To be clear, I’m not advocating for online age verification. I’m very much against it in any form. I’m just curious from a technical standpoint if it’s possible somehow to construct an accurate age verification system that doesn’t compromise a user’s privacy? i.e., it doesn’t expose the person’s identity to anyone nor leaves behind a paper trail that can be traced to that person?
There are some pretty strong arguments that even zk proof is a flawed way of preserving privacy though, in a variety of ways. It prevents pseudonymity by enabling one-user-one-account, and it leaves users vulnerable to being coerced to reveal their full online activities by handing over cryptographic keys.
Got ready to read some bullshit,
Vitalik Buterin
nevermind. But damn, what a great read. I haven’t given much thought to on-chain ID in years and he lays it out pretty well. Still sounds like encrypted tokens are the way to go, but we all need to have multiple forms for it to protect anonymity.
If there’s one person who knows their applied zk proofs, it’s that guy.