We live in a “Yes/no” world where you prove every day your identity: fingerprint & a smartphone - “yes, it’s mine”, password & a Facebook - “Yes, it’s my account”, calling to your partner - “yes, it’s my number”. Now imagine the same Yes-process, but without a phone, Facebook or your partner knowing more than needed to confirm the “Yes”-choice. Like if I am 18 years old to watch this video, hold a specific financial account to perform a transaction or have a digital key to access a closed community. That’s what ZK stands for.

This article is a sketch of a talk with Ukraine DAO. It’s aimed at Ukrainians, but it’s relevant for everyone. Mind that I use a non-tech approach to show the contrast between “prover-centric” storytelling & non-tech people’s inclusion into ZK-market.

Idea: Zero-knowledge has a great potential to educate people how digital interactions (me-governments, me-companies etc) works now & their next-gen disruptor.

Skills of the future

Motivation: young people could approach ZK as an ultimate skill to master the future of the both digital governments, data economy & social interactions (media, communities, chats).

Consider ZK if you want to make a career in IT & search for future tech from AI to VR. It would be a foundation principle on how we own exclusive items in Diablo XXX or get access to closed sneakerheads’ Metaverse communities.

Skill fusion (math + tech, tech + math)

Motivation: big breakthrough happens at an intersection of different skills & fields. Use ZK to blend math with coding & vice versa - the outcome could be a Nobel Prize, who knows?

Are you a mathematician in search of a new challenge? Dive deep into ZK - learn cryptography & fuse it with blockchain principles. Make it flawlessly work for society - It’s a complex mental riddle! The same works for developers who like to explore new fields & crack complex tasks - learn math, build new neural connections and become MathDev generalists.

Sovereign individual

Motivation: ZK raises questions about citizen + government relations. What happens when all your data belongs to you, and it’s the government who’s transparent & accountable?!

Use ZK to learn more about different sociological & technological ways to interact with governments, corporations & other people. So you aren’t abused by the data economy but selectively choose to disclose your information.

Government of the future (your ID belongs to you)

Motivation: ZK could make the government accountable from decreasing corruption to ensure fair elections.

Imagine a government in your pocket that is accountable to you. ZK-enhanced voting systems could eliminate digital fraud, prevent foreign agents from altering the voting process & significantly decrease bureaucracy.

Idea: Zero-knowledge market is full of jobs with great challenges & visions.

Mathematicians

Motivation: market players from Scroll to ZkSyns search for cryptographers. And they are forced to build internal educational tracks to teach mathematicians cryptography + blockchain while usually there aren’t enough high-skilled cryptographers in the market. Right now, it’s the best time to enter the market, build a portfolio in 1 year & become a cryptography superstar.

Developers

Motivation: applied cryptography is similar to the previous issue because there aren’t enough developers with the best marks in algebra. There are different points of entry:

• Fast acceleration track like zkIgnite by Mina

• Longer job application track (like Scroll’s job board)

• Learn by doing > grant applications (Aztec grants example)

• Learn one of several languages (Leo or Noir examples) & then find projects within Aleo or Aztec ecosystems

Designers

Motivation: there’s a great need to visualise complex solutions like ABC. So ZK would be accessible to both event visitors & future developers or ecosystem contributors.

Product managers

“You will define the UI-UX and launch strategy to reach the broadest spectrum of developers and users. This will require partnering closely across a variety of cross-functional domains on a highly technical product and working with our community and developer relations teams to roll out major releases end-to-end.”, - Scroll’s Head of Product vacancy

Motivation: strong product manager who has already proven his/her/theirs ability to execute valuable solutions is a gem for an industry. So many blockchain solutions lack good UX/UI, simple onboarding & non-tech/niche slang comms! Non-crypto people could turn industry-biased products into mass culture.

