The crypto industry is one of a kind. There is no other place that is as international and multi-disciplinary as crypto.

From real estate and AI to gaming and medicine, every field has been involved with blockchains or tokenization in some way or another.

However, the products often lack innovative depth. The general principle has always been “build the same traditional product but on crypto rails and hope the users show up.”

This line of thinking is naive in essence because we assume that other people care about the ideals of decentralization, transparency, and tokenization as much as we crypto natives do.

People are content with what they have in the traditional world. It is ten times more convenient to use than crypto and gets the job done, so why would they switch?

Of late, however, we are starting to see a shift spearheaded by projects like Sophon.

Rather than building the exact same web2 product on web3 rails, we should rather find a way to bring the web3 rails to web2 products so users can benefit from the infrastructure without having to deal with the security and UX issues.

I know, that’s a pretty vague statement, right?

Well, if you give me the next 5-10 minutes of your time and read through the rest of this piece, you will understand exactly how this works, how Sophon is implementing it, and what it would look like in practice.

What is zkTLS?

zkTLS stands for zero-knowledge Transport Layer Security. To better understand how this tech works, we need to divide the word into two sections: zk and TLS.

TLS is a technology designed to ensure that data is transmitted safely across the Internet. In fact, we already use TLS in our daily lives without really knowing about it.

Picture this: You once again decided to gamble on Trump coins and lost the house deposit on it. You now have to mail your mother that you need to move back into the basement. This is, of course, some sensitive information that needs to be kept secure.

TLS uses encryption and authentication to ensure that this data will always remain secure. It will ensure that no middleman along the way can intercept your data to view or alter it. It will remain encrypted and only be viewable by the data receiver (in this case, your precious mother).

zk-proofs, on the other hand, have more to do with data privacy.

As the name suggests, zk-proofs are a way to prove to another party that you know a certain piece of information/dataset is true and valid without actually having to reveal any information to them.

For example, let’s say you’ve been invited to a secret party where you have to give a code at the door to get in. You don’t want to reveal the code to everyone or say it out loud. With zk-proofs, you can prove that you know the secret word without actually revealing it.

Thus far, the main use of zk-proofs has been for layer-2s [L2s]. When L2s process transactions and data off-chain, they use zk-proofs to prove to the validators that the transactions in the block they have submitted to the base chain are indeed valid.

But now, by integrating zk with TLS, the use case expands.

By combining the two privacy-preserving technologies, information and data can flow easily and securely between the web2 and web3 worlds.

TLS ensures that the data is transmitted between the two worlds securely, and zk-proofs make sure that the data can be authenticated and its integrity verified.

To give you a better idea of what this technology looks like in practice, let’s look at a scenario.

Let’s say a company like Sony wants to create an on-chain music streaming platform. On this platform, people can create music, listen to music, and get paid to interact with it.

This sounds lovely, but unfortunately, Sony is a massive institution and will face regulatory trouble. They will require users to adhere to KYC norms or use other social logins.

With zkTLS, all of this can be done without much of a hassle. Users can use their real-life KYC or social logins to verify that it is actually them without revealing any of their information.

Take it a step further, and there is a chance that a lot of people who want to use this platform will be new to blockchains and won’t understand how to use wallets. Sony can create a way via which users can verify bank account ownership through zkTLS and allow them to directly on-ramp and off-ramp from the network.

This is just one example, but the possibilities are endless.

To summarize, zkTLS is a way to establish trust in web2 data and platforms.

zkTLS on Sophon?

So, how does Sophon come into the picture?

As some of you may already know, Sophon is focused on consumer crypto.

Consumer crypto is a sector focused on using crypto rails to host popular consumer-facing products.

This means the global transaction settlement, transparency, and decentralized nature of blockchains will serve as the foundation for consumer-focused applications like gaming, social networks, gambling, and even general e-commerce.

Combining the best of web3 and web2 to touch maximum consumer endpoints.

In prior articles, we have already covered how Sophon is preparing to become the market leader for consumer crypto. However, with the implementation of zkTLS, its position at the helm of consumer crypto will almost certainly be secured.

So, let’s go over some of the zkTLS use cases that will take Sophon to the next level.

1. Aggregating online identities

The current state of online identities is highly fragmented.

Users have different Twitter accounts, YouTube accounts, Spotify accounts, Instagram accounts, and PlayStation accounts, all of which are linked to different emails.

