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worldsayshi | 17 days ago

What about Zero-Knowledge Identity? Use zero knowledge proofs to prove that I have an eID without actually providing my identity.

discuss

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samename|17 days ago

EFF has a good write-up about zero-knowledge: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-...

> What ZKPs don’t do is mitigate verifier abuse or limit their requests, such as over-asking for information they don’t need or limiting the number of times they request your age over time. They don’t prevent websites or applications from collecting other kinds of observable personally identifiable information like your IP address or other device information while interacting with them.

notTooFarGone|16 days ago

The arguments they make is a good example of "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good".

If we allow incumbents to make photo age verification and upload of ID to third-parties to be the solution, we will have a much worse solution.

worldsayshi|16 days ago

Interesting. While that is true I don't see how it's an argument against. Over-asking + ZKP certainly seems superior to over-asking + without ZKP. Without ZKP in a world where you constantly need to identify yourself you have absolutely no privacy.

And going forward I think that any communication without establishing some kind of trust boundary will just be noise.

frogperson|17 days ago

Something like a cert chain, but it would need to be both simple to use and secure. Those two requirements are greatly at odds with each other.

acgourley|17 days ago

Yeah one reason I think the government has to offer this is usability. While you can imagine a purely p2p protocol between cypherpunks, for everyone else there needs to be a way to social workers, DMV staff, etc can deal with edge cases (such as your id being stolen and needing a reset). Furthermore it helps if it's super illegal to tamper with this network (consider how rare check fraud is, despite being easy).

acgourley|17 days ago

Yes that's the idea, once you have the soul-bound eID the ZK part is trivial, but the eID with the guarantees I outlined is not at all trivial.