Zero-knowledge proofs have become synonymous with crypto, scalability, and privacy. In 2022, investors gave over $700 million in funding to companies working with zero-knowledge proofs. ZK-proofs have become one of the biggest blockchain trends, with major Ethereum scaling protocols hitting mainnet. ZK-proofs allow one party to prove the truth of a statement to another party without sharing any of the statement’s contents. Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, once found the technology interesting but was skeptical about its ability to solve the “double-spending” problem. However, privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash successfully implemented zero-knowledge proofs, and now Bitcoin itself is ready to enter the world of ZK-proofs. ZeroSync, a nonprofit sponsored by StarkWare, is developing the world’s first ZK light client for Bitcoin. It aims to bring mass scalability and privacy properties to Bitcoin. It is believed that Nakamoto would have been intrigued by the privacy innovations brought by Zcash and would have likely pushed to integrate ZK-proofs into Bitcoin.
