Is ZK a valid source of truth?

Transcript

ZK protocol can be actually effective in identifying the authenticity of the original new sources. In other words, like can it be effective to combat fake news? And by fake news I'm not talking about kind of fake news that we're seeing these days, but like like AI level fake news. And that's what I would like to Okay, so I [clears throat] think the answer is actually very simple. Blockchains are permanent store of information or data, which means there's something in ZK code attestations. So if you commit a proof or let's say

I don't want to use technical terms. So if you if you upload a particular piece of information and then you generate a proof that you uploaded that piece of information and it's has attestations of time, dates, source or all of this information attached to it, it means this is the actual source of the information. So I don't think it would be able to um say this is a valid information or true information. I just think it's so it's not it doesn't um it doesn't show proof of I broke this laptop, okay?

>> [laughter] >> It doesn't it doesn't give you this proof. If only there's somebody who made a video and this was attested online and then okay, I think another thing we could look into is um I don't know if that's really interesting. Succinct Labs is a ZK protocol we're working on like you know proving systems, verifying systems. So they started working on something. Someone invented a camera that has ZK properties. So you could take pictures of things and you could prove that these are real pictures that were taken, not AI edited pictures or images or videos and you could you know you could have attestations on the blockchain

and you could verify that you know we're in a very very crazy edge where this uh current panel could definitely be AI generated. So so yeah, they basically help you verify what is true and what's false, but based on the metadata, based on the attestations. So I don't know if that answers your question directly, but basically it's it's can't it's math, so it doesn't have human bias. It still relies on data that has been uploaded by probably factual data that has been uploaded or invalid data that has been uploaded. I think that's like still left to human to comprehend. But in terms of things that can be computably

verifiable it could you know help with that. Like in a sense I get it somewhat, yeah, but I'm still in the learning process I think I have to check the YouTube video later, you know. Yeah, I think if you if if you want if you want to like to to understand it's like Oracles. Like >> [laughter] >> It's like Oracles. So basically you can trust an Oracle, okay? But the problem is the Oracle source. So with ZK you can basically verify that this is what the Oracle said, okay? But you need [clears throat] also always to trust the Oracle, the initial Oracle. So it is is the same problem that you have

like also in without ZK. Like you can trust an Oracle, but is the Oracle is right or wrong or this kind of thing. This is what I understood, so I don't know if I'm totally right, okay. So >> [clears throat] >> I think since we're going to Grokipedia and the old stuff later next week just [clears throat] like Wikipedia, because it's open source, you could know when a particular piece of information has been edited or when it was falsified or stuff like that and like all the changes are verifiable, not verifiable, but like you know attested on on their website. So ZK makes it because if Wikipedia decides, I mean they're open source, so

I'm not going to but Grokipedia is Grokipedia, they are going to be the scapegoats for today. So if they decide to alter a particular piece of information, they're centralized organization, so there is no way to verify that this piece of information was altered or the source of this piece of information has not been changed or stuff like that during a period of time. But if Grokipedia for example was hosted on the blockchain and they use ZKs to show proof of information and whenever someone makes an edit, it gets attested on chain.

I think even with the blockchain you could do this without ZK. So it just probably like maybe proving that you're an author on Grokipedia, proving that you published this particular article without actually doxing yourself. I think these are like the nitty-gritty that it could help with. You know, you're you're a journalist for example, you write blogs, you want to get paid you want to get paid, but you don't want to dox yourself and show your name or stuff, you don't want to dox your ID.

You could actually show proofs that you actually wrote this article without actually doxing your personal information. So ZK could help with that type of use case. Do you understand? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Like to level up the question here though, if we still have time here. Like journalists are basically report on external sources, right? It can be like an image, a spreadsheet, a financial analysis, a report or anything that can be all manipulated. But on that source level, do you think that ZK should can stand like Okay, yeah. So um there is like I said there's something

called attestations. Uh I'll give you I don't really know about data that is not on the blockchain that is like based on human beings inputs because transactions on the blockchain can be verifiable or you can see them on the blockchain basically. So thereby you can always like go back to when a a particular token was minted, you can go back to when the token was created, you can check the date and time of when a particular transaction was made. So all this information are on chain.

And not to forget what I was going for. Um So basically you would be able to still show attestations of this particular information and prove of this particular information, but I don't think it would help with showing validity of if it's if fake news because the same because it's it's decentralized, it's open. So the same way a great actor would be able to like upload yeah, right information, a false article would be able to like you know also upload false statements. Yeah, does that help?

Yeah, I think so. I'm exploring like what kind of like options, right? It's an uncharted territory and obviously like like ZK caught my attention in the last few weeks when I was actually like attending these events. I know it's a very difficult topic. I I appreciate your helping me give it some inputs. And just to add, in case you're building a platform, if you want to provide anonymity for your journalist, ZK could help with that. If you want to be able to accept payments privately or tips privately, so they don't track who published this journal. I mean you're doxxed now, so >> [laughter] >> If you want to be able to do all of these primitives, ZK could help you with it.

Yeah, that's a good start. Yeah, thanks so much.