Defeating some privacy issues with zero-knowledge proofs

Solutions that respect human limitations, with regard to knowledge or moral character, are more ethical and more robust than the sort of hand-wave everything will be fine attitude that pervades the tech world. It seems far safer to acknowledge that, although some people will abuse the anonymity, cash and barter transactions have taken place for thousands of years without any sort of central authority regulating them, and people often have legitimate reasons for wanting privacy or even anonymity.

Zero-knowledge cryptosystems may offer a solution in some use cases—cryptocurrencies such as Zcash and Monero more truly resemble cash. Bitcoin and (presently) Ethereum do not offer the sort of anonymity and privacy that detractors would have you believe they do.

Blockchain inherently has many desirable properties for people seeking privacy and anonymity, decentralization being the foremost of those. More broadly, outside of blockchain, this author suspects that users will be willing to pay somewhat of a premium for technology that ensures ephemerality, the property of being transitory, temporary, perhaps forgettable.

We've entrusted the most intimate details of our personal lives to mechanisms designed by fallible human beings, and despite the constant data breaches and the occasional happening, the public largely trusts things such as Facebook chats and devices with always-on microphones. However zealous blockchain evangelists may seem, trust in companies with centralized IoT and mobile junk remains the most remarkable arrogance.

Zero-knowledge proofs (and zero-knowledge arguments) allow the network to verify some computation (for example, ownership of tokens) without knowing anything about it. In addition to the properties for which we use blockchain (blockchains are consistent, immutable, and decentralized), specific implementations of zero knowledge may also be deniable, and avoid recording information on a blockchain that may compromise a user's privacy.