, an early ZK rollup called dYdX shut down and everyone who hadn't bridged back to Ethereum then had to use the escape hatch to withdraw. It's also silly to pretend that L2s have not been the plan and that they are just a stop-gap when sharding is what was intended... the Rollup Centric Roadmap was published over 5 years ago now and has been recognized as a better way to scale than the old ideas about L1 shards. Also, tonight's upgrade does include a type of sharding, Peer Data Availability Sharding (PeerDAS), which will allow up to 8x more throughput to be processed by rollups (so over 200,000 TPS)... the limit will be demand for transactions rather than network capacity. And finally: > The real TPS of Etheruem still remains 15 per second. Ethereum L1 is processing about 25 TPS at the moment and the peak today was 57 TPS... all time high was 136 TPS... so let's not pretend the limit is 15 huh? https://www.growthepie.com/chains/ethereum
It's due to Lighter L2. I've never heard of it before. It's a ZK perpetuals DEX. That single L2 is producing as many transactions as the rest of the L2s combined. I have no idea how a DEX even uses 10k TPS, or even 1k TPS.
Meaningless statement. Want to see a decent degree of financial privacy for trading and balances across all the most used things in Web3. Leveraging ZK will help bring us there. Just need to move fast. Not asking for or asserting opinions on any sht coin or the idea that something is not private if someone like the DEA can make semi plausible assumptions while trying to track illicit funds. Any degree of privacy is better than the 0 privacy the majority of web3 runs on. An original goal of every major chain, but was pushed back due to regulatory fear.
Yer there will be a lot more. It never made sense. Good tech, but there more utility out there with programmability and ZK proofs.
The real gem on ZK proofs was always Hush's no-opt sapling chain. This whole absurd campaign promoting Zcash as a privacy savior has been utter nonsense.
> I think privacy and compliance is going to be a huge factor in the choice Why do you think this? What kinds of privacy and/or compliance do you believe would be possible on a private L1 vs an L2? One of the biggest accountancy institutions in the world (EY) maintain the OS resources for Nightfall, a ZK based protocol designed and built specifically for financial institutions who want a 'plug-and-play' solution for privacy on rollups they deploy to Ethereum. https://www.ey.com/en_gl/newsroom/2025/04/ey-upgrades-nightfall-a-zero-knowledge-roll-up-enabling-private-transactions-on-the-ethereum-blockchain As far as regulatory compliance, are you aware of Project Guardian, the overarching group of which [Deutsche Bank's L2 (Memento)](https://gbaglobal.org/blog/2025/01/15/deutsche-bank-enters-l2-with-zksync-is-your-institution-ready-yet/) and a range of other Ethereum projects by [BNY](https://www.bny.com/corporate/global/en/about-us/newsroom/press-release/bny-expands-digital-asset-platform-with-launch-of-innovative-on-chain-offering.html), [Citi](https://www.lfdecentralizedtrust.org/case-studies/citi-transforms-transaction-banking-services-with-besu), [DBS](https://www.dbs.com/newsroom/DBS_expands_blockchain_capabilities_by_tokenising_and_distributing_structured_notes), [Fidelity](https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/03/22/fidelity-files-for-onchain-u-s-treasury-fund-joining-the-asset-tokenization-race), [J.P. Morgan](https://archive.fo/IR99q) etc? As well as these financial services companies, there are also plenty of governmental regulators involved such as the Monetary Authority of Singapore (who head the project), the UK's Financial Conduct Authority, Japan's Financial Services Agency, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank... https://www.mas.gov.sg/-/media/mas-media-library/news/media-releases/2024/annex-a--list-of-participants-in-project-guardian-industry-group.pdf So really I'm not sure there is a reality based argument that regulatory compliance or privacy requirements favours private L1s over Ethereum based L2s. Are there any other reasons you can think of that an entity could have for building and running their own L1 chain rather than tapping into the Ethereum ecosystem?