Ambassadors

Motivation: web3 is a great industry to work both remotely, but have a global impact. It re-designs the way you interact with the companies via DAOs & gives you access to financial incentivisation with an easy entry point. If you know visual editors, could write, communicate - become ambassadors of ZK projects. Note that this is a great opportunity for younger Gen Z who could rock Discord, Telegram, Twitter with ease.

Bounty hunters

Motivation: there’s nothing wrong with proactive contribution to the ZK-market driven by financial incentives.

Copywriters

Motivation: content is a queen of the ZK. More guides, explainers, workshops slide needed. In you know how to combine words, charts and create a middle comms way for both devs & general public - you could grow within orgs pretty fast & you will feel that your work is appreciated & needed.

Business development

“Our aim is to increase the adoption of zkSync through identifying, developing, and managing strategic partnerships, as well as helping Gaming projects identify what they need to use zkSync, and offering them resources from within the team to ensure these integrations are successful. “ ZkSync’s Senior Business Development Manager - Gaming vacancy

I will tell you a small secret: you don’t need to be a cryptographer to secure the best partnerships! Not at all, BD is about soft skills, so then devrels come into play & secure tech synchronicity. Hyper-motivated BD could find a place under a ZK sun, build solid global traction & make ZK adoption faster with ease. Why? Because ZK is a hyped word at the market & not many “clients” know how it works for real :). It’s magic, you know.

HR

“Build a strong company culture to maximize team engagement and retention. Recruit top talent for various open positions. Manage the day-to-day human resources operations to unblock any bottlenecks”, - Manta Network’s HR generalist vacancy.

HR process in Web3 is a nightmare. Teams propelled by entire male leadership execute patriarchal approaches to hiring process, ignore building culture & skip diversity issues in society while applying technocratic view on the world. What a great starting point for a passionate HR to change rules of the game! Solid HR would find great opportunities at ZK market - could build portfolios faster than lightning & contribute to the society here&now (not in decades!).

Founders

Ok, it’s not the most accurate data, but it shows that ZK companies raise more & more capital. Why? Rollups.

Come to the market, find the way for ZK applicability (like new use-case for privacy) and attract capital from both existing projects & VCs. I bet, ZK will be the next capital hype after NFTs & DAOs. Whether you like VCs or not - it’s your chance to make your idea funded & contribute to a ZK market.

One quick example: Zkitter could inspire a startuper imagine a new way of communication. So maybe the next social media would be empowered by a ZK?

Valuable example #1: Nucleo

“private, audit-friendly multisigs for on-chain orgs — full transparency a risk for you? go nucleo”

Valuable example #2: Notebook Labs

Grants!

Since the capital is flooding the market & companies are competing with each other - grant programs are fuelling devs & founders with money & resources.

ZK companies face a great challenge: they have lots of capital & not that much of a traction (more future promises while being also centralised from both governance to sequencers). Read comments under Aleo’s post: https://twitter.com/AleoHQ/status/1599524202767425536. Reality is whispering: come to the market - approach projects like Aleo & propose your ideas. There’s a high chance that they would become a reality! Aztec grants are another great opportunity. a16z & other VCs fuelled them with $100M - time to build!

Hackathons

Every new tech needs an infrastructure for developer engagement. Usually, it’s done through hackathons that solve several challenges for ZK-projects: show that project exists beyond online presence, that there could be IRL hype beyond online likes & retweets &... it’s always great for “look&like” culture sharing (these tech industries want to look less highbrow & more unicorn-alike).

Come and help companies make effective hackathons, build educational programs, include Devfolio & scale ZK as a buzzword beyond innovators. And this requires extensive education, workshops, code sharing, experimentation, winners highlights & smiling devs all over the post-NFT world!

Donations

Fact: Co-founder & CEO @the_matter_labs Alex Glukhowski is Ukrainian & contributor to Unchain fund.

Basically, ZK embodied in Alex already donated to the Ukrainian cause.

And since ZK is booming - there’s a way to connect ZK + donations: like MobileCoin which collaborates with “Ukrainian Students for Freedom”. Yes, ZK also stands for privacy - where you can hide your transactions from any third party. Here’s where all ZK-privacy currencies like Zcash could come in handy.

