The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 11 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Wilcox: Zcash provided the first practical application of zero-knowledge proofs
“Like I say, it was a very important scientific discovery, but it didn't get practical application until my company implemented it. We made some scientific advances that made it sufficiently practical, and we implemented it and deployed it to the world in this …”
Wilcox: Zero-knowledge proofs could solve blockchain scalability bottlenecks
“Zero knowledge proofs might be a breakthrough to solve the scaling problem that has stopped all the blockchains so far. Because the scaling problem is, you remember, everybody wants to be sure of everything that goes into the blockchain. That means the more pe…”
Wilcox: Centralized personal data databases are a national security threat
“But as we've learned over the last couple of years, this isn't safe, it's not scalable, and it's ballooned from not just being a personal security problem, and not just being a business security problem, but even being a national security problem.”
Wilcox: The NSA led a government faction opposing early HTTPS encryption
“There was a faction within the US government led by the NSA that objected to the development of HTTPS.”
Wilcox: Economic necessity drove the shift from opposing to mandating encryption
“And the big reason for that transition is that it turns out in that two-point system between the web server and the web browser, that web server became the center of our economy, and encryption is, became necessary for business purposes.”
Wilcox: Traditional point-to-point encryption cannot be applied to blockchains
“You can't apply this encryption to blockchain, because all this encryption from Julius Caesar to Alan Turing to Netscape is point to point.”
Wilcox: Satoshi Nakamoto failed to encrypt Bitcoin due to early ZK limits
“So when Satoshi Nakamoto was inventing Bitcoin, he tried to figure out how to add encryption into it, and he couldn't figure it out. It didn't fit, because back then, 10 whole years ago we didn't have good enough zero-knowledge proofs.”
Wilcox: Zero-knowledge proofs solve privacy flaws in traditional identity verification
“Every time we want to prove our identity, we do it by disclosing potentially sensitive information that could be abused. This is not a safe or scalable way to do it, and zero knowledge proofs might provide a replacement where instead of divulging information, …”
Wilcox: Zero-knowledge proofs will protect national infrastructure within 10 years
“It'll turn out in 10 years that it's something that protects both individual safety, and it protects businesses, and it protects our whole national infrastructure.”
Wilcox: Cryptography was exclusively a military secret until the internet
“Cryptography was a military secret, until the advent of the Internet.”
Wilcox: Zero-knowledge proofs confirm facts without revealing underlying data
“It's a zero knowledge proof because I have learned zero information about what's on here. If no matter if we did it a thousand times, I'm no closer to guessing whether this is a zero or whether this is a one. He never showed it to me, and I didn't learn any hi…”