You are asking the right questions, but do not expect rational answers from Bitcoin maxies :) I also had some btc, I mean minor amount, it was already expensive back in 2021. I sold with 100% yield so it kind of worked for me. However it is like going to Las Vegas, win a poker or roulete game and say - it worked for me LOL In terms of technical aspects Bitcoin got obsolete technology and the fact that “tech folks” do not care about obsolete technology must be a red flag for everyone, a kind of paradox. How is that possible? It is like shipping Windows 1 and telling everyone it is great and does not need to evolve much, it is perfect piece of SW!! Obviously this is funny comparison, so what is that factor? Well, bitcoin as technology remains the same and impractical. All those usual arguments of bitcoiners are weak and false, as they use arguments of general crypto currency - they still argument as if there was only Bitcoin out there. Obviously you can send money to different country via dozens of other crypto currencies etc. But the ultimate factor for BTC is that some folks created funny anti-system narratives (later replaced with orthogonal digital gold narratives), and created sort of religion on top of technology. That is where faith comes from - it is pretty weird to me, as a tech guy, to see other tech guys who fall to worshipping a technology and making weird claims comparable to african shamans and disregarding other more advanced technology (sh*tcoins). I still respect Bitcoin as the first project, a referential and working implementation. But in sw you need to evolve and evolve fast. Where are smart contracts which are to be the future? Privacy and ZK stuff? Throughput? I highly recommend some books on this like “Hijacking Bitcoin” where it is explained in better terms. Also the fact that Satoshi does not want to be identified and linked with Bitcoin - comment it, explain it, evolve it, that speaks for itself. In my opinion he/they know(s) that they just ignited a whole new industry, layed those foundations and showed the path to follow … but there are already others who walk that path better and carry the decentralization ethos without fallbacking to stupid “digital gold” narratives and typical Wallstreet greed demonstrated by Saylor and others. While other platforms start offering the real use soon, from Bitcoin you hear only price speculations and narratives for newcomers - buy, buy, buy (we need you to buy!) 🤑
tldr; Vitalik Buterin advocates for implementing Zero Knowledge (ZK) proofs on Ethereum to enable private account abstraction, allowing users to control funds without revealing wallet addresses. He emphasizes privacy as a mandatory feature for Ethereum, aiming to meet regulatory constraints and enhance competitiveness. This privacy-centric approach could drive mainstream adoption, increase liquidity, and make Ethereum more competitive against emerging blockchain networks. Institutions are already exploring private Ethereum Virtual Machines for compliance. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
this is exactly why ecosystems like Oasis have been investing early in advanced cryptography (TEE, ZK, FHE) and researching post-quantum–resistant designs. The shift he’s calling for is already underway there — privacy + security as a first-class priority, not an afterthought.
>Bitcoin >u/Bitcoin >Bitcoin is an open source censorship-resistant peer-to-peer immutable network. Trackable digital gold. Don't trust; verify. Not your keys; not your coins. >[https://x.com/Bitcoin](https://x.com/Bitcoin) So Bitcoin's strength now is that it can be traced by the government?! Meanwhile Vitalik is pursuing more privacy options for Ethereum. [https://www.theblock.co/post/379149/vitalik-buterin-unveils-kohaku-privacy-focused-framework-ethereum](https://www.theblock.co/post/379149/vitalik-buterin-unveils-kohaku-privacy-focused-framework-ethereum) >***Vitalik Buterin unveils Kohaku, a privacy-focused framework for Ethereum*** >*Kohaku is an open-source initiative to enhance onchain privacy and security. It offers a modular framework of primitives to allow developers to build secure, privacy-focused wallets without relying on centralized third parties, and may evolve to include tools like mixnets for network-level anonymity and ZK-powered browsers.