Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney talks zk proofs in 25-year-old unearthed footage

Early Bitcoin (BTC) pioneer Hal Finney shared his imaginative and prescient for zero-knowledge proofs greater than 25 years in the past, a full decade earlier than the launch of the primary cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. 

The video, purportedly from the Crypto ‘98 convention held on Aug. 26, 1998, in Santa Barbara, exhibits Finney discussing intimately, the idea of zero-knowledge proofs — a cryptographic know-how that gained immense recognition a long time later.

️ NEW: Bitcoin legend Hal Finney discusses Zero-Information Proofs in a newly unearthed presentation, made 25 years in the past at Crypto ’98 in Santa Barbara.

Have you ever ever heard @halfin‘s voice earlier than? pic.twitter.com/HdddworTsg

— Belief Machines (@trustmachinesco) September 20, 2023

Finney explains how one might hypothetically carry out a zero-knowledge proof on a SHA-1 hash, describing the potential for sending a cryptographically encrypted declare with out revealing any of the small print contained throughout the identical declare.

“I need to show to you that I do know a message that hashes to a given hash worth utilizing the SHA-1 hash. I do not need to reveal something concerning the message to you. It is a zero-knowledge proof, and I’ve written a program to do that that I will inform you about,” defined Finney.

A zero-knowledge (ZK) proof is a cryptographic protocol that permits one consumer (the prover) to persuade one other (the verifier) {that a} specific declare is true with out disclosing any particulars concerning the declare itself.

On the time of Finney’s speech, zero-knowledge proofs had been thought-about to be a chance, however attributable to {hardware} limitations on the time had been extensively regarded, as Finney places it: “inefficient or impractical.”

Associated: Idealistic Ethereum community-built zkEVM Scroll launching in weeks

A long time later, the crypto trade is now abuzz with discussions and debates on how finest to implement zero-knowledge proofs, with the primary use of the know-how being leveraged to scale the Ethereum community.

Finney is a storied pioneer of the cryptocurrency trade. He was a pc scientist who made a few of the earliest contributors to privacy-enhancing know-how, together with the primary absolutely nameless re-mailer, a software that protected consumer identification when sending emails. Moreover, Finney created the primary reusable Proof of Work system, which preceded Bitcoin by almost 5 years. 

In 2009, Finney was the very first recipient of Bitcoin, after he was transferred 10 BTC by the cryptocurrency’s pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto, and was recognized to have labored carefully with Nakamoto in Bitcoin’s earliest days. 

Some have speculated that Finney could possibly be Satoshi Nakamoto himself, although he has denied the idea.

Finney was identified with a uncommon neurological illness generally known as ALS, the problems of which might later declare his life in 2014. Finney was cryopreserved by the Alcor Life Extension Basis in Arizona.

The video could possibly be one of many first occasions that some folks has been in a position to hear Finney’s voice, steered TrustMachines on X.

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