IT companies

280 developers are writing code in Ukraine (minus ones who fight & can’t write under electricity blackout). But opportunity for IT companies is there. For example, NEAR collaborates with IdeaSoft to deliver critical ecosystem solutions, because… IT service providers are more reliable than independent developers. 

In other words, Ukrainian IT companies & IT service providers could embrace ZK development & build whole new market both for corporate engineering and Web3-market delivery. Also, diversifying their business models (owning Scroll or ZkSynk token is a plus). 

zkApps by MINA as a reference: link

Blockchain agencies

Lots of Ukrainian R&Ds are working for blockchain ecosystems from Polkadot to Ethereum. For many years they delivered Wallets, Smart contracts, DAOs, DEXes & many other reliable solutions. Why not make ZK in 2023? Especially when Ukrainian developers are eager to jump into the new tech, onboard it rapidly & scale their services to the market. More developers = faster ZK-market fit.

More valuable examples (R&D labs):

• Chainsafe

• Privacy & Scaling Explorations

• Electric Coin Co. (behind Zcash)

Researchers

Huge opportunity for academics & data scientists. Right now, ZK is going through a great phase of academic research before standartization. Maybe you could become a new research star behind what would be known as a golden standard of ZK?!

PR

IT-friendly company

Non ZK IT company could use ZK to strengthen their cutting-tech image. Attract new workforce, expand their BD portfolio.

IT-friendly country (digital gov)

The Ministry of digital transformation could show how they facilitate ZK to embrace citizen-centric control over the government. When it’s almost impossible to crack centralised database & steal all information on Ukrainians. Moreover, they would show that corrupted politicians can’t use citizens data. Basically, re-framing citizen-government relations.

Companies

Every company could use ZK for reputation purposes, facilitating verifiable credentials. For example, companies could apply ZK to worker’s CVs in relation to compensation. So no one could compromise their CVs & at the same time roll back compensation commitments from the company. No more shady HR practices - long live white ZK reputation. Dock example: HR brand (ZK reputation)

DAO governance + Voting systems

Aragon has been built from the necessity of Catalan people to stand out & be independent of centralised actors. If you are a part of blockchain market - you could use ZK to enable both fair, sibyl resistant & even anonymous elections (hey, you could use these services beyond blockchain!): discover https://vocdoni.io

Reputation systems

We live in a world where everything has reputation from Avatar 2 movie on IMDB to Spotify’s recommendation algorithm. People from the market could discover how ZK enhance well-balanced reputation mechanisms without becoming a surveillance state apparatus: https://about.unirep.social

Here you could apply reputation to communities, DAO voters, users of your solution, event visitors & so much more. But be nice, people don’t like to be scored & surveil!

Protection from hacking (increasing security)

There’s a high chance that hackers already have your data: emails, name, gender, password. They crack sooooooo reliable companies from WhatsApp to T-Mobile again & again. But we still give them sensitive data as if nothing has happened.

ZK-based identity like Sismo could give you back control over your digital identity (real or imaginative). So you won’t be hacked & your data won’t be stolen again. Mind that these ZK solutions aren’t silver bullets & they are also vulnerable to hacking. But it’s worth exploring & asking yourself: how secured are these solutions, how founders could prove it? Heyanon could be also valuable tool in DAO anon participation

Buy military equip

Ukraine is in the midst of the war. Military-related equipment trading has became a norm for thousands of volunteers (beyond officials). Private ZK payments could help to hide details of the transactions, so you could make your deals safer (tradeoff: your enemy could do this too).

Sismo x Banda x Comeback alive

Comeback alive is the leading volunteering organisation in Ukraine & Banda is a creative agency with multiple Cannes Lions & Red dots. ZK could be an instrument for friendly-contributions network building when “friends of Ukraine” would get access to exclusive things now & after our victory: merch, startup products, ideas… Here ZK identity + reputation could become future of the “rebuild Ukraine” campaign. Just make it creative - that’s why we need Banda on board!