* And then there’s the quantum-computing risk. Bitcoin is ossified, but even it will eventually have to change - and that’s when people will realize the protocol isn’t some untouchable monolith, but a codebase updated by a handful of developers. On top of that, the block reward keeps halving every four years. You don’t control miners, and you can’t force them to keep securing the network if the economics stop making sense. A lot of them have already pivoted to AI data-centers because Bitcoin mining no longer pays their bills. Power and infrastructure costs keep rising, while transaction fees still contribute less than 1% of their revenue. BTC was about $58.6k four years ago. It isn’t even 2× that today - and that’s before factoring in inflation, which has eaten into miner margins even further. For miners to stay ahead of rising costs and shrinking block rewards, Bitcoin’s price has to keep more than doubling every cycle. That’s a tall order. [https://www.ccn.com/news/crypto/bitfarms-dumps-bitcoin-mining-all-in-ai-as-profitability-drops/](https://www.ccn.com/news/crypto/bitfarms-dumps-bitcoin-mining-all-in-ai-as-profitability-drops/) >***Bitfarms Dumps Bitcoin To Go All-In on AI as Crypto Mining Profitability Drops*** >*Bitfarms Ltd., one of North America’s long-standing* [*Bitcoin (BTC) mining firms*](https://www.ccn.com/news/crypto/bitcoin-mining-crisis-major-firms-abandon-crypto-for-ai-and-hpc/)*, is officially exiting the business that built it.* >*The Toronto-based company announced it will wind down Bitcoin mining operations over the next two years and convert its facilities into* [*infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI) a*](https://www.ccn.com/opinion/technology/data-center-capacity-continued-growth-ai/)*nd high-performance computing (HPC).* [https://coincentral.com/bitcoin-mining-faces-growing-challenges-warns-mara-ceo-fred-thiel/](https://coincentral.com/bitcoin-mining-faces-growing-challenges-warns-mara-ceo-fred-thiel/) >***Bitcoin Mining Faces Growing Challenges, Warns MARA CEO Fred Thiel*** >*The Bitcoin mining industry is entering a tough phase, with increasing competition and shrinking profit margins. Fred Thiel, CEO of MARA Holdings (MARA), highlighted these issues in an interview with CoinDesk, emphasizing the intensifying difficulties miners are facing. Thiel warned that as more participants enter the market, profitability for many will continue to decline, with energy costs determining the threshold for survival.*
I think it's likely Zooko IS Satashi, I mean he's on record trying to make a decentralized money much earlier and was the first to blog about BTC. Way too much of a coincidence, I respect him leaving it behind and starting fresh without exposing who he is and using it as marketing for zec But alas, people know and that coupled with zec pioneering and now integrating ZK in. Battle tested way helps explain the recent explosion.
tldr; Uniswap has introduced Continuous Clearing Auctions (CCA) on Ethereum's Uniswap v4, enabling transparent, on-chain token sales with market-driven pricing and automatic liquidity bootstrapping. CCA eliminates off-chain deals, ensuring equitable access and fair allocation. The inaugural sale is for Aztec Network's AZTEC token, featuring privacy-focused tools like ZK Passport for compliance. CCA aims to revive the inclusive spirit of 2017 ICOs while addressing their flaws, offering a new standard for token launches in DeFi. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
We’re starting to get industry and government waking up. When the solutions can both be decentralised and abide by KYC, industry will come to crypto. You can only do that with ZK, which is starting to get traction. But what you need is selective disclosure and programmability for privacy. Enter Midnight. They want to be the privacy layer for dApps. Under and government will only get on board in a big way if ZK is done properly. Take for instance, being able to verify a wallet is owned by 1. A voter who is registered to vote. 2. In country X. If you can have certainty about that. Then you can also do other verification required for commerce.
From timing wise, the ZEC pump coincided with its Tachyon upgrade. Most of the market seems extremely confused on what is what. Some ZEC advocates are saying it is because of anticipating of “upcoming” ZEC halving - an event happened last year, rofl. Some are saying it is because of ZEC is seeing a surge of adoption - very weird argument when you realize it processes fewer tx than the fading away Cosmos hub. The gist of the Tachyon upgrade is scaling its ZK txs tps in the shielded pool. But I have never seen the market pump a tech upgrade like this without the follow up metric to show real adoption. It is seems like a very weird outlier.
