Comment by nl
21 hours ago
Disagree with this.
RISC Zero is useful for crypto use-cases: Other people need to verify an exact program was run.
The identity use case is about connecting sources of trust (document issuers) with consumers of that trust ("this is a real person") in ways that don't release more than the minimum information required ("the passport office has signed that this is a real person so we can trust that").
Single purpose circuits make a lot of sense for this - there is just no need to a full ZK RISC-V VM for this use case.
RISC Zero verifies that an exact computation was performed. What would be the point of the system otherwise? If you're starting from this incorrect premise, you're going to arrive at an incorrect conclusion.
> Single purpose circuits make a lot of sense for this
No, they don't. They lock your system into a single set of trade-offs without an advantage to offset it. They're premature optimization. How do you think ZK systems can be made resilient to cloning attacks without hardware locking if your ZK vocabulary is limited to stupid BBS-style selective disclosure and nothing else?
> if your ZK vocabulary is limited to stupid BBS-style selective disclosure and nothing else
I don't understand what "BBS-style" means in this context, but selective disclosure is exactly what the requirement is.