alt Hacker NewsWhy is that required? The whole point of zero knowledge proofs is that it can run on untrusted devices.
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gbear605 • today at 12:52 AM
You’d have to ask Google
Why is that required? The whole point of zero knowledge proofs is that it can run on untrusted devices.
You’d have to ask Google
Because true “zero knowledge” proofs are actually useless for age gating purposes.
Conceptually, if a proof was truly zero knowledge and there were no restrictions on generating it, there would also be nothing stopping someone from launching a website where you clicked a button and were given a free token generated from their ID. If it was truly a zero knowledge proof it would be impossible to revoke the ID that generated it, so there is no disincentive to freely share IDs.
So every real world “zero knowledge” proof eventually restricts something. Some require you to request your tokens from a government entity. Others try to do hardware attention chains so theoretically you can’t generate them outside of the approved means.
But the hacker fantasy of truly zero knowledge proofs is impossible because 1 hour after launch there would be a dozen “Show HN” posts with vibe coded websites that dispense zero knowledge tokens.