The money that is exiting BTC, ETH, SOL, Major Alts, and Shitcoins but not landing back in USDC/USDT is going into the ZK/Privacy infrastructure. Zero Knowledge like ZCash, ZKsnarks (ETH), STARK, Monero e.t.c. It is a macro trend and I think the liquidity heading there isn't moving back into BTC or the "surface market" anytime soon - they're expecting the bear market which may make the ZK assets ones that will rise as BTC bleeds.
I get what you mean — in cryptography, privacy is defined in binary terms: either data is revealed, or it is perfectly hidden. From a protocol-design perspective, that’s absolutely correct. But what I’m pointing at isn’t the cryptographic layer. It’s the user-facing visibility layer — the part that sits above the math. In real economic life, humans already operate with different levels of visibility: • transparent to the counterparty • opaque to outsiders • selectively revealable under legal or social context • locally visible but not permanently recorded Those are not “grey zones” in cryptography — they’re interaction models that sit on top of cryptographic primitives. Selective privacy is not a weakening of privacy. It’s a way of mapping real human use-cases onto digital systems, while still allowing strong auditability when necessary. Crypto tends to jump from physical cash → ZK systems, but there’s a middle layer that traditional finance captured well (relationship-based visibility, role-based access, context-based disclosure). What I’m interested in is whether public blockchains can support that layer too — not instead of binary privacy, but built on top of it.
That’s exactly the fascinating part — as ZK, FHE, and MPC mature, the limitation stops being computational and becomes philosophical. Once cryptography is strong enough to hide everything by default, the real question becomes: What should remain visible? And to whom? And under what social context? In other words, when the technology finally makes perfect invisibility possible, human societies will have to re-decide their own gradients of visibility. That’s where things get really interesting. Because markets where no one sees the order books… still need some actors to see something: • the counterparty • the auditor • the regulator • or the social relationship itself Otherwise we lose the relational aspect of economic life. So I don’t think the future debate will be “transparent vs. hidden.” It will be: “How much visibility does a human relationship require — and how much can technology gracefully step out of the way?” That feels like the real frontier to me.
While our current stack is Web2-based, we are structuring our data models to later integrate with decentralized data infrastructures such as Convex, which provides a high-performance consensus lattice for managing immutable global state. This allows us to define and enforce ownership and sharing policies directly on-chain without sacrificing speed or user experience. Data Flow: \- Capture: Raw motion data is captured by the V.1 wireless sensors. \- Encryption: The data is immediately encrypted locally on the user's device (similar to end-to-end messaging, as we mentioned), which is our primary layer of privacy preservation. \- Storage: Encrypted data is temporarily stored in our back end using standard security policies. \- Tokenization/Blockchain/ DLT Use: The blockchain & other DLT solutios will be used to establish immutability and ownership of the data pod (the container of the wellness data) and to enforce user-defined data-sharing policies, not to verify the contents of the raw data itself. Trust Assumptions: We currently capture data from the sensors but do not verify its accuracy at the point of capture. Unlike in other sectors (e.g., drug development), there is no immediate monetary incentive for tampering with wellness data. This reduces the primary attack vector. We are evaluating decentralized execution layers like Convex that use lattice technology and Convergent Proof of Stake (CPoS) to maintain trusted, convergent state without the bottlenecks of blockchains. This would allow us to cryptographically enforce user-defined data policies (access, anonymization, consent) while remaining composable with future ZK modules. We don’t plan to build privacy or data-policy mechanisms from scratch. Instead, we aim to leverage proven decentralized infrastructures to handle the global consensus layer, while we focus on secure local capture and user experience. This phased path allows us to evolve from Web2 privacy to fully cryptographically-verified, decentralized trust.
