With the dust settling from the 'airdrop season' of leading projects like zkSync and Starknet, zero-knowledge (ZK) technology has never ignited community fervor and controversy like today. For the first time, millions of users' wallet addresses are directly linked to this profound cryptographic technology. However, amidst the clamor surrounding valuations, transaction volumes, and airdrop rules, are we falling into a 'winner's shortsightedness'? Are we locking the imagination of ZK solely into the single dimension of 'making Ethereum faster and cheaper'?
While the market's attention is still focused on the cutthroat battles of Layer 2, another grand wave—the fusion of AI and Crypto—is quietly rising. And ZK is the key technological bridge connecting these two super narratives. This article aims to penetrate the current haze of ZK-Rollups' hype and propose a core viewpoint: the ultimate battlefield of ZK technology is not to win the L2 war but to build a trustworthy, permissionless digital reality that can defend personal sovereignty for the upcoming AI era.
(Photo from: @ayyyeandy)
ZK-Rollups: A great starting point, not an endpoint
Undoubtedly, ZK-Rollups are the most successful commercialization of zero-knowledge proof technology to date. It addresses the scalability problem in the 'impossible triangle' that has plagued the blockchain world for years with a nearly perfect cryptographic technique. By bundling hundreds or thousands of transactions off-chain (Layer 2) to generate a concise validity proof and then submitting it to the main chain (Layer 1) for verification, ZK-Rollups enhance Ethereum's transaction processing capacity by several orders of magnitude without sacrificing security.
From StarkWare's StarkNet to Matter Labs' zkSync, and then to Scroll and Polygon zkEVM, the technical competition among major teams revolves almost entirely around 'EVM compatibility' and 'transaction costs (Gas Fee).' The market has responded enthusiastically, and capital has expressed its preferences with real money. This has created a kind of prosperity but also brought about a 'tunnel vision'—we seem to assume that the mission of ZK is solely to make on-chain transaction experiences faster and cheaper.
However, if we widen our perspective, we find that limiting ZK technology to the framework of scalability underestimates its revolutionary potential. Scalability is a necessary path, the infrastructure leading to the future; but it is not the future itself. It paves the way for us, but what truly captivates us is the scenery that this path leads to.
Breaking out of the scalability fortress: Three high-potential battlegrounds for ZK
When we no longer see ZK merely as a 'compression tool,' its essence as a 'trust tool' becomes apparent. This reveals three areas that are ripe for explosion and align more closely with the spirit of Crypto fundamentalism:
1. Verifiable Computation: Reshaping the Trust Foundation of Data and Computation
Imagine a scenario: a complex machine learning model or a sophisticated financial risk model running on a cloud server. How does it prove to you that its computation process is accurate and has not been maliciously tampered with? In the traditional Web2 architecture, we can only choose to 'trust' the service provider.
ZK technology fundamentally changes the rules of the game. Through zero-knowledge proofs, the party executing the computational task can generate a proof certifying that it has executed the computation entirely according to the preset program and returned the results honestly. The verifier does not need to re-execute the entire time-consuming computational process; they only need to verify this lightweight proof to establish mathematical-level trust in the result.
This is not just a technical showcase. It will unlock decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), decentralized science (DeSci), and a fairer digital advertising market. For example, the field of ZKML (zero-knowledge machine learning) that Modulus Labs is exploring allows the inference process of AI models to be verified, enabling users to be assured that the AI-generated results they receive have not been censored or manipulated. Projects like RISC Zero are building universal ZK virtual machines (zkVM), allowing any type of computation to generate ZK proofs, opening the door to decentralized, verifiable cloud computing. When the computation process itself becomes trustworthy and verifiable, we no longer need to rely on centralized brands or institutions as trust intermediaries, making a truly peer-to-peer, permissionless computing market possible.
2. Decentralized Identity (DID) and On-Chain Reputation: Building Your Web3 Native Passport
In the current Web3 world, our 'identity' has been brutally simplified to a wallet address. This address records our assets and transaction history, but it cannot encompass our complex social relationships, professional achievements, or credit scores.
ZK-DID allows users to selectively prove their attributes without disclosing specific personal information. For example:
Prove your credit score is above a certain threshold to DeFi protocols to obtain better lending rates without revealing your entire asset status.
Prove you are a real, independent user in DAO governance voting without disclosing your identity.
Prove to a gaming platform that you are over 18 without showing your ID number.
This ability of 'selective disclosure' is key to building a Web3 ecosystem that protects user privacy while enabling complex social collaboration. This is not a fantasy; Polygon ID has already constructed a complete open-source framework for developers to easily integrate ZK authentication features. Projects like zkMe focus on providing decentralized KYC solutions, allowing users to verify once and anonymously prove their compliant identity across the entire Web3 world. Even large-scale social experiments like Worldcoin utilize ZK technology to ensure that users' 'identity proofs' are separated from their on-chain behaviors, protecting personal privacy. It will give rise to a native on-chain reputation system, transforming our digital identity from just a cold address into a rich, dimensional, and sovereign 'soul.'
3. True On-Chain Privacy: From Transparency to 'Controlled Transparency'
The transparency of Ethereum is a double-edged sword. It guarantees the fairness and auditability of the system but also exposes all users' financial situations to the light. Privacy coins (like Zcash) have long demonstrated the power of ZK in transaction privacy, but their ecosystems remain relatively isolated.
The future trend is to seamlessly integrate privacy features into mainstream smart contract platforms in an 'optional' or 'default' form. Imagine businesses conducting confidential supply chain financial settlements on-chain; DAO organizations issuing anonymous salary payments; individual users making private asset transfers.
In this arena, Aztec Network is the pioneer, aiming to bring a native privacy layer to Ethereum by building a cryptographic ZK-Rollup, allowing users to conduct confidential transactions within familiar DeFi applications. Furthermore, Layer 1 public chains like Aleo are designed for privacy from the ground up, aiming to create a smart contract platform that is private by default. This requires us to shift from the mindset of pursuing 'complete transparency' to that of pursuing 'controlled transparency'—where data is private by default, but owners can grant viewing permissions to specific parties (like auditing institutions) as needed, generating corresponding ZK proofs to demonstrate compliance. This is where ZK technology brings about the most profound transformation in finance and even social governance.
The success of ZK-Rollups is a significant victory for ZK technology at the level of 'instrumental rationality.' It efficiently addresses the industry's most pressing pain points. However, the vastness of Crypto ultimately returns to the exploration of 'value rationality'—what kind of world do we truly want to build with these powerful tools?
I firmly believe that the ultimate mission of ZK technology is to grant individuals unprecedented digital sovereignty. It empowers us to participate in the digital economy without sacrificing privacy, to verify the authenticity of the information we rely on, and to build a trust internet guaranteed by mathematics and consensus rather than defined by centralized giants.
Thus, when we evaluate a ZK project next time, perhaps we can ask higher-dimensional questions: besides making transactions faster and cheaper, does it make our digital world more trustworthy? Does it give us stronger control over our identity and data? Is it contributing to a fairer, more protective future for individuals?
Betting on ZK is not just betting on a technology, but on a future. And that future is far grander than the TPS and Gas fees we discuss today.