Bot factories

“Sybil resistance” sounds alien? Let’s say ZK could fight bot factories so popular… for example, on Twitter. When legitimate account could be granted if you would confirm your unique identity. As simple as that. Maybe it’s the way to ensure that society can’t be so politically polarised because of the bots. If ZK could contribute to democracy - worth trying!

Journalism x Whistleblowing

Whistleblowers are societal guardians helping people control governments. ZK could assist media be ensured that particular person is not anon-anon, but real & reliable source of information. At the same time, this “source” can’t be prosecuted by non-democratic governments.

Privacy is one of the biggest ZK-markets. It’s both highly regulatory sensitive, but at the same time, stands for human rights. Think of ZK as a shield that protects you from bad actors. The shield you could trust.

Stealth payments

Russia occupied your region? Use Zcash or other ZK-empowered currencies to receive financial help without being traced.

There are extra challenges with merchants & exchange on fiat or the necessary goods, but it’s a solvable issue, even on occupied territories.

Here ZK saves lives, literally.

Receive & send money

Lots of people don’t work to be exposed while they send money. They could be leaders of NASDAQ-traded companies, public personas etc. There could be different motives, but 1 need - to be “invisible” & not traceable, preferably, to the media or political opponents.

You can use ZK to receive money on humanitarian causes anonymously. Aztec’s http://zk.money is here to stay.

Enterprises (Polygon)

EY & Polygon are collaborating to ensure that corporations could use blockchain, but with sensitive data being hidden. Again, ZK acts as a shield.

Ukrainian corporations can make R&D copying  this approach or make their own ZK PoC related to the business operations. The more ZK actors around - the better for technology-readiness & ZK-market-fit.

Monobank scoring

The coolest neobank in Ukraine could adopt ZK for its loyalty program. Ensuring players that it’s fair & censorship resistant activity.

It could be a getaway to DeFi for traditional institutions, especially, when Ukraine is so crypofriendly at the moment.

ZK NGO x Mina

Local Ukrainian NGOs could collaborate with ZK protocols to build a future-ready ZK-accountable organisation. From approval budget spending to access to help. It could lead to a greater ZK-identity implication beyond just organisational structure. See UniRep protocol solution

ZK NFT (Artist)

ZK could help to revive demand for confidential NFT ownership. Which could make NFT offer an exclusive event. Helping both Ukrainian/foreign artists to stand out, but at the same time fundraise additional funds for a great cause (victory). Here girls from Ukrainian digital clothing startup DressX could come in handy:

Insurance companies x Scoring

Credit scoring companies (like FICO) could use ZK to empower reliability of their algorithms: Teller + MINA example

As an alternative take: ZK credentials help market disruptors to change embedded racial profiling within financial scoring mechanism & make financials inclusive to all people.

Gaming studios x Unique items x NFTs

Ukrainian game developers are well-known in the world. ZK could be used in relation to exclusive access attribution to in-game items. These items could also be used offline to create new economies of scale between online & offline worlds.

Laba education certificates

LABA educational platform could use ZK to prove authenticity of certification. Simple & valuable example.

And guess who’s coming to ZK adoption dinner

Not a conclusion

“ZK magic” has no Harry Potter.
Everyone contributing to the cause of shifting power structures, returning power to the people or even protecting them from oppressive regimes deserves the highest credits.

It’s 22 Jan 2023, perfect timing to make ZK real. Join the game.

Homework

• 100+ different ZK-projects to explore

• Voting: https://vocdoni.io

• Badges: http://sismo.io

• Reputation: https://about.unirep.social

• Making transactions cheaper + faster: https://zksync.io/ & www.scroll.io

• R&D lab to follow

This article is dedicated to a chat:

• Hey, do you want to hear my ZK explanation with a cave?

• No, my business isn’t a cave.

These words were filtered out from the article (because they are slang that confuses non-tech people)