How exactly do you cryptographically verify motion and biometrics on-chain while preserving privacy. Describe the data flow, proofs used (e.g., ZK, attestations), and where trust assumptions remain.
Simplified explanation for the inept: Imagine you have a busy highway (Ethereum network + its scaling layers) and you want lots of cars (transactions) to pass through quickly, cheaply. You also have some new super-fast lanes (layer 2s + ZK-rollups) to help relieve congestion. Great. But then there’s a single toll booth (the modexp precompile) that’s super slow whenever certain kinds of cars use it. It doesn’t stop all cars, only some kinds of cars (those requiring that particular crypto operation). But because these kinds of operations are common in some of the new scaling / ZK stuff, the slow booth backs up traffic, slows everything down, and raises costs. So even though you’ve built the super-fast lanes, the toll booth still forces many cars into a jam or makes them pay a lot more. That means your overall highway throughput (transactions per second), or cost per car (gas/fees), gets worse than potential. And the new lanes don’t work as well or as cheaply as they could.
tldr; Ethereum is facing a critical scaling issue due to the 'modexp precompile,' an encryption algorithm created by Vitalik Buterin in 2017. This algorithm significantly slows down Zero Knowledge (ZK) rollups, which are essential for Ethereum's scalability. Vitalik admitted the algorithm was a mistake and proposed an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) to replace it with a more ZK-friendly solution. The current algorithm increases execution difficulty by up to 50 times, potentially causing consensus failures and negating the benefits of recent upgrades like Dencun and Pectra. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
A lot of things have a fixed supply. There are a lot of Bitcoin forks. For example, Litecoin also has a fixed supply and native privacy feature. Do you see that thing pumping? A lot of the newly converted "privacy advocates" are arguing it is because they think ZK is superior to mixers, TEE, etc. I bet you 100% most of them don't know wtf mixers or TEE are besides reading points off their influencers' notes.
ZK - zero knowledge is all about privacy. So is Zcash, Dash, Monero, Beam, grin, ghost and many others. Not everything is a public ledger.
Uh no. Research continued afterwards and gave birth to more secure, less wasteful and more capable blockchains (Ethereum was the first of them). Then ZK-STARKS was invented to make L2s as secure as their L1 blockchains while being 100x faster.
Wow ZK just had a 10% jump in 1 second..
I can see where you got "Solana and Sui" from :). It's not just those two. But I happen to like Sui so I don't mind, heh. I haven't seen this paper, thanks for the pointer. It's a nice review. I'll edit my post and include it. I used to dislike review papers, but I grew to appreciate them. This one seems like something everyone interested in the topic should read. The one I indicated is technical, describes an actual implementation of a ZK based migration for EdDSA. In fact it's the 2nd citation in the paper you mentioned.
Sorry I can't resist shilling Firo a little. Firo, formerly Zcoin, is also one of the OG privacy coins originating roughly at the same time as Zcash. It was a couple of months earlier in its usage of ZK technology. While Zcash probably was more secure/private back then Firo has since evolved massively and is criminally undervalued at the moment for a coin on par with Zcash and Monero. Just like with Zcash privacy is optional though, unlike Monero which has privacy by default.
GKR isn't new, it's been around in academic literature for years. Vitalik writing about it just brings more attention to techniques that researchers already knew about. The improvements are real but incremental, not revolutionary. The main benefit of GKR over SNARKs is you don't need a trusted setup ceremony. That's useful but it comes with tradeoffs in proof size and verification time. For most practical applications SNARKs or STARKs are still faster overall even with the setup overhead. Our clients building ZK systems care more about prover time than verification speed because generating proofs is the bottleneck. If GKR makes proving faster for specific types of computations that's valuable, but it's not replacing existing ZK tech across the board. The scalability claims depend heavily on the specific computation being proven. GKR works great for certain circuit structures but performs worse than alternatives for others. It's another tool in the toolbox, not a universal solution. Most of the ZK performance improvements lately come from better hardware acceleration and optimized implementations, not fundamental protocol changes. Getting existing protocols running on GPUs or FPGAs matters more than switching to GKR for most use cases. The hype around every Vitalik post is exhausting tbh. He's smart but the Ethereum community treats everything he writes like gospel when it's usually just consolidating existing research with his perspective on it.
