As the "airdrop season" of leading projects like zkSync and Starknet comes to a close, zero-knowledge (ZK) technology has ignited both enthusiasm and controversy in the community like never before. For the first time, millions of users' wallet addresses are linked to this esoteric cryptographic technology with real financial implications. However, amidst the clamor surrounding valuations, trading volumes, and airdrop rules, are we falling into a kind of "winner's myopia"? Are we limiting the imagination of ZK to merely "making Ethereum faster and cheaper"?

While the market's focus remains on the fierce competition in the Layer 2 arena, another grand wave—the fusion of AI and Crypto—is quietly rising. ZK is the key technological bridge connecting these two super narratives. This article aims to penetrate the haze of current ZK-Rollups hype and propose a core viewpoint: the ultimate battlefield for ZK technology is not to win the L2 war, but to build a trustworthy, permissionless digital reality that can defend individual sovereignty for the upcoming AI era.

(Photo from: @ayyyeandy)

ZK-Rollups: A Great Starting Point, Not an Endpoint

Undoubtedly, ZK-Rollups are the most successful commercialization of zero-knowledge proof technology to date. They solve the long-standing scalability problem in the blockchain world’s "impossible triangle" with an almost perfect cryptographic technique. By bundling hundreds or thousands of transactions off-chain (Layer 2), generating a concise validity proof, and then submitting it to the main chain (Layer 1) for verification, ZK-Rollups have increased Ethereum's transaction processing capacity by several orders of magnitude without sacrificing security.

From StarkWare's StarkNet to Matter Labs' zkSync, and Scroll and Polygon zkEVM, the technical competition among major teams has almost entirely revolved around "EVM compatibility" and "transaction costs (Gas Fee)." The market has responded enthusiastically, and capital has invested real money to express its preferences. This has created a kind of prosperity but also brought about a "tunnel vision"—we seem to assume that ZK's mission is solely to make on-chain transaction experiences faster and cheaper.

However, if we broaden our perspective, we will find that confining ZK technology merely within the framework of scalability underestimates its revolutionary potential. Scalability is a necessary path, the infrastructure leading to the future; but it is not the future itself. It paves the way for us, but what truly excites us is the scenery that this path leads to.

Breaking Out of the Scalability Fortress: Three High-Potential Battlefields for ZK

When we no longer view ZK merely as a "compression tool," its essence as a "trust tool" becomes apparent. This reveals three areas that are ripe for explosion and more aligned with the spirit of Crypto fundamentalism:

1. Verifiable Computation: Reshaping the Trust Foundation of Data and Computation

Imagine a scenario: a complex machine learning model or a sophisticated financial risk model running on a cloud server. How does it prove to you that its computation process is accurate and has not been maliciously tampered with? In the traditional Web2 architecture, we can only choose to "trust" the service provider.

ZK technology fundamentally changes this game. Through zero-knowledge proofs, the party executing the computation task can generate a proof that certifies it has executed the computation exactly as programmed and returned the results honestly. The verifier does not need to re-execute the entire time-consuming computation process; they only need to verify this lightweight proof to establish mathematical-level trust in the results.

This is not just a technical showcase. It will unlock decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), decentralized science (DeSci), and fairer digital advertising markets. For example, the field of ZKML (zero-knowledge machine learning) that Modulus Labs is exploring allows the inference process of AI models to be verified, ensuring users can trust that the AI-generated results they receive have not been censored or manipulated. Projects like RISC Zero are building general-purpose ZK virtual machines (zkVM) that enable any type of computation to generate ZK proofs, opening the door to decentralized, verifiable cloud computing. When the computation process itself becomes trustworthy and verifiable, we no longer need to rely on centralized brands or institutions as trust intermediaries, making a truly peer-to-peer, permissionless computing market possible.

2. Decentralized Identity (DID) and On-Chain Reputation: Building Your Web3 Native Passport

In the current Web3 world, our "identity" has been brutally simplified to a wallet address. This address records our assets and transaction history, but it cannot carry our complex social relationships, professional achievements, or reputation scores.

ZK-DID allows users to selectively prove their attributes without disclosing specific personal information. For example:

• Proving to a DeFi protocol that your credit score is above a certain threshold to obtain better lending rates without exposing your entire asset status.

• Proving in DAO governance voting that you are a real, independent user without revealing your identity.

• Proving to a gaming platform that you are over 18 without showing your ID number.

This ability for "selective disclosure" is key to building a Web3 ecosystem that protects user privacy while establishing complex social collaborations. This is not a fantasy; Polygon ID has already built a complete open-source framework for developers to easily integrate ZK authentication features. Projects like zkMe focus on providing decentralized KYC solutions, allowing users to verify once and anonymously prove their compliant identity across the entire Web3 world. Even large-scale social experiments like Worldcoin utilize ZK technology to ensure that users' "personhood proofs" are separated from their on-chain behavior, protecting individual privacy. It will give rise to a native on-chain reputation system, transforming our digital identity from a cold address into a rich, three-dimensional "soul" governed by our own sovereignty.

3. True On-Chain Privacy: From Transparency to "Controllable Transparency"

The transparency of Ethereum is a double-edged sword. It guarantees the fairness and auditability of the system but also exposes all users' financial situations to the light of day. Privacy coins (like Zcash) have already demonstrated the power of ZK in transaction privacy, but their ecosystems are relatively isolated.

The future trend is to seamlessly integrate privacy features into mainstream smart contract platforms in an "optional" or "default" manner. Imagine businesses conducting confidential supply chain financial settlements on-chain; DAO organizations distributing salaries anonymously; individual users transferring assets privately.

In this arena, Aztec Network is a pioneer, building an encrypted ZK-Rollup aimed at bringing a native privacy layer to Ethereum, allowing users to conduct confidential transactions within familiar DeFi applications. Additionally, Layer 1 public chains like Aleo are designed from the ground up for privacy, aiming to create a default private smart contract platform. This requires us to shift from the mindset of pursuing "complete transparency" to seeking "controllable transparency"—where data is default private, but owners can grant viewing permissions to specific parties (like auditing firms) as needed and generate corresponding ZK proofs to verify compliance. This is the most profound transformation of ZK technology in finance and even social governance.

The success of ZK-Rollups is a significant victory for ZK technology at the level of "instrumental rationality." It efficiently addresses the industry's most pressing pain points. However, the vast cosmos of Crypto ultimately returns to the exploration of "value rationality"—what kind of world do we truly want to build with these powerful tools?

I firmly believe that the ultimate mission of ZK technology is to empower individuals with unprecedented digital sovereignty. It enables us to participate in the digital economy without sacrificing privacy, to verify the authenticity of the information we rely on, and to construct a trust internet defined not by centralized giants but by mathematics and consensus.

Therefore, the next time we evaluate a ZK project, perhaps we can pose higher-dimensional questions: Beyond making transactions faster and cheaper, does it make our digital world more trustworthy? Does it enhance our control over our identity and data? Is it contributing to a future that is fairer and more protective of individuals?

Betting on ZK is not just a bet on a technology; it is a bet on a future. And that future is far grander than the TPS and Gas fees we are discussing today.

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