"What would it look like if we could maintain human rights through mathematics, technology, and means beyond control? That is the power of cryptographic technology."
——Edward Snowden, Token2049 2024
"Citizen Z puts forward a future that aligns with Zama's vision, and we are realizing this vision through our FHE products and services. The biggest obstacle to an open data economy is the lack of security and sovereignty protection for data. FHE eliminates this barrier, bringing superior AI, superior asset ownership, superior healthcare, and superior transactions."
— —Rand Hindi, CEO of Zama
"Today, users have very limited control over their digital lives, and this situation will only worsen with the proliferation of centralized AI platforms. Through the use of blockchain and FHE, Fhenix is committed to restoring this control, supporting Citizen Z's vision of digital sovereignty, allowing everyone to have ownership and freedom over their data."
— —Guy Itzhaki, Cofounder of Fhenix
"From the breadth of human history, the digital world is still in its early stages. In the future, when we look back, digital sovereignty will be seen as the cornerstone for building a sustainable and secure digital environment. Inco is committed to providing the ability to ensure confidentiality to support the adoption of blockchain, which aligns with the Citizen Z plan of Mind Network."
— —Remi Gai, Founder of Inco
Overview
With the fusion of decentralized ledgers (blockchain) and decentralized intelligence (DAI, DAGI), we are about to push the boundaries of human potential and individual sovereignty. Blockchain provides us with the infrastructure to decouple nation-states and currencies, allowing for global (and even supra-global) value transfer and decentralized coordination of currency networks. Artificial intelligence enables everyone with internet access to tap into all known intelligence, soon to have multidisciplinary assistants capable of handling personal, household, professional, and creative tasks.
In this era, data sovereignty is critical, artificial intelligence must be decentralized, and human rights must be encoded into code. Simply put, the existing internet cannot meet the needs of this era, and we urgently need reform.
Today, we present a vision of a new type of citizen called CitizenZ. This citizen will live in an internet where individual rights are integrated, data sovereignty is institutionalized, and AI technology is fully democratized.
HTTPZ: The Next Generation Internet, Encryption is Sovereignty
We are experiencing an extraordinary moment in decentralized infrastructure.
Mature decentralized networks like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Uniswap, Arweave, and Filecoin have already demonstrated the possibility of achieving the future web by encoding core concepts like information connectivity, privacy security, technological neutrality, and digital rights.
Decentralization has been a fundamental principle since the birth of the internet, with over 30 years of history. The internet has undergone a significant evolution from HTTP to HTTPS. HTTP, as the foundational protocol of the early web, was simple and efficient but raised concerns about the security and privacy of data transmission due to its plaintext protocol. With the push from companies like Google, HTTPS gradually became the default standard, highlighting security and privacy issues.
In 2024, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France for alleged illegal activities on the platform. Although he was eventually released, Telegram quickly revised its terms of service, exposing the core issue of today’s internet: servers can decrypt user data.
Telegram's regular chats are encrypted on the client side but must be decrypted on the server side for message processing, meaning servers can access the data. Therefore, law enforcement or hackers can compel Telegram to hand over user communication records for scrutiny, attack, or monitoring.
As Snowden pointed out at Token2049: "If you do not resist interference at the protocol level, you will ultimately face interference."
To address this issue, ZAMA has launched the HTTPZ protocol based on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). FHE ensures end-to-end encryption and allows for computations on data while maintaining encryption, eliminating the risk of data exposure. HTTPZ heralds an internet where all data is end-to-end encrypted.
This is not just another technological innovation, but a paradigm shift based on first principles. If citizens are to enjoy the sovereignty that current cryptographic technologies can provide, who will bring this technology to market? The answer must be decentralized projects and protocols. Any other choice, centralization, will deviate from this purpose and undermine the highest interests. HTTPZ represents a new philosophy of data and individuals, elevating privacy protection and digital sovereignty to unprecedented heights.
Key Features of HTTPZ:
End-to-End Encryption: Ensuring data security throughout the entire communication process.
Supporting fully homomorphic encryption: Data processing occurs in encrypted form without decryption.
Zero Trust Security: Providing comprehensive protection throughout the data lifecycle, eliminating the need for trust in third parties.
If HTTPS brought us a secure internet and digital age, the development of HTTPZ will lead us into the smart age. From messaging to AI applications, user data is encrypted at every level, ensuring privacy and digital sovereignty. This extends beyond messaging to all aspects of data, communication, transactions, social networks, AI, gaming, and digital life.