Despite this headline, the article says: Note that GKR is not "zero knowledge": it only handles succinctness, not privacy. If you want zero knowledge, wrap the GKR proof in a ZK-SNARK or ZK-STARK.
EIP 7732 will be included in the Glamsterdam update which is the update after the next, Pactra. ePBS aka enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation will make execution and consensus validation separate activities. This will change how validators get paid and you can choose which validation you are participating in. This will pave the way to ZK proving. It won't be out of pocket, block builders would be compensated for their activity. Companies like Brevis or Succinct (there are more too) will most likely be the ones doing the proving / block building and everyone else can validate those blocks. [https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7732](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7732)
this is huge for Ethereum's scalability! the ability to validate blocks faster with ZK proofs is a game-changer. reducing hardware costs and making it more accessible could open up Ethereum to a whole new range of validators and users, especially on lighter devices. i’m especially excited to see how this impacts gas fees and dApp performance long-term. it’s a breakthrough that could really set the stage for smoother, more efficient blockchain experiences
So UTXOs are just inherently simpler when it comes to state. A UTXO either exists or it doesn't. When you're building ZK proofs you're basically just proving "this UTXO exists and I can spend it". With account models you have to prove the entire current state of an account (balance, nonce, etc) and since that's constantly changing you end up with way more complex state management in your ZK circuits. The bigger issue imo is the centralization risk with account models. Most ZK rollups using accounts (zkSync, StarkNet, etc) rely on centralized sequencers because account balances HAVE to update sequentially ). You can't process two txs from the same account without knowing the order. So whoever runs the sequencer can front-run, censor, extract MEV... basically defeats the whole point. Privacy is also way better with UTXOs since they naturally break the input/output link. You can prove you're spending valid UTXOs without revealing which ones. Account models inherently tie everything to an address, so even with ZK you need extra layers to get similar privacy. In proof generation, with account models you often need to track the entire global state which means only entities with massive compute resources can generate proofs. UTXOs are more independent, so smaller operators can do it.
That’s a big step for Ethereum scalability. Brevis’s Pico Prism could make real-time zero-knowledge proving practical, meaning faster rollups, lower latency, and cheaper on-chain verification. If it works as promised, it could push Ethereum closer to true mass adoption — where ZK tech runs seamlessly in the background without slowing user experience.
tldr; Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal criticized the Ethereum Foundation for not supporting Polygon despite its significant contributions to scaling Ethereum. Nailwal expressed frustration over the lack of recognition and support, claiming Polygon's market value could be higher if it operated independently. Sonic Labs' Andre Cronje echoed similar concerns, highlighting uneven support for developers. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin acknowledged Polygon's contributions and suggested future collaboration through advancements in ZK technology. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
tldr; Vitalik Buterin has introduced the GKR (Goldwasser–Kalai–Rothblum) protocol, a new proof system aimed at enhancing Ethereum's efficiency in proof verification and scaling. GKR enables faster and more efficient zero-knowledge computations by processing proofs in logarithmic time and reducing computational overhead. While not inherently zero-knowledge, it can integrate with ZK-SNARK or STARK layers for privacy. This aligns with Buterin's vision for a scalable, quantum-resistant Ethereum network, supporting advancements in rollups and zero-knowledge-based scalability. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
Yeah but it depends on the specific rollup. With optimistic rollups it takes 7 days to prove the state of the chain which adds a layer of risk. ZK rollups reach finality nearly instantly so they’re insanely difficult to tamper with. AliPay is using ZK proofs. SWIFT is also using a chain (Linea) that generates ZK proofs. The largest rollups (Base and Arbitrum) both use optimistic proofs currently but they’re moving to hybrid models that also generate ZK proofs. So yeah there’s a trade off but as ZK proofs are adopted the risk keeps decreasing. No L2 will ever be as secure as L1 Ethereum but using an L2 that publishes ZK proofs is much safer than using an alt-chain with a more centralized set of validators.
