Vitalik Buterin: Zero-Knowledge Alone Fails Coercion Resistance in Voting and Secured Apps
Vitalik Buterin has weighed in on the use of cryptographic tools for secure applications, arguing that Zero-Knowledge (ZK) technology, while powerful for privacy, is inherently insufficient for certain critical features.
Buterin states that ZK alone cannot provide coercion resistance in applications like voting, where an external party might force a user to reveal their vote. To achieve this, ZK must be combined with supplementary cryptographic techniques, including Multi-Party Computation (MPC), Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), or Trusted Execution Environments (TEE).
He proposes a multi-layered architecture where ZK secures core properties (privacy), while FHE or MPC adds specialized features like coercion resistance. This combined approach ensures that even if one component (like FHE) is compromised, all security properties except coercion resistance remain intact, pushing the boundaries of resilient cryptographic design.
