An introduction to zkTLS

Privacy is a hot topic in the crypto world. The transparent nature of the blockchain can be both a blessing and a curse.

Transparency can foster trust for those who choose to embrace it. On the other hand, there is another, darker side, where anonymous users are doxxed and shamed across the timeline for dumping on their followers.

As the crypto industry gets bigger and gains legitimacy (hard to believe sometimes), the need to protect users, especially their data transmission, grows exponentially.

For these reasons, and others, many a big brain in the industry has been on the hunt for a solution.

Of all the possible answers, one has emerged with the greatest potential to fix this decade-long issue.

It involves a combination of Transport Layer Security (TLS), which encrypts data as it travels across networks, and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK-proofs).

Thanks to the fusion of these two technological advancements we may now be able to prove who we are without exposing anything about ourselves.

In order to make sense of all this technological jargon, let’s dive in and check out how zkTLS could change the crypto landscape and help protect us degenerate peasants while we crawl around in the depths of the trenches.

What is TLS?

To best understand zero-knowledge Transport Layer Security (zkTLS), it makes sense to break it down into its separate parts.

TLS is something we all use daily, most likely, without knowing about it.

Every time we do anything online, data is sent somewhere. If we think of these data packages as good old-fashioned mail in the post, then we can better understand the risks involved.

For example, it could be your wife sending a love letter to her boyfriend after you lost the house deposit gambling on Trump coins.

This sensitive information must be kept secure from any possible interceptors who might read it while it travels to its final destination.

More specifically, on the internet, we use HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) to enable our web browsers to interact with websites and applications.

TLS keeps this communication between browser and platform secure using things like encryption and authentication.

In the same way that your wife's mail might be picked up and read on its path to her boyfriend, your internet traffic can be intercepted by what is known as a man-in-the-middle.

These men in the middle can either see the data packages and where they are going or, even worse, if unencrypted, view and change their contents.

Basically, TLS ensures that only the data receiver can access and act on it. In the case of online activity, this would be a website server viewing your request to access the site and allowing you to do so.

This is known as a handshake.

After the handshake, the website then authenticates itself by providing a type of digital ID to prove it is who it says it is. Once this is done, data can flow freely between your device and the website, protected by encryption so that no middlemen can see it taking place.

As good as TLS is, there are some limitations.

Because TLS is designed to act between a client and a server, it leaves little room for third parties to access data. Even if this data were to be shared with a third party, TLS has no real way of proving that the data is authentic.

This is a problem in decentralized finance (DeFi), where data needs to be more readily available for other parties to process complex transactions.

This is where Zero-Knowledge Proofs shine.

What are Zero-Knowledge Proofs?

Within the world of DeFi, there’s a need for applications to prove that data has not been tampered with and is authentic before sharing it with other third-party applications and endpoints.

To achieve this, Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK proofs) are used.

In their simplest form, ZK-proofs are used to prove that something is true without exposing anything about that something in the process. This is more complicated to do than you may think.

For example, you may need to prove to someone that you have the login details for a certain website. You could just stand next to the person and sign in without them seeing you do it to prove this. You could do this multiple times to ensure that it's not just luck.

Essentially, this is what ZK proofs do. They are a cryptographic way of proving to one party that something is true about another party without revealing any information about that party in the process.

In doing so, the verifying party learns nothing about the proving party except that what they are trying to prove is true.

This is all possible thanks to advancements in cryptographic algorithms and mathematical concepts like hash functions.

Within crypto, ZK-proofs are used for a multitude of different things.

There are privacy-preserving coins, like Zcash, that use ZK-tech to allow users to make fully private transactions without publicly revealing transaction details.

Then we have different scalability solutions, like ZK rollups, which bundle transactions together off-chain and verify their authenticity on-chain to take the workload away from the main network.

ZK-proofs can also be integrated into smart contracts to allow different tasks to be executed without giving away any underlying data. Large exchanges can use them to prove things like their solvency without exposing any sensitive financial information.

Anywhere that privacy is paramount, ZK-proofs can be put to work.

Combining the Tech; zkTLS

Zero-knowledge transport Layer Security (zkTLS) is more than just a mouthful. At its core, it is a multi-party protocol that allows information to flow securely between the web2 world and the cryptoverse.

This means that it is capable of extracting data from any off-chain web2 source and bringing it on-chain without revealing any sensitive information.

The advantages of combining these two privacy-preserving technologies become clear when we consider how each complements the other.