Great to hear. Also, Grvt doesn’t seem to be getting as much attention as it deserves right now. The “dark pool” narrative people are pushing around that Aster DEX is what Grvt built so much earlier with ZK tech. Feels very underrated right now.
L1 bitcoin is not really useable for small payments, so those payments would need to happen on a L2. As it lightning network does support micro sats, so you can send a fraction of a sat. As you pointed out, LN does have issues, but there is progress being made on ZK-rollups on top of Bitcoin, which in my opinion would make for a superior L2. That could also just use fractions of satoshis.
Hello u/chain_miner! Thanks a lot for your great questions 🙏 1. About the Hilbert Group investment: We don’t see this as just an investment but as a strategic partnership because our goals are aligned. Beyond capital, there is ongoing collaboration to position Concordium as the primary infrastructure layer for the next generation of institutional and consumer payments. Hilbert is already helping connect us with new partners, and together we are focused on driving ecosystem growth and accelerating the adoption of traditional finance on-chain. Keep watching this space, and you will be pleasantly 2. About the Concordium ID App and ZK-Proofs: We are very happy to hear your excitement about the ID App. A lot of work is being done to achieve feature parity across Concordium’s native wallets and the ID App, as well as to integrate with more wallets to give developers a larger user base. You may have seen our partnership with Ledger, which enables ZK-proof-based verification and stablecoin payments for more than 7.5 million users. That is only the beginning. Now that the infrastructure is in place with the ID App and stablecoins on mainnet, we are launching hackathons to educate, inspire, and support developers in building new applications and use cases. You should join our next Townhall this quarter, where we will share many exciting new updates.
The 20% dev tax is called the "Founders Reward" and it's controversial as hell. It was supposed to fund development but it also means miners get less and the incentive structure is weird compared to pure PoW coins. Monero's donation model is cleaner philosophically even if it means slower funding. Zcash's node software situation is a mess. You're right that it feels semi-abandoned compared to Monero's polish. Zcashd deprecation without a clean replacement path is amateur hour for a project that's supposedly focused on privacy. Our clients building privacy infrastructure almost always pick Monero because the tooling is just more mature. The bigger problem with Zcash is optional privacy. Most transactions still use transparent addresses because shielded transactions cost more and are slower. That means the anonymity set is way smaller than Monero where every transaction is private by default. ZK-SNARKs are theoretically stronger but practically useless if nobody uses them. Monero's privacy is mandatory which means you've got a massive anonymity set and better real-world privacy even if the cryptography is less fancy. Zcash's tech might be more advanced but adoption and ease of use matter more than theoretical privacy guarantees. The trusted setup ceremony for Zcash is another red flag that Monero doesn't have. If that ceremony was compromised the whole system could be printing unlimited coins and nobody would know. Monero doesn't require trusting some initialization process. Your Monero purism is justified tbh. Zcash had potential but the execution has been lacking and optional privacy kills the whole value prop.
tldr; Railgun contributors have developed a private multi-signature wallet on Ethereum, addressing a privacy feature requested by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The wallet uses zero-knowledge proof (ZK proof) technology to enhance security and privacy, hiding user identities while enabling multi-factor authentication. This innovation responds to Buterin's call for privacy protocols to support multi-signature wallets, a key security standard in the crypto industry. Railgun plans to demo the wallet at an upcoming conference in Argentina. *This summary is auto generated by a bot and not meant to replace reading the original article. As always, DYOR.
$ARRR Matey, ZK is the way forward..
