This year, the conference centred on Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs) — a cryptographic technology that enables individuals to prove eligibility for services without revealing their underlying personal data. In the opening speech, Dan Bogdanov (Cybernetica, Estonian Academy of Sciences) positioned zero-knowledge as a technology critical to the future of bureaucracy and digital identity.
Olivier Blazy from Ecole Polytechnique in France introduced the big challenges with European Digital Wallet privacy and how zero knowledge can help remediate them. Researchers and industry have put their effort into it – there are standards and concrete schemes. But he also concluded by saying that cryptography won’t fix the law.
Aivo Kalu from Cybernetica took stock of the currently open procurements for digital wallets in Europe. We learned that privacy and zero-knowledge requirements are left quite open, allowing for later additions – should the technical leadership wish so. He also gave guidance to researchers on how to give new cryptography a chance with engineers and buyers.
Marek Sýs from Masaryk University then took a step back and gave the audience the big picture on what zero-knowledge proofs provide and what they enable. Colourful slides and strong delivery helped the massive amount of information go down well!
Then, Jan Willemson from Cybernetica explained how zero knowledge proofs were added to the Estonian internet voting system to protect against various attacks while preserving vote confidentiality. We learned that one more proof will be added for next year’s elections. We also discussed how these proofs can be audited by the public after balloting.
There are many people who know zero knowledge proofs from cryptocurrencies and Web 3.0. Janno Siim from the University of Tartu had you covered! We learned how ZK proofs are a performance enabler and a privacy enabler all at once. We learned about smart contracts, ZK virtual machines and marvelled at how far ZK could go!
Then, Martin Suomalainen from Cybernetica talked about a really down-to-earth use case. Imagine the applications that we could have if all cars were equipped with a GPS that the government could process – taxation, subsidies and more. On the other hand, imagine the surveillance capability! Martin showed a tested device and software prototype for privacy-preserving vehicle subsidies and transactions, with performance that looked reasonable for real-world use.
We then got back to wallets, this time in a very pragmatic way. Søren Eller Thomsen from Partisia constructed step-by-step, four different solutions for zero knowledge proofs in wallets, with different trade-offs. We are more than halfway there – we can start rolling out ZKP today, but we need to continue research to tie everything up perfectly in a few years.
Peeter Laud from Cybernetica demonstrated how zero knowledge proofs can be used to perform private authentication to blockchain services. His team had managed to implement and good amount of cryptography under ZKP using the ZK-SecreC toolchain.
Dan then concluded the event and wished everyone a lot of zero knowledge proofs for their privacy!
For more information about the presentations and videos, please look at the Future Conference Cryptography website https://futurecryptography.eu/