As we now know, TLS keeps data secure while in transmission but struggles to prove the authentication and integrity of data to share it with third parties. ZK-proofs are used to do exactly the latter, authenticate and prove the integrity of shared information without revealing the sensitive parts.

It’s the perfect killer combo. It essentially creates a protocol that facilitates safe data transmission with the added benefit of a verifiable privacy layer on top.

To make life even better, many of the modern zkTLS frameworks are purpose-built to be added to any existing TLS protocols.

This makes it simple for developers to beef up their systems, regardless of whether they exist in web2 or crypto, and allows data to flow seamlessly between both worlds without sacrificing privacy or integrity.

zkTLS Usage in Crypto

These advancements in cryptographic technology have some interesting use cases within the crypto space. Here are just a few:

Identity Verification

Let’s say you want to move some of your private information from one place to another within DeFi, such as account balances, lending and borrowing positions, or certain smart contract interactions.

With zkTLS tech, you can verify what you own and who you are without exposing anything about yourself or your positions.

This becomes especially useful for the likes of proving ownership of collateral to secure loans, for example.

Not only this, but the need for passwords and wallet sign-ins can be greatly reduced, in turn reducing the attack vectors for would-be hackers.

Smart Contract Interaction

Protecting your sensitive information while interacting with smart contracts is another area that zkTLS helps make safer for all.

Using this technology, you can complete various DeFi-related tasks without exposing sensitive data like your wallet address or account balances.

This goes beyond just signing application-specific transactions and includes the likes of transferring funds from one wallet to another without the transfers being publicly visible.

Yes, these technological advancements are, as usual, a double-edged sword.

There is a good chance that any smart wallet drainers out there will be using this tech to move your hard-earned, magical internet beans to a destination of their choice without ZachXBT being able to track them.

Oracles

In order for crypto to function as a sector, data needs to be brought on-chain from a wide array of off-chain sources.

Everything from price feeds, real-world assets, and social network data to information needed for decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) protocols like weather and mobile data needs to be brought on-chain.

Think about prediction markets and how much real-world information they need to function. Voting information, sports results, and so on all need to be dragged from the web2 world into crypto.

The problem with doing this has long been verifying the authenticity of this off-chain information.

If a price feed is wrong or a sports result reflects a score that never happened, millions or potentially billions of dollars can be lost. Not to mention the credibility of the platform that messed it up.

zkTLS provides a way to verify the integrity of any data source before it is used by an application and can discard any information that does not seem legit.

It does this by comparing a variety of sources and using verifiable language models to ensure that the information is true before being used.

It also has the ability to perform these tasks without disclosing where the data has come from, preventing man-in-the-middle attacks.

Remember this the next time you are gambling on a President mentioning our precious crypto coins in his inauguration speech.

The disappointment was real.

Data Scraping for AI models

With artificial intelligence being all the rage of late, the topic of training has become a major talking point.

A lot of data is needed to train highly intelligent AI models, and this data has to be taken from somewhere.

This data is someone's intellectual property, and the moral conflict of using it without permission from the original creator is being addressed by several large projects at present.

zkTLS provides a way for AI models to train on data scraped from every corner of the web while still maintaining the ability to verify if the data is valid and give credit to the original creator without exposing anything about them.

Institutional Usage

It’s no secret that the big boys are here, sharks swimming amongst us minnows, gobbling up large bags and dumping them on unsuspecting victims.

These big players need a way to interact with the blockchain without giving away any of their multi-billion dollar secrets, and zkTLS enables them to do so.

These institutions' ability to bring important information from their web2 worlds into crypto allows them to tokenize real-world assets (RWAs) and create huge amounts of on-chain value in the process.

It is fair to expect any major projects in the RWA space to utilize this type of technology or risk losing institutional interest to better-equipped competitors.

Closing thoughts

As the crypto space grows, it will require a never-ending stream of data to provide the services needed to onboard more users. Not to mention the fact that we now have AI models being birthed natively on-chain that need access to secure data to improve themselves.

For all this exponential growth to occur, a technology like zkTLS is paramount.

Due to its relatively simple integration into existing systems, its implementation taking off in all corners of crypto and web2 won't come as a major surprise.

The benefits of such a technology are obvious to even the lowest IQ mind, and there may soon come a time when your horrific shitcoin trading history will be your secret to keep and not for the rest of the world to discover while sifting through SolScan.

With all the degeneracy happening lately, it is refreshing to remind ourselves that there is still real tech being built here, and some of it has the potential to completely change the entire internet as we currently know it.

There will come a time when the tech will matter again, just might not be in this lifetime.