Agree. The anonymous, granular system that you described is essentially a ZK framework. No government should be able to control and coerce the decisions it's citizens makes to the level that these proposed IDs would allow. Ever.
Yep, ZK is definitely part of the equation. What you describe would be awesome but I wouldn't hold my breath for it. The chances of this being implemented at scale in our lifetimes is essentially nil. I would be OK with some centralized system where you could hand out granular, anonymized parameters ("can drive a car", "is over 18", "has a credit score over 700") as bits of data signed by some trusted verifying authority. I mean we're already doing a lot of this authorization stuff quite elegantly in tech, there just needs to be a political will and the technical know-how (which I realize is a massive ask).
reason: the eth foundation has funded almost single handlely all the ZK research and thank to them we have ZK proofs
Depends on the country I'm in. For some examples DuitNow, PromptPay, Keepz, OnePay, SBP, etc. usually they are built by local central banks but sometimes private, depends. Still, it's not that interesting, although literally the most common way to pay for like coffee on the street. Free and fast stablecoins transfers on ethereum networks - that's the real deal. Immediate confirmation by the sequencer + fast L1 finality (with actual plans to reach single-slot using ZK proofs), tokens more stable than dollars at the bank, best of all worlds. You know that your credit card transactions are reversible, right? That means even after "settling" they are not technically final for quite a while. Entirely different approach from most crypto and doesn't compare apples to oranges, no idea why you're forcing this comparison - but still you never fucking wait by the terminal for twenty minutes to an hour waiting for confirmation!
Hi u/eth_mines, Thanks for all the questions! If you think about it, the combo of Protocol Level Tokens + Native ID Layer pretty much unlocks every real-world use case you can imagine — while still keeping blockchain speed, efficiency, and reliability. A few examples: • **Age-Verified Stablecoin Payments:** With regulators tightening rules in places like the UK, France, and parts of the US, there’s a real push for solutions that can enforce age checks without giving up privacy. Concordium’s ID Layer + ZK proofs make it possible for someone to prove they’re 18+ (or meet any other requirement) without sharing personal data. When this plugs into stablecoins as PLTs, it’s already getting serious interest from merchants and payment providers in areas like adult content, gambling, and gaming. • **Trade Finance & Tokenised MMFs:** Concordium’s programmable locking means collateral can be locked or released at the protocol level based on supply-chain events or milestones. That cuts out expensive third-party escrow and reduces smart contract custodial risks. We’ve already got Spiko — one of Europe’s biggest tokenised money market funds — on board, and we’re in late-stage talks with major trade finance players who want to use this to streamline deals without escrow. • **Travel Rule Compliance for Institutions:** For exchanges, brokers, custodians, and prime brokers, Travel Rule compliance is a pain point. With Concordium’s ID Layer, ZKPs, and our partnership with Notabene, Travel Rule data exchange can be automated, making stablecoin transactions fully compliant while still being straight-through settled. That’s a big deal for institutional networks where delays around margin calls and collateral transfers slow things down for their clients.
ADA so is undervalued. Its properties, like robustness, reliability, decentralization, security and soon scalability will sooner or later get a fair evaluation. There's no way around a truly decentealized system. It's very well positioned to become an L2 for Bitcoin DeFi because it uses an extended version of UTxO that Bitcoin uses. It will be lossible to trustlessly use Bitcoin with Cardano DeFi to get yield on BTC without trusting a bridge because it will use ZK and therfore it will be trustless. Great things are coming. Cardano's treasury ensures there's money to develop the ecosystem further and to finance the projects that bring utility to Cardano. All done in a decentealized way by the community. It's time to slowly let memes go and adopt real dApps that solve real world problems.
Thanks for sharing the updates! My questions are about ecosystem growth: How is Concordium measuring the impact of the Hilbert Group investment beyond capital (e.g., introductions to new institutional partners)? The ID App is powerful. What are the plans to incentivize community developers to build dApps that specifically leverage ZK-Proofs?