As artificial intelligence and Web3 continue to drive productivity, more network states and digital organizations are emerging, bringing challenges regarding sovereignty, efficiency, and privacy. HTTPZ achieves comprehensive encryption at the protocol level, laying the foundation for the future internet while also providing the infrastructure for future organizational structures, ensuring the true digital sovereignty of every citizen.
CitizenZ: The Digital Sovereign Citizen of the HTTPZ Era
In the HTTPZ era, the concept of digital citizens will be redefined. We introduce CitizenZ or Zero Trust Citizens, whose core idea is to protect personal digital sovereignty through encryption.
The concept of CitizenZ draws on Friedrich Hayek's ideas on free markets, as well as the principles proposed by Rees-Mogg and Davidson in (sovereign individuals). Hayek advocated for minimizing external control and maximizing personal choice. (Sovereign individuals) further emphasized the importance of applying this freedom in the so-called "information age" (very similar to the smart age).
Therefore, we propose the core characteristics of CitizenZ:
Universality: Everyone, regardless of gender, race, nationality, or faith, can become a CitizenZ and enjoy equal rights.
Digital Sovereignty: Full ownership and control over personal digital assets such as speech, data, and tokens.
Voting Rights: The right to freely express will, vote, and participate in consensus building is protected.
Ultimate Form: CitizenZ represents the social realization of the HTTPZ protocol.
The goal of CitizenZ is to empower individuals with autonomy in the smart age, enabling them to participate in public affairs and freely express their will without any external interference or mediation, truly achieving the democratization of the digital society.
The Road to Digital Sovereignty
Digital sovereignty means absolute control over personal speech, data, assets, and other digital property. It is the foundation of personal freedom of expression, information security, and economic independence, as well as a prerequisite for exercising the right to participate in network voting.
Through HTTPZ, the voting process will undergo a revolutionary change:
Verifiable: Using zero-knowledge proofs to validate the validity of votes without revealing voter identities.
Encrypted Counting: Utilizing homomorphic encryption for encrypted counting, ensuring the fairness of votes.
Tamper-Proof: The blockchain provides immutable voting records, ensuring transparency.
Voting rights are crucial as they allow individuals to safely express their views and participate in consensus formation. In the decentralized world we are about to enter, consensus is a ubiquitous process, needed daily for millions of network loyalists. Just like the original social systems, voting rights were privileges of a few, but today are regarded as basic human rights.
With the advent of the smart age, new systemic risks have emerged, such as vote manipulation or data tampering. HTTPZ achieves encrypted voting through FHE, with the voting process fully encrypted, calculations and validations performed without decryption, eliminating intermediary trust.
From community governance to government elections, from network consensus to organizational decision-making, voting can be conducted in an encrypted, transparent, and tamper-proof manner.
We do not need to trust centralized committees or voting systems — everyone can freely and securely participate in collective decision-making and consensus building.
In all aspects of digital life — data sharing, identity verification, financial transactions — HTTPZ will play a crucial role in protecting the privacy, security, and sovereignty of every digital citizen, creating a world filled with CitizenZ.
Reshaping the Digital World: The Future of Digital Sovereignty
Mind Network and ZAMA's Citizen Z plan is laying the groundwork for HTTPZ, aiming to create a truly decentralized zero-trust digital ecosystem.
Digital Sovereignty of CitizenZ:
Removing intermediaries: Participation rights, such as voting, do not require third-party mediation.
Trustless Security: System security is based on cryptography, not entities.
Transparency: Fully verifiable processes, based on blockchain, unaffected by tampering.
Sovereignty: Individuals have complete control over fundamental rights such as property, data, and voting.
These breakthroughs are not just technological innovations, they represent a reshaping of the future digital world. In this future, assets, information, voting, identity, entertainment, work, and education will exist in the form of data, and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) will ensure their security and privacy.
We stand on the threshold of a new world, a world where FHE and HTTPZ will change how we interact with both digital and physical life. CitizenZ is an individual with complete sovereignty.
Fight with Us
In this AI-driven era, individuals are at the peak of productivity, and information is wealth. We are striving to create a world where privacy, sovereignty, and autonomy are fundamental rights rather than privileges.
Therefore, we invite all those concerned with unleashing a new era for global citizens to join the HTTPZ revolution.
In the world of HTTPZ, digital sovereignty belongs to every CitizenZ, based on a zero-trust foundation.