A single person's history and activity across all these different platforms are highly fragmented, but the data itself is very important and useful.

With zkTLS, a single user's web2 data across all platforms can be unified under one cryptographic account without the user needing to reveal any passwords or other raw data of their activity.

So why is this important?

Imagine a single user's entire online life, from social to gaming to financial, all under one roof on Sophon. You can now layer crypto incentives/rewards on top of this and create a whole suite of applications.

Extrapolating this line of thinking to every single person with an online identity effectively creates the breeding ground for vampire attacks on web2 platforms through crypto incentives.

Consider this: Say you’re a gaming influencer with a big following on YouTube and Twitch. zkTLS allows you to provide on-chain proof of ownership of these accounts, and then gaming projects can pay you for promotion or for interacting with them directly through Sophon.

Now, imagine you also play other games on Steam. All the different games that want to incentivize players will pay you in token/NFT rewards if you prove ownership of the Steam account.

The general premise is that having a user's entire web2 identity under one roof on-chain where they still maintain full control over their private data is a great tool for onboarding web2 users.

Crypto incentives will bring them here and allow them to keep building an on-chain reputation, and from there, a whole suite of different platforms can leverage this user base on Sophon.

One of the more exciting ideas from the Sophon camp is the idea of social oracles.

If the network successfully onboards large amounts of web2 data and the data is trustworthy, then there will be a massive data hub that applications can feed off of. That data hub would essentially act as a social oracle.

So, imagine a prediction market based on an event that relies on a large amount of data. Those markets can be made and settled very quickly and reliably.

This is just one example, but the possibilities after effectively onboarding so many users and so much data are virtually endless.

2. On-chain entertainment

These social oracles can also unlock new pathways of interaction between web2 and web3 that can completely transform online entertainment.

Let’s start with music. When you think of music, one of the first platforms that comes to mind is Spotify.

Imagine an artist has a project come out that they are really passionate about and would like to reward their users in some way. This is not possible directly through Spotify. However, through social oracles, a user can verify their Spotify credentials on a platform on Sophon.

Through this platform, the artist can now give rewards in the form of NFTs, tokens, or POAPs to their early listeners without obtaining crucial user data.

In the same way, there may be artists who want to remain anonymous but still earn their dividends from their music while being able to license their content. With social oracles, their content can be licensed and verified so they can earn while maintaining anonymity.

The same can be done for video content. Streamers and other content creators can stream on similar platforms powered by Sophon, where they can earn higher compensation while also occasionally giving cool rewards to their users without sharing any party needing to share personal information.

Similarly, with gaming, private tournaments can be held for users across the world where the users' identity can be verified through zkTLS, and based on the results of the tournaments, the rewards can be paid out directly through on-chain wallets on Sophon.

3. Institutional interactions

As we know, there are many reasons why institutions are hesitant to build on blockchains, the main one being regulatory concerns related to KYC.

Now, with zkTLS, users can verify whatever real-world credentials a traditional company or institution would require, be it bank account ownership or general KYC. This can be verified on-chain without sharing any information, so everyone wins.

This would open the door for institutions to not only experiment but allocate a lot more resources to actually building fully fleshed out on-chain products that can target a global user base almost insatnly.

4. AI data scraping

As we discussed in this article, AI is going to be a big part of Sohpon’s plans. All of these AI products are going to need a lot of data to train their models and it just so happens that zkTLS provides a great solution for this.

There are two concerns with AI data.

One is that people’s data is often accessed indiscriminately without the person knowing that their data is being used. If it is their intellectual property, they should be able to own it and authorize its use.

The second issue is that with so much data being taken indiscriminately, the quality of data tends to be subpar unless you’re a tech giant.

With zkTLS, the ownership and validity of certain datasets can be verified. So AI models can now be trained by data that is almost certainly of high quality while also knowing that the person whose data is being used authorized its usage.

Concluding thoughts

The Sophon team has shown us time and again that they are willing to do what it takes to push technological boundaries and make sure the world is operating on crypto rails.

The implementation of zkTLS is going to be an absolute game-changer in this push, and I think people are underestimating it quite heavily.

The number of pathways and use case opportunities this opens up is mind-boggling. You could spend days writing and may not even scrape the surface of what’s possible.

Imagine a huge dam between web2 and web3. The implementation of zkTLS has just opened the floodgates, and now users, information, and innovations will pour in.

Exciting times ahead anon, make sure you don’t get left behind.